Subject:
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Re: eBuisness Model
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.dear-lego
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Date:
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Sun, 10 Dec 2000 21:57:01 GMT
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Viewed:
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2037 times
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In lugnet.dear-lego, Kyle D. Jackson writes:
> ... [ a lot!] ...
I won't quote your novel here, (instead I'll write my own! :-) but I think
that you are wrong. TLC *could* put together thousands of different sets.
Your error comes in thinking that the customer designed sets will be put
together with the same amount of manual labour, artwork, colourful boxes,
etc., and look exactly like the other 'normal' sets that LEGO puts out.
To see why this doesn't need to be so, consider how different the UCS sets
look, and especially the Statue of Liberty - this one comes in only a grey
scale box with four plain white boxes inside that! I think LEGO will WANT
to differentiate their official sets from those of their customers, just
like these (UCS, Liberty, etc.) AFOL oriented sets are packaged differently
from those intended for the masses.
(By the way, if one extrapolated your thinking about having too many
options, it would not be possible to ship anyone their current S@H orders
either. The best they could do is ship you one of five preset orders.
Obviously this is not the case.)
Instead of thinking how impossible it would be to provide what everyone
dreams of them providing, take a minute and think about ways that it COULD
happen. Put on your optimists cap for a minute.
Here's my first pass. You needn't point out all the holes in this - there
are many problems with it, but it is a proof of concept, not a detailed
document showing every detail.
The key is to have *everything* automated. No human intervention is
required anywhere along the line. Perhaps when the model is first proposed
to LEGO, someone looks at it, but the next time a human sees or touches it
is to put the final product in a shipping box.
Start with an order for, I don't know, Timmy's Monster Truck. It requires a
size 4 box. Take the next size 4 box on the line, scan the bar code, and
set the machinery in motion.
Given the fact that polybags are already assembled with a great assortment
of pieces in them, and that these are put together in an automated way, if
you could scale up that kind of automation, you could theoretically assemble
any number of any type of available piece. The automation would have to be
slightly different because instead of creating thousands of bags of
identical content, you are putting together single bags, each one with
different content, but I think that it could be done.
The two obstacles are figuring out which pieces must come together, and
simply having them actually get there at the same time. The first is a
database lookup. There are no limits to the number of models this can
support. Ten million different models isn't any more difficult than fifty
different models.
The second problem, getting the pieces to all arrive in the same box, the
physical half of the problem, is more difficult, but not exceedingly so.
Each different type of element (bricks, plates, tiles, windows, technic
pins, etc.) have a combining point, and as the box nears that point, the bar
code is scanned, the pieces bagged, and tossed into the box.
If you have trouble seeing how this works, imagine just one, say for bricks:
you have rows and rows of channels, each with a different size and colour
element in them, pointing towards a funnel, and you count off how many of
each element you need. The instructions come for seven red 2x4s, twenty
grey ones, etc., and the machine counts them off, dropping them into a bag
which is then sealed, and tossed into the waiting box.
Finally, you have a big colour laser printer print out the instructions,
collate them, and staple them, (big photo copiers can already do this, so
there's no reason a laser printer couldn't as well) toss them in the box,
and if you want to be really fancy, print a large coloured sticker to slap
on the top.
Voila! A set has been generated on demand! Credit the creator of the set,
Timmy, one LEGO dollar, if you wish, for the next time he orders some parts,
and go on to the next one. A million totally different sets could be done
in a similar way.
Anyway, that's the optimist in me, still hoping that LEGO will deliver what
I wish they would.
I personally think that the greatest difficulty isn't in LEGO providing any
one of thousands of sets on demand, (which I think is the future of all
manufacturing: not the narrowing down of options, but the exponential
increase of them) but rather providing a nice way for the customer to sort
through these myriad sets that are available, and pick which one(s) he wants.
Current online stores all do this very poorly. