Internal Bullwhip Effects (& how to lessen them) – improving time-to-market for scholarly pub – part 1 (of 2)

We played the root beer game in an ops class this semester. I’d heard of bullwhip effects, but it was the first time I’d ever played the game or run a simulation. Interesting game, it made me wonder about implications for scholarly pub.

Basically, the bullwhip effect is a supply chain concept that grew out of research in manufacturing environments: e.g., root beer factories. Relatively recently, (1960s on) researchers found that tiny changes in demand at one end of the pipeline will send destructive shockwaves up the supply chain; the shockwaves increase in amplitude—interfering with and giving rise to other shockwaves—as they travel to the factory, resulting ultimately in complex delays and skyrocketing costs for the organization.

The complex delays and high production costs (overhead) that result are often a mystery to firms suffering these effects. Bullwhip effects can occur externally (originating with the customer) or internally (between divisions or departments). They can also occur in service industry organizations.

My first thoughts ran to books and returns: How much more complicated does “supply” become in a world of “Gone today, here tomorrow” inventory? But again, the bullwhip effect also applies to service industries; e.g., a scholarly press offering publishing services to its authors.

If we look at these “other customers,” authors and manuscripts (mss.), then the supply chain inverts. Rather than printing and warehousing being the “factory” with the customer-facing endpoint being tablets, Amazon, websites, or bookstores, the “factory” would be the production department itself, or the “bookmaking operation” as a whole, and the customer-facing endpoint would be upstream in acquisitions.

Again, organizations can also experience internal bullwhip effects; so from this, the game, and some reading, I had a few questions:

a) Could some scholarly pub houses experience internal bullwhip effects (that might cause fitful delays in delivery of bound books),

b) Could others (that get books out quickly) have procedures in place that coincidentally dampen bullwhip effects, and

c) Could some of the “fixes” developed in other industries shed light on paths to shortened operational timelines and enhanced profitability for u and other scholarly pubs?

Traffic patterns

Proofs for the bullwhip effect are very cool but can be complicated; however, we live through a simple illustration of a linear bullwhip effect whenever we drive through a “backup” on a freeway.

A backup can be caused by a bottleneck or accident. It can also be (and is more frequently) caused by concern over a potential bottleneck or accident or more simply still from merging traffic; i.e., slowing down to observe something unusual or slowing down to avoid another vehicle. In heavy traffic, the car following a car that slows down must slow down a little longer than the car ahead of it, to be sure that the first car resumes speed before continuing on. The car following that car must slow down longer still, and so on down the line. (Each car is over-estimating the need to pause and, in a sense, "asking" for an overestimate from the next car; building in not only a delay but a small multiplier of the delay at each stage.) Fifteen cars back, what began as a 10-second delay for car one has grown to a two and 1/2 minute slowdown for car sixteen, and what's more, the amount added at each stage is increasing: a backup is born.

On the flipside of backups is the world of the “high-speed merge.” A beautiful freeway to drive on, but how to get there? ...and, is it a toll road?

Simple sources and general fixes of bullwhip effects

Per considerable research and many rounds of the root beer game, changes in levels of service or “boom and bust” periods of requests for resources/production cause destructive bullwhip effects. Several general approaches help dampen them: A) keeping service or production levels constant, as much as possible, B) maintaining spare operational capacity (extra room between cars) to absorb the changes that can’t be controlled for — so they don’t translate from one project to the next — and, C) in all cases, sharing information from customer-facing endpoints to supplier-side materials- and services-providers helps managers control against (i.e., lessen) the deleterious impact/s of the shockwaves and bullwhips.

Scholarly pub

Looking within a publishing house, we can see the production department as the “factory” and acquisitions as the “retail store” or customer-facing endpoint; i.e., where the requests of work from the factory begin (e.g., contracts for services, receipts of final mss.). Managing editorial could be lumped in with the “factory” or seen as an intervening “distribution center.” In either case, acquisitions would be a value-added and customer-facing service center leading ultimately to the “factory” beyond.

Together these departments constitute a supply chain of publishing services, resulting in the published work of its customers (authors) landing online and in the warehouse. The receipt of a final ms. and transmittal into the pipeline from acquisitions is the same as an “order” being placed for those services.

