Holguin-VerasLuisTheMatrix1


 * Speed - Development and Production**

Moore's Law is a law that basically states that processing power doubles as size gets smaller every 2 years. As a result, if we want/need to go faster we need to throw out computers that are old for the latest ones that are the fastest. This is both an economic and ecological issue in that people and businesses for the most part need to buy new computers to stay updated on the latest and greatest technologies.

In addition, we are having to basically throw out our computers every two years. The image below shows a good example in that people often do not just throwing away just a monitor and a computer. What i mean is that quite often people will throw away all the associated stuff old stuff like a old printer and just replace it with a new or "fresh" version of that same item.



The life cycles of products, obsolescence, being both perceived and built in is very unsustainable. We design a great majority of our products to have built in obsolescence in that the given item, we can use a Apple laptop or Ipod will break within only a matter of around two years or even quite possibly several months. The perceived obsolescence issue which is behavioral is that we are most like made to believe that items that we used can only be used within a certain time frame, at which point we must replace it.

One example of this is that we now buy new cars every few years, when we have no reason to do so because a car is made to last quite easily over a decade, However we perceive having a old car as not being rich, cool and so forth. As a result of things such as this, we make things that have short life spans, which results of causing use to use and dispose of resources that could quite easily be used for better purposes.

Fast development is another area that could be unsustainable and dangerous. Let's believe i made a pill to cure cancer. One quick test showed that it killed any signs of cancer, as a result i will mass produce it to put it on the market and don't do any additional testing on it. As a result of having a extremely fast development cycle of this drug, many people died. If i had actually waited a few months or even a few years, i would have known it killed the person even faster than the actual cancer.



If you notice the title of the presentation, it says Speed - Development and Production. The title implies that Development and production are two separate yet important things. However, the following information about the Ford Pinto, image shown above, will make you realize that these two words can sometimes be mixed or even combined.

Normally when one wants to develop a new car, one generally must go through a few steps one after another. However in the case, all the usual steps were done all at the same time which resulted in several things that could or should have been avoided in the first place.

The first part of the example is that the production line for the pinto was already tooled, as in the modifications and such had already been made to the machinery that would produce the car. As a result, when the engineering team found out that the car had a dangerous gas tank, the top management at ford decided that production should proceed as scheduled. One could attribute one of the reasons that this happened was that Ford was believed that the competition would release a similar car in the small car market that was at the time very lucrative.

Additional issues relate to behavioral aspect of the people within the company. The engineer who had designed the Pinto and had found out about the gas tank issue could not or would not tell the person in charge, Lee Lococca because of what may happen. Lee was one who would fire anyone who brought up any issues with his car, aka "Lee's car" that would result in the delay of the car.



The other issue issue is in regards to the classic business technique known as the Cost Benefit Analysis. The reason that it took nearly a decade for Ford to make any changes to the car, is that they determined that the company would be unable to make any profits if they had made the simple and cheap modification to the Pinto.

"Slow is better" is what a recent New York Times article stated. Without going further, one would think that saying these 3 simple words would basically equate to a Christine saying that there is no god from a business standpoint. However, once you start actually reading the whole article, it starts to make complete sense. In a world that wants to go ever faster, we often forget what happens as a result of going so fast.

The stated above article talks about a ship getting to its destination a week slower than it did two years before, one would say that the ship captain is unreliable and that the cost would increase. Counter-intuitively going "Slow is better" actually holds true. As a result of going slower, there are many benefits to going slow. The ship is saving money by going slow in that it is saving around 30% of its fuel consumption. In turn, this results in a great deal less of greenhouse gases that get released into the environment by this single ship.

When one thinks of speed, most often than not they would assume that a great way to increase speed is to multitask. However, according to a recent study reported by the The Associated Press that the people who actually multitask the most are worst at doing it. Some would assume that the people who can multitask are good at organizing any given data, ignoring irrelevant data and be able to switch between the different tasks without isssues. Actually it is quite the opposite, instead the research data concludes that these types of people basically love irrelevant data, can only think about the stuff they are not currently working. For example, if you need to read an online article and write your own paper at the same time, you will be thinking about read the article while writing your paper or vice-versa.


 * Sources**

Dowie, Mark. "Pinto Madness". Mother Jones. 2/25/10 <@http://motherjones.com/politics/1977/09/pinto-madness>.

Rosenthal, Elisabeth. "Slow Trip Across Sea Aids Profit and Environment ". New York Times. 2/24/10 <@http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/business/energy-environment/17speed.html>.

Schmid, Randolph E.. "Study finds people who multitask often bad at it". The Associated Press. 2/23/10 .