Word: modularity
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...technology" motif that tries to make a fashion statement out of one of the biggest changes to hit the auto industry since Henry Ford started making flywheel magnetos on a moving assembly line in 1913. The car industry, like the computer and consumer-electronics industries before it, is going modular, and the percentage of a car that is actually manufactured by traditional car companies is getting smaller and smaller as a result. More and more of the cars of the well-known brands are composed of whole sections that instead come from specialized upstarts like Magna and from established engineering...
...this year was its innovative and extensive use of systems suppliers in 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...
David R. Wamback, coordinator of ID cards and information retrieval for HUID, says, "The general `Harvard Card' is pre-printed with a specific design. We use a DataCard 9000 machine to `personalize' each card. It is a modular system that a) encodes the mag-stripe and tests the encoding, b) adds graphics such as the bar-code, faculty and general role, c) prints an image of the individual using a dye sublimation process, d) adds a protective coating, e) embosses the card with the ID number, name, and faculty code, and finally, f) coats the embossing for readability...
...advantage: Symbian is charging just $5 a phone, while Microsoft charges computer makers $25 for each device that uses Windows CE, according to analysts. Jan Ahrenbring, an Ericsson vice president, adds that Microsoft's operating system "really wasn't applicable for mobile," but Microsoft maintains that the software is modular and can be customized to suit customers needs. South Korean manufacturer Samsung has produced the prototype of a Windows CE phone that it plans to market next year...
...They're modular and completely adjustable," Levesque said of the units, which retail at about $90. "You can build with them, take them apart at the end of the year, and then build something new next year...