(Marketing is part of the publishing services offered; but, delays are already “mature” enough in production, for illustration purposes.)

Treating the “fixes” above in reverse: A) we’d expect any fluctuations in the rate of transmittals from acquisitions to the rest of the house, at the start of the process, to add to scheduling delays and increased overhead costs in the “factory,” per the bullwhip effect, B) we’d expect the absence of spare operational capacity to worsen these effects, and C) any restrictions on the flow of information on future needs for services to send managers through multiple ad hoc rounds of scheduling revision — themselves further consumptive of resources and generative of delays.

Surprises leading to variations in the rates of requests for service (service levels)

Acquisitions, as a “customer-facing endpoint,” contends with considerable variations and surprises in its dealings with authors; e.g., the contracting for and delivery of final mss. 1) Some projects are on a short timeline, sent through peer review and contracted not far in advance of final delivery, as the manuscript is complete. Others are on a longer timeline, as they have yet to be written; i.e., they are contracted on proposal basis. 2) Across both of these categories, some projects arrive late, past their contracted delivery date, while others are on time.

Four general categories of variances and their resulting impact on scheduling are noted below, with projects on short timelines that arrive late offering the most potential surprises ( + + )—and therefore the greatest change in scheduling—and projects on long timelines arriving on time offering the least potential surprises ( – – ).



These fluctuations in scheduling and arrivals can translate to irregularities in transmittals from acquisition to managing editorial and impact scheduling in the production “factory” beyond. That said; some firms may have several steps or other procedures in place that effectively spread ms. arrivals and their transmittals out through the calendar. Such steps or procedures would normalize variations in requests for service and dampen would-be bullwhip effects before they start. Absent these measures, variations in arrivals would translate to variations in requests of later departments in the pipeline.

Divide and accelerate

Isolating groups of projects that characteristically lead to variations in requests of production/requests for resources or present other scheduling challenges (surprises) allows organizations to make managerial decisions to address each group separately, restricting such variations (from getting out of hand) and thereby minimizing costs and maximizing profitability.

There would be many ways to isolate such groups for scholarly publishers; above is just one example. But where would you go from there?

Perhaps (and before addressing operational capacity and information flow) we can look to other industries that manage "controlled chaos" under similar circumstances for inspiration; to see how they cope, survive, and thrive. Many do, in fact, cope, survive and thrive, often with fewer resources and sometimes to quite winning and even profitable effects ...which are categorically better than bullwhip effects.

I'll take a stab at looking for inspiration in one such industry in a followup post.

exploring new business models for scholarly publishing—part 1

Given everything we’re facing, this session was the most exciting, informative, helpful, and hope-filled of the talks I attended. (Though I hear How Good Is Your MetaData was a close second.) If you only listen to one section of the AAUP recordings and/or only get to pick an attendee’s brain for a few minutes, make sure it’s on this session.

Colin Robinson, Founder of OR Books, showcased a thriving new business model for us—OR Books’ approach to market. Joe Esposito analyzed the industry from the u press perspective and gave us a breakdown of what we will need to look for in our new b-model components; and, Bob Stein rolled out what was basically a concept car of a new book format, calling it "the Social Book." Probably not breaking any news here, but Greg Britton is an evil genius—what a lineup!

First, OR Books: The Movie is required viewing. According OR Books founders, OR Books has reached the point of “no returns.” (Their pun, not mine) They have no warehouse and no inventory; they do only POD and e-pub.

Strategy is about tradeoffs. This tradeoff allows them to shift monies that traditional publishers (we) spend on distribution 100% over to promoting authors and titles, driving greater sales with each dollar spent.

The masterstroke? OR Books works with Amazon as an independent vendor, filling orders themselves. Hence, the model of POD & e-pub products shipping straight from OR Books is preserved, no monies are spent on moving inventory between warehouses, and Amazon’s reach is put entirely at the publishers’ disposal—with the least profits given away in the bargain. Schmart.

The b-model component of a renegotiated relationship with Amazon seems neatly excisable and implementable—I wonder how many u presses will be moving in this direction?

