Summary of Clock Speed: Winning Industry Control in the Age of Temporary Advantage by Charles H. Fine Introduction In order to conduct a scientific study, you set a baseline then introduce changes in order to understand the impact of the change. Unfortunately, the rate of change, or clock speed, in many studies (human evolution as an example) is too slow for one person to have time to introduce multiple changes and measure the results. Biologists have found by studying fruit flies (a rapid clock speed with a life span of days rather than years), they can reach conclusions faster by studying multiple life spans in a short amount of time. As with the fruit fly, some businesses also have a rapid cycle making them a prime target for study in application to business in general. By studying organizations with fast clock speeds, one can draw inferences to others. Essentially, studying fruit fly industries lets us understand all industries with the idea of implementing effective change in any company regardless of their individual clock speed. Analysis Clock speed is defined as the rate an industry evolves based on product, process or organizational change. By looking across multiple industries, it is possible to find some with very rapid clock speeds and others with exceptionally slow ones. By taking lessons from industries such as entertainment and computers (very fast), one can draw conclusions for the automobile and aircraft industries (longest cycles noted). In his analysis, Charles Fine goes on to note that as the speed of an industry accelerates, the advantage one company may gain shortens – advantages are temporary. This conclusion is somewhat intuitive since the research and development to production cycle gets s... ... middle of paper ... ...ce provider. Granted, the turn of the double helix did happen and they appear to have changed as a reaction rather than through proactive process change. Conclusion Every business has an evolutionary clock speed measuring the rate of change in products, processes and capability. At the core of everything is the organizations ability to design a sustainable supply chain. When this becomes an organizations core competency, they are then positioned to continually win the temporary advantage. By simultaneously working to improve products, process design/creation and supply chains (three dimensional concurrent engineering), a company can drive the “turn of the helix” thus changing the clock speed for the industry. References Fine, C. H. (1998). Clock Speed: Winning Industry Control in the Age of Temporary Advantage. Reading, Massachusetts: Perseus Books.
Derry, T. K., and Trevor Williams. A Short History of Technology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961.
In a world of fast-challenging technology, we can only remain competitive by continuously refining and expanding our technical capability.
By 1984, a combination of factors had contributed to lowering the profitability of the DRAM industry. As the DRAM industry matured, DRAMs began to take on the characteristics of a commodity product (Burgelman, 1994; Burgelman & Grove, 2004). Competitors had closed the gap on Intel’s lead in technology development causing the basis of competition to shift towards manufacturing capacity. Gaining market share in an industries where product features had become standardized required companies to agressively pursue capacity expansion, while engaging simultaneously in cutthroat price competition. Also, with each successive DRAM generation, companies wishing to keep pace with the demand for increasing production yields were forced to commit increasingly large capital investments to retrofit their fabrication facilities. Figure 1 contains a snapshot of the DRAM industry between the periods of 1974 through 1984. The important thing to note is that Intel begins to fall behind the competition beginning with the 16K generation and is virtually non-existent in any of the future generations (Burgelman, 1994).
...impressive speeds, but at what cost? Is rapid industrialization more important than efficient production methods?
PC industry is affected by two opposite forces: technological advance that pushes the industry forward and the industry sensitivity to economical stagnation (if the economical situation is bad customers won't upgrade their computers).
Kanigel, Robert. The One Best Way: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency. New York: Viking Press. 1997.
Schlager, Neil, and Josh Lauer. "The History, Development, and Importance of Personal Computers." Science and Its Times 7 (2001): n. pag. Print.
Virilio and Gleick use speed as an analytic tool/concept to understand post-contemporary society. Both authors trace the
Carr distinguishes between proprietary technologies and what he calls infrastructural technologies. Proprietary technologies can provide a strategic advantage as long as they remain restricted through "physical limitations, intellectual property rights, high costs or a lack of standards," but once those restrictions are lifted, the strategic advantage is lost. In contrast, infrastructural technologies provide far greater value when shared. Although an infrastructural technology might appear proprietary in the early stages of buildout, eventually the characteristics and economics of infrastructural technology necessitate that they will be broadly shared and will become a part of the broader business infrastructure. To illustrate his point, Carr uses the example of a proprietary railroad. It is possible that a company might gain a competitive advantage by building lines only to their suppliers, but eventually this benefit would be trivial compared to the broader good realized by building a railway network. The same is true for IT - no company today would gain a cost-effective competitive advantage by narrowing its focus and implementing an Internet only between their suppliers to the exclusion of the rest of the world.
Microprocessors and Angelic Self-possession: The microprocessors of today's computers are integrated circuits which contain the CPU on a single chip. The latest developments, with variable clock speeds now often exceeding 200 MHz, include Intell's Pentium chip, the IBM/Apple/Motorola PowerPC chip, as well as chips from Cyrix and AMD. The CPU chip is the heart of the computer; only memory and input-output devices have to be added. A small fan might be added on top of the fastest chips to cool them down, but in the chip itself there are no moving parts, no complex gaps between the movement being imparted and that which imparts the movement.
We have the microprocessor to thank for all of our consumer electronic devices, because without them, our devices would be much larger. Microprocessors are the feat of generations of research and development. Microprocessors were invented in 1972 by Intel Corporation and have made it so that computers could shrink to the sizes we know today. Before, computers took a room because the transistors or vacuum tubes were individual components. Microprocessors unified the technology on one chip while reducing the costs. Microprocessor technology has been the most important revolution in the computer industry in the past forty years, as microprocessors have allowed our consumer electronics to exist.
Product Life Cycle shortened as more companies had product launches which propelled product development at a higher frequency
Houghton. A Brief Timeline in the History of Computers. Western Carolina University Retrieved January 30th 2014 from Western Carolina University:
Fredrick W. Taylor’s body of work on time studies to improve manufacturing efficiency was so advanced, he is considered to be the father of time studies. Although he did not invent time studies, he promoted the idea of scientific management for the manufacturing industry in the early 1900s. The use of time studies can be traced back to 1760 when Jean Rodolphe Perronet, a French engineer, conducted an extensive time study on the manufacturing of No. 6 common pins. Perronet establish the standard of making 494 pins per hour (2.0243 hours/ 1000 pins). Later in 1820, Charles W. Babbage, an English economist, performed a time study on the manufacturing of No. 11 common pins. Babbage concluded that 5,546 pins should be made in 7.6892 hours (1.386 hours/ 1000 pins). Babbage published his book “On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures” in 1832 (Niebel, Freivalds 2014).
My second interest in Supply Chain Management arose from my assessment that it is a ‘rational’ specialty. I understood that its simplistic applications could find solutions for essential needs of humanity. I realized that Mechanical Engineering has an enormous reach from automobiles and manufacturing to medical equipment and nanotechnology. I studied an extremely stimulating curriculum diligently focusing on Basic Mechanical Engineering and Operations research which gave me a holistic overview of the engineering field. Hence, my penchant for the range and extent of science with Mechanical engineering as the cynosure grew.