Invention Is The Mother of Facts

Please enjoy the thoughts and musings of our friend, supporter, and long-time contributor Art van Bodegraven Jr., who passed away on June 18, 2017. Art was a prolific writer and had amassed a collection of unpublished blog posts he had planned to run well into the future. To honor his memory, we will continue to post these remaining blogs as he had intended. If you’ve been a fan of The Art of Art blog, check out our tribute.

 

The late and loved Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan is celebrated as the imputed author of "Every one is entitled to his own set of ideas; no one is entitled to his own set of facts".

Today, we live in a cosmosphere of strongly-held opinions and ideas, some based on nothing at all, some based on what are presented to us as "alternative facts".  When are we given these revelations?  When our ideas are egregious mismatches with observable facts.

So much for political commentary; so much for current and over-heated feelings and positions.  Whither rational discourse; whither the facts that can be interpreted in the development of thoughtful ideas?

How do these affect supply chain management?  Answer; they'd better not.  We can, apparently, afford opinions in extremis and false facts, along with prominently characterized "fake" news.

But, our work decisions and our customer handling must be made based on reality - reality in facts and reality in their conclusions.  

Anything less is a dis-service, both internally and externally - and we can't afford notions and random "facts".