Joe Esposito—what can I say? Esposito held class. Check out his slides, and get the audio. Esposito stressed the need for hybridized approaches; one solution will not cure all of our ills. Also stressed: we are not-for-profits in a commercial arena; with this comes drawbacks and advantages—we will have to be mindful of both. Last, we have major players reshaping the industry in their favor—namely, Amazon, Wiley, SAGE, etal.—and we are overly dependent on one sales channel—Amazon. The combination is a killer. Solutions we seek will have to reshape the industry in our favor AND decrease our dependence on Amazon.

The kicker was Bob Stein giving us a live demonstration of his "Social Book." For those familiar with The Institute for the Future of the Book, what we saw looked to be the next evolution of Commentpress; so, I'm going to call it Socialbook from here on out. Socialbook brings a fixed text into a dialogic space wherein readers can select and comment on passages. As with Commentpress, users work in the margins rather than scrolling "away down below" like traditional blog space, but in Socialbook the text breaks out into chapters intuitively with tabs, and users can work in real time together; i.e., they can occupy the live critical space as a group.

The new coordination(s) of space, text, users, and time, will have clear applications in academic settings (including but not limited to): peer review, book clubs, distance learning, homework, lectures, and author events. Stein said that practical applications for much of what they are working on at the Institute may not hit the mainstream for decades—possibly a century. However, aspects of concept cars usually find their way into production models within a few seasons. We may be lining up Socialbook events sooner than he thinks.

This was a good day in publishing.

debating the humanities—how u presses can best compete in the post-digital landscape

Plenary 3 took the “crisis in the Humanities" as read, treating it as backdrop to an analysis of how u presses can enhance their role(s) in the post-digital landscape, specifically in light of the struggles humanities departments face; what to hang on to, what to look forward to, and what to explore.

Fred Nachbaur (Director, Temple University Press) kicked things off with a nod to la crise by showing results of a recent Google search on the subject—yielding 10.2M hits (second slide). Nachbaur then pointed to the AAUP taskforce report on Sustaining Scholarly Publishing: New Business Models for University Presses, properly identifying it as a must read for this and most every discussion in 2011-12. Assuming everyone had happened on one or two of the above, the panel dove in. Nachbaur ran panelists through a gauntlet of questions; ensuing debate can be heard in the AAUP recording; highlights are as follows.

Avoiding all “mimicry of traditional forms” when exploring digital opportunities was roundly emphasized as “absolutely vital” for u presses from here on out; indeed, approaches for “enabling the scholarly discussion” were stressed over “publishing solutions” per se.

“Collaborative scholarship” was touted as “the next point of tension.”

Monographs took some shots—but also found champions. Can there be a “plan b” for publishing theses that are clearly for tenure-review purposes only, while still holding “plan a” publishing for authors who write something of broader interest. Frank J. Donoghue, (Associate Professor of English, Ohio State University), hoped there would be, citing the long-form argument as something of unique value that we will need to protect. Bob Stein, (Founder and Co-Director of the Institute of the Future of the Book) added that the monograph may take new forms—he also promised a view to a sample of possible things to come in the next session, Exploring New Models for Scholarly Publishing.

Discussion lingered on and returned to peer-review. Kathleen Fitzpatrick, (Professor of Media Studies, Pomona College), allowed that in many cases the peer-review process could be held in an open forum; that readers and authors are often known to one another (or they figure it out as things proceed), and that if the peer-review process were opened up to the public, before, during, or after, it might lead to new, fruitful exchanges for all concerned, ones that could advance the interests of scholarship and publishing alike.

Reader reports and possibly exchanges with authors could “prime the pump” of interest and further debate and drive sales well in advance of publication. Clearly each discipline may embrace such an approach differently, and the degree to which it could be done live/without a net would have to be examined. Debate ensued accordingly, but all agreed, as Donoghue put it: “the pros far outweigh the cons,” and they recommended that u presses consider exploring open peer review in some instances.

So here again, as others had throughout the meeting, panelists encouraged u presses to hold our contributions above and beyond the peer-review process (i.e., before and after) as the real value-added benefit that u presses bring to the table; that the imprimatur of the editor and press is unimpeachably distinct from the peer review process itself and that therein our expertise lies. I.e., what sets us apart is not that we manage peer review really, really well, but rather that we publish peer-reviewed content expertly well—we have the unique, learned skill set of having intercourse with academe during our publishing process; we advisedly select work for peer review, and make expert publishing decisions based on the issue. Or so the panel left us to consider.

