Digital Britain

Last week the UK government launched a programme based on a report titled "Digital Britain". The aim is to develop the electronic infrastructure of the UK in the next decade or so. The news media have homed in on three proposals from the many (an executive summary of 30 pages seems to go against the desire to be concise). One relates to the funding of the national broadcasting services (BBC), one to the funding of the national broadband network (so every home can have 2MBps broadband by 2012) and the third to the desire to move many FM radio transmissions to Digital by 2015.

Let's look at the second and third from an OR perspective. The proposed funding scheme is a tax of £6 per year on each telephone landline in the UK. (It's not clear if this will be applied pro rata for businesses with internal exchanges.) The media have questioned why such a tax is needed. The government scenario is that the objective of extending the broadband service can only be done by government intervention. An alternative scenario is that commercial operators will develop the broadband provision in response to demand and their financial objectives. So far the operators have done very well without the need for taxes to help. And with the increasing convergence of computer technology and telephone technology, is the scenario seen by the government the correct one?

The third proposal is intriguing. Digital radio in the uK is often referred to as DAB-radio. The government argues that the cost of upgrading the FM network will be about £200million, and this is not worthwhile. Instead, they are looking to manufacturers to develop radios that cost less than £20. So, instead of spending £200million, consumers are expected to replace their radios. Currently, our home has 7 FM radios, plus one in the car. All of these have other functions -- a radio alarm, radios with CD players, an MP3 player with FM radio. So, to replace these will cost rather more than £20 each; unlike TV sets which often have a limited life, radios go on and on and on. Of our 7 household radios, I expect 5 or 6 to be in working order in 2015. Is the scenario of scrapping them a good one? I don't think so.

Finally, the report was launched with a triumphant "We want the UK to be the best in Europe or the world". What about helping other countries to develop in their use of technology? Do we selfishly optimise our bit of the system, or do we think globally and optimise the whole? I favour thinking globally, even if it means that the UK infrastructure is not quite the best in the world!

Lessons for O.R. from the primary school

The same article in "The Independent" mentioned the primary school at St Ives; there was a thought-provoking quote from its head teacher (Joanne Dean) too. She too stressed the need for lifelong learning for everyone (including the O.R. profession!).

We never think to ourselves:
"That's it; I have learnt all I need to know."
It never happens

Lessons for O.R. from the junior school

Britain's "The Independent" daily paper carries a supplement on education most weeks. Last Thursday (16th April) there was a page about two schools in St Ives, Cornwall. Although St Ives is a popular holiday destination, many local people are not well off, as tourism is low paid, seasonal work. The Junior School had problems when it was inspected in about 2003, and the head teacher, Sue Smith (no relation) was drafted in to sort things out. The feature covered many of her achievements and philosophy.

Two quotes struck me as being relevant to the O.R. profession. First, a homily from her office wall:

In times of change, the learners will inherit the earth whilst the knowers will be beautifully equipped to deal with a world which no longer exists.

Second, the response to Sue Smith's question at the start of school assembly, "What are we doing?":

We are thinking, looking, listening, not talking, and concentrating.

Why the relevance to O.R.? For the first one, it is a reminder that learning never stops; as O.R. professionals, we are agents of change in systems, and that rebounds on us -- we need to be people who learn and change in turn. And for the second, those five characteristics should be the ones we show when we face a new management problem; maybe the fourth is not so relevant, and might be replaced by "Not talking irrelevantly".

The coin machine problem

Yesterday I saw inside a new machine and realised that its designers had solved an interesting multicriteria problem.

Many British supermarkets have introduced self-service checkouts; the shopper brings their basket to the machine, scans the items one by one without the need for a cashier, and pays by card or by cash at the end. I use one such supermarket regularly when buying a few items, because it is generally quicker than queueing for a cashier. As I have used it, I have been interested in the algorithm it follows for giving change for cash purchases. The first part of the algorithm is straightforward; if your bill is for P pence, then as soon as you have inserted any sum greater than P, the machine gives change. (So if you want to get rid of small change, then you must put that small change in before the larger coins.) But the second part concerns the coins that are dispensed as change.

British coins have values 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 and 200 (pence). My change has never included coins of value 2, 50 or 200. 9 pence in change is dispensed as four 1s and one 5. 90 pence in change is dispensed as one 10 and four 20s. So when I found staff maintaining one of the machines, I stopped to look (probably being labelled by the CCTV operators as a suspicious character). There were six storage receptacles for coins to be given as change, labelled 1, 5, 10, 20, 100, 100. So there is no way that I could be given a 2, a 50 or a 200.

The designers needed a design that worked with an algorithm. Have a stock of coins to give change in a logical way, and keep that stock inside a small volume. So they eliminated three coins from inclusion. So, objective 1: Be able to give change; objective 2: keep the number of storage bins to a logical minimum. But there was a subtle objective 3: use coins of small volume, to maximise the number of coins in the machine.

2 pence coins are larger in volume than those of value 1, 5, 10 and 20. 50 pence coins are larger than 2 pence. 200 pence (2 pound) coins are very large. So these were the coins to remove from the machine's design.

Now, was this design a multicriteria O.R. problem, or not? I think it was -- even if it has a solution that will not shake the world! But it does make the world a little better.