jason thurber's blog

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“Build to Order” Cars

with 19 comments

Saw this over at Lockergnome Bytes (not Locker-Byte Gnomes), which in turn pointed to an article at BaselineMag. Apparently a guy named Scott Painter is starting a Build-To-Order car company in Los Angeles. What an awesome idea.

I was somewhat disappointed by this comment, as it strikes me as irrational (particularly when it’s followed by a similarly “E-Level” description of the advantes of “web-services” as offered by .NET):

[Chief Information Officer] Lele has largely ruled out using Unix, saying he would like to think ahead.
“The preconceived notion is that the network will run Unix, but I came to the view that this is a unique opportunity, so why take something that’s decades old?” says Lele.

But I was impressed by the vision:

Build-To-Order’s specialty will be assembly. Painter has divvied up the car into 13 modules such as interiors, chassis, panels and braking systems. Each will be pulled together by a supplier, such as Johnson Control or Dana. Each supplier’s factory will sit around a cross—the assembly line—which resembles a street intersection. And each of those suppliers’ factories may in turn be ringed by parts vendors that supply components that arrive minutes before being used in, say, a transmission.

It’s also sorta cool that they’re considering using E.piphany…

Written by jthurber

August 5th, 2003 at 12:33 pm

Posted in found-on-web