Opening up peer review in certain disciplines is further intriguing in the context of our next session, Exploring New Business Models for University Presses, as Fitzpatrick was, in essence, holding the resultant content of peer review apart as a new product (even if a free or promotional one), and the hosting of the peer review in a public forum as a potential new service.

Makes one wonder: Would peer review have evolved differently within the humanities if current technologies had been in place from the hop, and given what technology may be crafted to support, where might we go from here?

plenary 1: innovation & organizational change—a.k.a., release the McCracken! (part 2)

After describing how we might go about keeping an open mind to enhance our collective lateral thinking and improve commercial outcomes for the AAUP, using our inherent and abundant pattern recognition abilities to imagine new organizational structures, new entrepreneurial opportunities, new poly-valent business models, and new modes of enabling the scholarly discussion, Monsieur McCracken went one step further to imagine one such way we might reshape what we do: by our dropping peer review.

Now before it gets ugly, let me say why I think this improved takeaways from the meeting. [insert: humorous anecdote about recovering from knee surgery, where I call Tony the physiotherapist Torquemada, repeatedly cursing his house and questioning his parentage and mental health, but end up being able to ski again.] It just goes to show; sometimes we need to be pushed into uncomfortable positions to re-achieve our full strength and potential range of motion.

Note to self; possible book idea in this: It Takes a Sadist.

McCracken held our editors’ pattern recognition skills apart from the peer review process for us, as value-added assets in and of themselves. He imagined a third product category for us, in addition to our peer-reviewed journals and books. Specifically, what he said was, What if... we stop at our editors’ assessment of X and go to press with it, sans costs associated with too much design and copy editing and of course peer review, in order to field “well written essays, of topical cultural worth, for popular consumption.” Might there be something in this (a new product) that could enable the scholarly discussion and further support our other publishing efforts. (His question to us)

It's a bit of an uncomfortable stretch to imagine our fielding anything perfectly disintermediated; we edit grocery lists before shopping. But, after a good long Wait what? and taking our editorial nature as read (not going anywhere anytime soon), I came up with two possible products in the would-be, acquisitions-driven category:

1. An AAUP zine like Giant Robot or Bust; for the sake of discussion only, let’s call it “U Press Forum”—I'm sure we can come up with something apt and well branded if pressed.

2. A suite of AAUP-wide, print-only, subscription-based publications by discipline, per McCracken's illustrative example of Surveillance; for the sake of discussion, “[Insert Discipline Name Here] Surveillance”—now I'm clearly ducking any name calling.

1. U Press Forum - We already have an example of a zine comprising “well written essays for popular consumption” that also happens to support/parallel other publishing: a little outfit called Harper’s Magazine. As Harper’s has new pubs covered, an AAUP zine could focus on headline news and areas of topical interest, supporting our “Books for Understanding” program.

a) What if we asked authors of Books for Understanding books to respond to current events and tie them into their work (or tie their work to current events); thus, creating a bridge to our books, giving us a new—and monetize-able—promotional tool in the bargain while and by providing our authors with a new forum.

The disintermediated angle could work to our collective advantage, to underscore the timeliness and, dare we say, immediacy of the content (something books aren’t particularly known for), and help keep costs minimal.

b) Another section could be the “Plan C” option mentioned above (not a book or a journal article). If editors review a book proposal that is especially timely or attractively topical—but not quite a book—they could move to engage authors to write an article for the Forum.

We often bounce projects at one press, only to pick it up at another. A brief Forum piece would be an expression of support from (and an equity-up scenario for) the imprimatur of the U Press system at large. It might help spread the word of the work among other presses and possibly grow the AAUP brand in a celeritous direction.

c) And last, we could throw in some feature articles (which probably would call for some editing). These would only be necessary if we wanted to go so far as to field a “Harper’s Mag for U Presses.”

