Word: modelling
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...first column, we'll play two rounds of an ice-breaker called "Two truths and a lie." Spot the lie from the following to win: a) I am a citizen of no country whatsoever; b) I have a blood brother; c) I almost became a runway model. The answer appears at the bottom...
...previous years. A few years back, Volvo's engineers teamed up with Autoliv to develop safety systems that incorporated side air bags, and safety-minded Volvo got a one-year exclusive deal to use the systems. Going modular helped Volvo offer more flexibility on a limited range of basic models. "With the traditional assembly process, you can usually manufacture just one car per assembly line," Franzen says. "In our case, being one of the smaller players, we don't have the volume to justify setting up multiple assembly lines, so we have to use one line for all the varieties...
...platforms to bring more and more niche vehicles to the market. Those platforms are what everything else is based on. We design a module to fit an existing platform, but it's the carmakers who define the platform." Assemblers usually settle on one or two preferred suppliers for each model, but there is always another supplier ready to jump in if one or more of the chosen stumble. "If Magna doesn't provide the best price, GM can go down the street to somebody else," Magna's Blommers explains...
...sequence, with making that practicable. "Just think of something as simple as door panels," says Franzen. "There are four to five basic colors per car line, plus various internal surfaces such as textile, leather or wood trim, and then there are electric and mechanical mirrors. For just one car model, 3,000 variants of door panels exist." That's far too many for an assembler to handle. Explains Franzen: "The systems partners chop the elephant into more manageable chunks...
This is a sour note for the $12 billion-a-year music industry, which is belatedly taking a long, painful look at its endangered business model. The industry is losing millions in revenue to the digital pirates, who use a readily available (and free, of course) software program called MP3 (Mpeg1 Layer 3) to receive and send music over the Internet. The pirated tunes have sound quality comparable to that of CDs, and can even be channeled through conventional stereo systems. "The Internet has made music so vulnerable," says Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) general counsel Cary Sherman, "[that...