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Technology Stocks : Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: rkral who wrote (62103)	10/22/2002 11:49:58 PM
From: Stock Farmer	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 77397

Ron, you under-estimate the ability of the newly minted buzzword factories (oops, I mean folks with an MBA in Marketing) to take perfectly useful words and turn them into something that resembles the original about as closely as turnip stew resembles a turnip. Probably went something like this: Assistant Vice Minion to the Marketing Manager (MBA, BS, BO, BBQ, PDQ): "You call this new feature a Decision point? That sounds much too ordinary, I mean, it's really not much more complicated than an if-statement, or maybe a table driven decision tree. But that wouldn't sound like something we could charge a million bucks for, would it?" Engineer: "Yes, you are right. It's not much more than a table driven if statement. In fact, we got the idea from an Excel macro running on the desk of a shipping clerk. We put a team of 30 designers on it a month ago and reverse engineered the design according to standard specifications. We've only got about 2,300 PRs open on the base functionality so if all goes well it will be ready to ship in the next few days. If you want a more descriptive name, I think you should know that before we engaged the Nomenclature Consultants the rest of us in the engineering team had been calling it the QuasiModo, which is short for Quad Array Superheterodyne Input Multiplexed Occipital Decision Oscillator function after the four processors it runs on and rather aptly describes the decision input design structure... " Finance weenie, cutting him off: "Right we've got to call it something our sales executives can spell, or this part of our revenue curve is likely to represent an inflection point from positive to negative curvature, which I don't have to mention ... " Vice Minion "What was that you said?" Weenie: "Negative curvature"? Vice Minion: "No, before that". Weenie (exasperated): "Inflection point, you know (dripping sarcasm), where the first derivative of the curvature changes sign?" Minion (promotion pending): "I don't want to know what an Inflection Point is [you idiot (muttered)]. It's the name. "Inflection Point"... sounds fast. Sounds neat. New. Something our competitors won't know what to do with and our customers will feel silly asking questions about. Perfect. I'll get the word to the sales executives immediately. How do you spell that"? ... John

To: rkral who wrote (62103)	10/23/2002 12:10:36 AM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Respond to of 77397

An inflection point in the world of adaptive supply chains should bear some similarities, at least, to the definition of inflection point in mathematics. I know it should, but it doesn't... but then you'd have to go back to the true origin of the word, don't you think? Whos to say whether the mathematicians or the operations research people got it right... <gg> Like I said, I realized after my post that all this is buzzword babble, especially the "adaptive" part- all supply chains are adaptive thats the whole point of having one, but anyway this entire lingo pops up, as if its some magical feature you should pay more money for. Inflection point at least connotes something different going on, whether its gramatically correct or not. I think I'll have to refer you to the ultimate buzzword source.... line56.com <gg> Lizzie

To: rkral who wrote (62103)	10/23/2002 12:27:35 AM
From: Jorj X Mckie	Respond to of 77397

I understood Lizzie's usage of "inflection point" without much trouble. From dictionary.com A turning or bending away from a course or position of alignment. so an inflection point in a supply chain doesn't necessarily have to match up to the mathematical definition. In the supply chain is wherever the course of the manufacturing process can be changed. Some places where that can happen off the top of my head would be: Purchasing components Kitting WIP Final Assembly And since CSCO uses contract manufacturers for the bulk of their manufacturing, there are probably lots of ways to see what is happening at those inflection points. Heck, I bet that the trucking/ freight forwarding companies can be considered an inflection point.