Thus, U Press Forum could be seen to have at least three McCracken-inspired sections for starters: a) scholars at large (rejected or fast-tracked scholarship) + b) the experts speak (in support of Books for Understanding) + c) feature articles. All sans peer review. Feature articles might be a bit of a departure for university presses, but the first two sections seem within reach and reason. By slapping a nominal sign-up/subscription price on it, we could defray added administrative/editorial expense(s).

2. [Insert Discipline Name Here] Surveillance - This one focuses on McCracken’s illustrative example, Surveillance, rather than on his seditious remarks in re peer review. It’s a little busier, as a model, but it would work in step WITH our peer review process (and therefore probably work better for U Presses) and be more likely to generate high subscription revenues while also reshaping the industry in favor of our offerings. It might fall under the headings of both collaborative entrepreneurship and collaborative publishing.

a. We already solicit reader’s reports. What if, roughly when final manuscripts return to Capistrano, when we transmit them to manuscript editorial and therefore about a year out from publication, we go ahead and send a copy out for a single report in a new category: coverage.

This new report (coverage/treatment or whatever you like) could be a boilerplate summary of the book’s content, methodological approaches, arguments, material analyzed, and contributions to the academic discussion—by scholars for scholars—slightly more descriptive than critical, running a few pages at most, and cleared for us to publish.

(I seem to remember “book abstracts” coming up a few times on Scholarly Kitchen and elsewhere—and they no doubt have many times before; this report would be similar but completed by a third-party under work-for-hire. Apologies if I’m repeating anything, but I don’t think anyone has touched on collaborative publishing of such “coverage” by discipline, as a standalone product offering; if so, apologies again, that’s what I’m seeing in McCracken’s suggestion.)

b. All book coverage (from all AAUP member presses receiving a title in a given discipline during the season) would route to one U Press for complication, possibly along with related journal abstracts from the discipline?, and at the end of an acq-season—about 6 + months ahead of publication of the earliest book in the list—we could place an attrctive though disintermediated cover on it and send it forth into the world. We could also send them tri-annually or quarterly, increasing the “lead time” we’d be giving our customers.

The compiling press could easily drop the new McCracken-inspired offering in alongside other serial publications, for a print-only subscription and/or nice cover price (individual/institutional), and revenue could be distributed to contributing presses, per number of titles “covered” in the issue, less administrative costs and shipping fees.

c. Prices could be set gratifyingly high in the first season, as Disciplinary Surveillance would be a luxury item rather than a necessity, containing a wealth of information well ahead pub dates, and could be dropped to free in seasons following—so none could complain of the cost.

Reports could be solicited without cash out of pocket from partner presses, viz., in exchange for a copy of the issue of Disciplinary Surveillance in which their coverage appears. The end result being that news of our authors’ work (our books) will enter the popular scholarly discussion six months ahead of publication without any marketing budget expense.

Most importantly, and even if the Disciplinary Surveillance(s) are distributed “liberally” (pirated), our titles will be quantifiably more likely to breech the 10-page-view threshold (and trigger sales) in the new PDA paradigm, in their first six months-year of publication, as people will already be talking.

Ergo, libraries will be pleased; scholars, engaged; and we will be able to distance ourselves from the commercial press (our competition)—increasing revenues from e-book aggregation options for AAUP member presses and adding an entirely new revenue stream/collaborative product offering in the bargain. I.e., we might just have a 21st century solution built on our traditional, 20th century strengths of peer review, compilation, and serial publication. (Once it was up and running, and scholar behavior had been duly modified, the serial could allow commercial presses to submit coverage as well, for a fee.) Fiscally, that McCracken might be on to something.

d. Finally, responsibility for compiling and publishing disciplinary surveillance could fall to/route among several presses—each of us is a “top contributor” to one discipline or another. Or, compiling operations could be centralized to the AAUP, or to a few or one member press. Economies of scale might support centralization.

So those are my Wait, what?s from McCraken's What if...? in the second half of Plenary 1. I’m sure others are way ahead of me on all fronts; apologies again if I'm out of the loop on anything/repeating anything and sorry for the delay in posting. Should, however, the latter Wait, what? ever sound attractive enough to pursue, I hereby call dibs for Indiana, including but not limited to: Jewish studies, African Studies, Paleontology, and Music, several disciplines which we are proud to support.

opening banquet: thoughtful advice and a lead for acquisitions

David Simon, MacArthur Fellow; author and producer, "The Wire" and "Homicide: Life on the Street" was our opening banquet speaker—a brilliant idea from Johns Hopkins University Press!

