What should you see once your there? Definitely visit the capital, Hobart. Go to Salamanca markets, take the trip to Port Arthur. Rent a car and drive around the island, go to Launceston or try out the West and take the Gordon River cruise. There’s plenty to see, so if you can, plan it and go!

There is more than one approach to lean production. Some view it as a set of tools which help in decreasing the amount of waste in production. Others see lean as being an effort to maintain a special flow in production eliminating “unevenness”. The latter philosophy was promoted by Toyota. The main goal in both these philosophies is generally the same though the method to achieve it is somewhat different.

More information on maintenance benchmarking: http://www.mcpeurope.com/amis.aspx

So what kind of functionality will a good piece of self storage software include? It will have a well designed reservation system, and it should be scalable, i.e. allowing for managing multiple storage sites. Flexible reporting and complete pricing and billing control is also essential.

I’ve added it in the “Widget” section, but it won’t work.

That’s not super hi-tech, but boy it’s handy.

The other is cutting the costs when buying your own phone. How? Well, first you might consider choosing the right satellite phone plan, as just like with regular phones, you can cut your costs somewhat by correctly estimating your usage and choosing the best option from your provider. The second is buying a cheaper sat phone. The simplest way to do this is to buy a used phone. If you want to go real cheap you can consider buying a first-generation sat phone, like an Ascom 21 or Hughes 7100 (if your considering Thuraya) or and Kyocera SS-66K (for Iridium).

They are somewhat more bulkier than the new models, but as long as you don’t buy damaged equipment, you should do just fine with them. The older phone work fine within their networks – just as the new ones (Globalstar might be an exception to this, as their old phones might not work globally due to some compatibility issues – but Globalstar is a seperate issue of its own so I’m going to leave it for another time).

The costs of launching a network of satellites, maintaining the system and then replacing it after 7-15 years is enormous. You need to be a real business wizard to have something like that going smoothly.

Iridium and Globalstar both bankrupted in the early 2000′s, with outrages debts. The new owners bought the equipment for pennies, but still have a tough time balancing the companies (especially Globalstar, who has faced an earlier than planned replacement of their satellite network).

And Thuraya in this light is an interesting company. It isn’t global, no, but that has allowed it to start by investing a much smaller amount into building it’s system. They have put on the market some interesting (very small!) satellite phones, the Thuraya SG-2520 and Thuraya SO-2510, and now have launched a new handheld, the Thuraya XT.

I will try you to give a better glimpse of the company and equipment it is offering in the next few blog posts.