Tag Archives: production

Automobile Industry Feelin the Heat

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On Monday Ford Motor company announced that they will be shutting down production of their F-150 pickup truck for a week. The demand for these American cars has been dropping and Ford has been feeling the heat from it. Ford’s F-150 truck has been the best-selling model in North America and Ford has seen steady growth in the last six years. But Ford was forced to shut down one of its Kentucky plants for the next week and temporarily idle production of several other plants in the US and Mexico. Reuters.com reports that 13,000 employees will be effected by these Continue reading Automobile Industry Feelin the Heat→

Video Games: Just a Plastic Disk

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For all those Xbox, PlayStation, Wii owners out there, have you ever thought about why your video games cost you so much these days? The average game costs about $60 when it is first released and can go to about twice that if it includes bonus material. But if you think about it, the actual game is just a plastic disk. It can’t be that difficult or costly to produce. But you guessed it… individual games for consoles such as Xbox or Playstation actually have huge budgets. In 2014 Activision, a popular video game developer, announced that one of their Continue reading Video Games: Just a Plastic Disk→

No one knows how to make a pencil: Globalization and interdependence

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Consider the following question: If you…wanted to…go into the forest naked and create something from scratch, anything, what do you think you could pull off? The latest Freakonomics podcast points out something very unexpected; no individual knows how to create a pencil.  While it may seem unimportant that we won’t have artisanal pencils in the future, it raises some interesting questions about globalization and the interdependence that it has created in the production processes of even simple goods. We have evolved into a highly specialized and widely globalized society.  Each piece of a pencil, for example, is made in different places Continue reading No one knows how to make a pencil: Globalization and interdependence→