It was hard to know what to expect; harder still to parse (before breakfast) the wisdom and talent evident in what he said and didn’t say to us. I'll just say quickly what we were given.

Publishing advice; cogent analysis of two other communications industries responding to new models and new technologies (the missteps, impacts, and fallouts for each) with an insightful acquisitions lead born of those analyses and bespoken to our situation—in under 30 minutes. 

The unifying theme, “copyright has to be fought for;” i.e., developing worthy intellectual property requires an investment, and maintaining a program of publishing such property (regardless of media) calls for viable commitment (sustainability).

Longtime star reporter for the Baltimore Sun, Simon gave us a privileged view into the precipitous demise of investigative, print journalism in the US in the late nineties for the perspective of a deeply invested participant. Simon’s candor and frustration was palpable as he explained that although the Internet changed newspapers’ competitive landscape, what prevented them from competing on the new format had happened in the years prior—and was perhaps embedded in the value system that lead to actions taken.

Paraphrasing substantially: corporate conglomerates had bought up most all major newspapers in the US, and in an attempt to maximize profits, they cut standing bureaus and reporting staff—brutally. Simon was among the buyouts ordered by Wall Street-minded consultants. Per his analysis, newspapers didn’t keep their commitment to quality IP development and as a result failed to maintain what had made them viably unique and had afforded them a sustainable competitive advantage. They didn’t protect copyright [enough].

Fast forward only a few years sans competitive distinctiveness to when the Internet came along, with its blossom of day-trading pundits and unqualified/un-vetted/over-caffeinated bloggers (e.g., me), and they found that they lacked the confidence in their content to charge money for it online—to hold it successfully apart from free offerings—which in turn hamstrung their ability to “staff up” or otherwise invest to address the problem.

Strategy is about trade offs, and they traded away baby and the bathwater, keeping only the shiny plastic tub to plaster advertising on.

Simon then dovetailed this study with a broad-strokes overview of the rise of pay TV—tracking a successful evolution of b-models, complete with beneficial social and artistic fallout, taking new delivery systems as read.

Paraphrasing again, with ugly language added (mine) to underscore inferences taken: TV content on a free-view model; once you adopt the platform, you can have all the content in the system; broadcasters made their money on advertising alongside the content. With the advent of pay TV, revenue shifted from advertising to subscription, and this changed everything.

When advertisers held sway, eyeballs were all that mattered; hence, pressure from all side to develop content that offended no one, regardless of whether is was deeply meaningful, relevant, or attractive to none. Under the subscription model, content developers shifted to the latter emphasis, holding that deeply interested niche markets would be encouraged to “pull the trigger” to subscribe, so long as some content mattered to them deeply.

The bell curve inverted; minority reports were distributed and read; and strange and wonderful programming, that had been impossible to imagine under the old eye-balls paradigm, ensued (e.g., Simon’s work). 

Across both industries, Simon noted that a suite of decisions had unexpected consequences, one set unfavorable with negative cultural impact; the other, downright bountiful with culturally enriching results. However, with a deft nod to caution via juxtaposition, we were allowed to consider that each industry had made investment decisions based one what it felt would drive revenue, given a chosen/perceived business model.

Simon’s acquisitions lead, born of his early analysis, was to note that a need existed in the vacuum created by the demise of viable investigative print journalism; one that perhaps university presses were uniquely suited to fill?

With our access to peer review, our publishing strength, and our credibility, might we be able to offer journalists a new platform in which to work; namely, and in step with our regional commitment, could we find area journalists who are committed to digging deep and writing important, investigative work, vet it with our access to sociologists, economists, and anthropologists, and bring it forth to social benefit and, possibly, to our greater fiscal advantage.

He closed by noted that we were in a tough spot overall and that choices on either side could lead to negative outcomes. Quoting a Woody Allen, which I will need to look up and correct: ‘You can choose between a quick, excruciatingly painful death or a long, drawn-out, agonizing crawl to grave.’ 

Takeaway: Fortune rarely favors the risk-averse.