News & Journal Articles

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What’s the formula for statistical sampling?

Statistical sampling, for some reason, is one of those concepts that gives some people a lot of trouble. There is a book by Daniel Kahneman titled “Thinking, Fast and Slow” that I always recommend. One of the concepts Kahneman likes to write about is System 1 thinking vs. System 2 thinking. I suppose that those who feel comfortable when dealing with uncertainty and probabilistic models are people who are good system 2 thinkers.

So, what is statistical sampling? To keep things simple, it may be better that we start with an example.
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The NSN (Part 2)

In this post, we will expand on the NSN concept that we introduced in part 1.

Let us start with a simple mental exercise. Can you tell what type of number this is?

(866)555-5555

If you said a telephone number, you are correct. We have also been conditioned to recognize even more obscure numbers such as 012-01-01234 (social security number), or 12345-1234 (zip +4). If someone asked us to pick out the area code or prefix from the telephone number above, most of us would know the answer.

The NSN, for those with even a vague familiarity with DoD logistics is also just as easily recognizable.
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The National Stock Number (NSN) System – Part I

Why NSNs? As I mentioned in previous articles, almost every product sold in the world, at any store, has a reference number. This number can be a Universal Product Code (UPC), a Unique Product Identifier (UPI), a Model Number, a Manufacturer Part Number, Drawing Number, SKU, UPC, EAN, ISBN, etc.

Manufacturer Part Numbers (MPN) are assigned by each manufacturer using their own criteria. There is no enforced standard for the MPN, although there are some industry conventions.

For example, one manufacturer might produce an item and assign it part number A123, while another manufacturer might produce a completely different item and also assign the same part number. Additionally, different manufacturers implement different business rules regarding the significance of the part number itself. For example, the use of spaces or dashes might be significant to one manufacturer but completely irrelevant to another.

For this reason, the US, NATO, and other governments adopted a means of assigning the same catalog number to items that have common technical characteristics. This is done using the NSN.

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Product Identifiers and Catalog Systems

In this article, I will attempt to set up some of the background for a series of articles for an eventual discussion on unique item management.

Part Numbers

The part number system is one of the most misunderstood parts of a system of material identification. It is almost entirely based on best practices, although there are some rules for certain types of material. Perhaps the best article I have seen explaining part numbers is the Wikipedia page at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Part_number, which is a miracle it ever got written so well with exactly zero references.

Example UPC Lookup Results


Universal Product Cataloging Systems

Beyond the wild wild west of the part number system, attempts have been made by industry to standardize product identification. What is interesting is that we are exposed to these every single day. Even if a product has a part number, if it is sold somewhere, it is almost guaranteed to have a universal product number or equivalent code.
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Intelligent Products

I confess that I like reading research papers. It is an excellent way to stay up to date on the profession and also a good way to understand what is a fashionable trend (i.e. flavor of the day) vs. what is a trend toward progress. I always liked to read copiously, but it wasn’t until I started working on a doctoral degree that I learned how to read efficiently in order to achieve a research goal.

When an interesting research topic comes to mind, I usually start by searching for literature in Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.com/), which many people surprisingly don’t know it exists. But I digress.

I have been reading, off and on, for years about unique item management. This goes back to my brief time as a civil service employee in 2007 where I ended up working on a project that would have required individual parts in a submarine to be managed at the item level in order to enable remote management.

The Unique Logistics at  Ikea

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