Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
3
Nimble
manufacturing:
Good, fast, and
cheap
At my auto mechanic there's a sign taped to the cash register that says “You
can have it done good, fast, or cheap. Pick any two.” This enduring joke
sums it up. But what if my auto mechanic is wrong?
Halfway across the world, a distant toothbrush factory sells children's tooth-
brushes for 10 cents apiece. This factory employs advanced machines and techni-
cians. That sounds good, like a high quality outit. The factory's daily output of
toothbrushes is over 300,000 pieces a day. That's fast.
Could it be that my salty old car mechanic got it wrong after all? Maybe
you can have it done good, fast, and cheap, no compromises necessary. But
maybe he wasn't wrong. There's more to the story than at irst meets the eye.
Mass production is riddled with hidden costs and delays. If you consider the
big picture from the perspective of a company rather than the consumer, mass
production is not cheap. Nor is the process of transforming a design concept
into a mass-produced product particularly fast. If you desire anything other
than a product aimed at the lowest common denominator, mass-produced
products are not particularly good either.
Small-batch mass manufacturing is an oxymoron. The lower the product's end
price to the consumer, the more critical are high-volume sales to the company.
This is why the toothbrush factory—to earn back the investment involved in
producing a simple plastic toothbrush—sells its mass-produced wares in big
batches. The size of a minimum order is a whopping 28,000 toothbrushes.
Another hidden cost lies in the product design process. Factory production
is merciless. Translating a design concept into a proitable mass-produced
product is similar to the sacriices made in adapting a complex novel into
a blockbuster movie. Even a simple design for a plastic toothbrush (which
looked ine on the computer) will behave in unpredictable ways when subject
to the rigors of an industrial-strength plastic molding process. The laws of
