Gosplan never had anywhere near enough compute power or good data to do that job.
The data problem could have been solved with bar-coding. That's how WalMart got tight control over their inventory. Master Control in Bentonville, Arkansas can see pallet 2345235 leaving warehouse 242 on truck 24343 headed for store 2514. If store 2514 doesn't report arrival of that pallet, questions will be asked and the pallet will be found or somebody will be in big trouble. When the pallet is found, broken down, and product placed on shelves, the items will eventually show up in cash register data. If shelf inventory minus sales is not very close to incoming shipments, the "shrinkage" security people are informed and start looking for theft.
Gosplan had an annual planning cycle and monthly reporting. WalMart has a weekly planning cycle and daily reporting. A year was far too much lag for the system to work well. Although it did for heavy industry, where things take months anyway.
The huge linear programming problem isn't insoluble. It's a sparse matrix; potato chips don't affect steel tubing much. There's probably some way to come close to an optimal solution.[1] Sparse matrix techniques were in their infancy when the USSR was active, though.
> The data problem could have been solved with bar-coding. That's how WalMart got tight control over their inventory. Master Control in Bentonville, Arkansas can see pallet 2345235 leaving warehouse 242 on truck 24343 headed for store 2514. If store 2514 doesn't report arrival of that pallet, questions will be asked and the pallet will be found or somebody will be in big trouble. When the pallet is found, broken down, and product placed on shelves, the items will eventually show up in cash register data. If shelf inventory minus sales is not very close to incoming shipments, the "shrinkage" security people are informed and start looking for theft.
This is really interesting -- I'd never found much on pre-SAAS/internet Wal-Mart's asset tracking system, which I assume this must be a part of. Do you have any links to articles or books I could read to learn more about this?
Interesting! Thank you. Surprising to me to see RFID tags mentioned in the context of a system-wide transition -- I'll have to look into whether that was successfully completed.
It wasn't.[1] 2003 was too early for this. Their RFID usage continues to increase, though.
Latest WalMart edict: clear bar codes must appear on all four vertical faces of each carton.[2] They're tired of having to rotate a box to find out what's inside.
"People think we got big by putting big stores in small towns. Really, we got big by replacing inventory with information." - Sam Walton
The data problem could have been solved with bar-coding. That's how WalMart got tight control over their inventory. Master Control in Bentonville, Arkansas can see pallet 2345235 leaving warehouse 242 on truck 24343 headed for store 2514. If store 2514 doesn't report arrival of that pallet, questions will be asked and the pallet will be found or somebody will be in big trouble. When the pallet is found, broken down, and product placed on shelves, the items will eventually show up in cash register data. If shelf inventory minus sales is not very close to incoming shipments, the "shrinkage" security people are informed and start looking for theft.
Gosplan had an annual planning cycle and monthly reporting. WalMart has a weekly planning cycle and daily reporting. A year was far too much lag for the system to work well. Although it did for heavy industry, where things take months anyway.
The huge linear programming problem isn't insoluble. It's a sparse matrix; potato chips don't affect steel tubing much. There's probably some way to come close to an optimal solution.[1] Sparse matrix techniques were in their infancy when the USSR was active, though.
[1] http://www.gurobi.com/resources/getting-started/lp-basics