Thinking Out of the Box

By accepting the design and methods of the manufacturing process of products as a given (as well as the products themselves), we ensure that only incremental changes are possible whenever we seek to make improvements. The answer, therefore, is whole system thinking. Whole system thinking begins with a simple question: what are you really trying to do? For example, if you go to the hardware store looking for a drill, chances are that what you really need is not a drill but a hole. Then the reason for that hole should be looked at… The point is that if you ask ‘why?’ enough times you typically get to the root of exactly what you need.

Take the automobile, for example. After 120 years of engineering effort and ‘improvements’, the modern day automobile is still incredibly inefficient, using less than one percent of the fuel it consumes to move a driver. How does this happen? Only an eighth of the energy released from petrol actually reaches the wheels of a typical car. The rest is lost in the engine, the drive train, pushing air aside, moving the tires, friction, moving the body of the car (indeed, three quarters of fuel usage is eaten up by a car’s weight) and so on.

In response to this massive waste, most people suggest an electric motor as an alternative to the internal combustion engine. Unfortunately, the electric car programs of most automobile manufacturers envision their electric cars in conventional terms: a heavy metal chassis with thousands of component parts. Thus, the result is an overpriced product, still inefficient (except for the electric motor) weighed down with an additional seven hundred kilos of batteries, that few consumers want to purchase. The problem is that optimising one part of an automobile (the engine) does nothing to eliminate the inherent inefficiency of its entire system.

General Motors answer is to completely re-design the automobile through whole system thinking. Rather than think of a battery as a box-like contraption, General Motors realises that a battery can take on virtually any shape or size. They then built a concept car prototype by integrating a large, flat battery into the design of the vehicle. In other words, the fuel cell (or battery) doubles as the vehicle’s chassis. The car then uses electric motors for power, each of which is much smaller than an internal combustion engine. In fact, the electric motors are so small the car can use four of them. Each one directly attaching to a wheel at the wheel’s base. This design not only delivers superior power and torque directly to each wheel, especially at the low end, it also allows the wheels to be controlled independently, enabling the vehicle to be driven sideways into a parallel parking space. All together, the completed battery/chassis and motor/wheel assembly looks like a large skateboard.

Apart from the electric motor and wheels there are virtually no moving parts. The steering and all the vehicle’s functions are controlled electronically using wireless technology. Therefore, because the entire fuel and power train is reduced to little more than a floorboard, the fundamental vehicle GM has designed can take on virtually any form or functionality. Want a sports car? Lease a sports cars interior and body design that can be readily attached to the chassis. Need an SUV? Remove the sports car top section and attach an SUV exterior. Want a sedan? Switch to the body type that is desired.

The body of these car ‘tops’ are made from super light and ultra strong (and sustainable) carbon fibre, which can absorb twelve times as much crash energy per half kilo as steel at less than half the weight and, due to its ability to be moulded, reduces energy and assembly movements by seventy-five percent. Carbon fibre parts can also be snapped together and glued, basically eliminating the role of a body shop (without reducing jobs). By laying the colour of the car in the mould, a paint shop is eliminated too.
In other words, a ‘whole system’ approach has allowed GM engineers to reduce the number of components in a car from thousands to hundreds, drastically simplifying its supply chain, decreasing manufacturing processes, and reducing the overall cycle time of their product.

Since 75% of the world’s energy is used in buildings and transportation, this type of radical ‘whole system’ thinking could be especially useful in the building trade. In seeking more energy efficient buildings (most buildings are, for the most part, enormous energy users and wasters), most people accept the current convention of having heating and cooling systems, ductwork, blowers, air compressors and so on. They then add on energy efficient technical devices and or insulation thereby hoping to optimise one or two elements of an entirely wasteful system.

But thinking back to General Motors’ concept car, what if builders (and buyers) began questioning the need for expensive and potentially unnecessary pieces of construction materials? What if more was invested in building well-insulated, passively heated and cooled structures powered by solar energy (or wind) that could eliminate the need for conventional heating and cooling altogether? Might this not produce buildings of superior functionality, energy efficiency, and cost?

Ample evidence has shown that such a design philosophy does work. What holds it back is not a lack of state-of-the-art building technology (which does exist and is affordable), but rather restrictive and outdated rules, laws, building codes, and a lack of inertia behind the current construction industry (particularly material suppliers and contractors), who only know how to build one way: an inefficient and unsustainable way.

From: ‘Going and Going – Without Any Oil’, by Cal Fussman, Discover Magazine, Feb. 2006, Vol.27, No.2
And: Capitalism at the Crossroads, by Stuart L. Hart, Wharton School Publishing (Pearson Education), Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, 2005.