More than Moore

Everyone knows about Moore’s law, which suggests that computing power doubles every 18 months. Compound this and you’d find that computing power grows roughly 100-fold every ten years; today’s $1000 computing device will cost $10 in 2014.)

But there are other forces at work. Forces like Dell, who powers my notebook.

Five years ago, it took two workers 14 minutes to build a PC; it now takes a single worker roughly five minutes to do the same. … A dozen years ago, Dell stored roughly 30 days of inventory – the outer casings, motherboards, Intel chips and other components needed to feed the beast – in warehouses around the Austin area. The company, based just north of Austin in Round Rock, Tex., no longer operates any warehouses; instead, it requires suppliers to stock 8 to 10 days’ worth of goods no further than 90 minutes from its assembly plants. Its de facto warehouse, therefore, is the lineup of semi-trailers parked in the 48 truck bays that line one wall of its plant.

Dell’s CEO says, “If we asked for a 10 or 15 percent increase in productivity, we’d get conventional solutions. But if we ask them to double their productivity, then they have to rethink everything.”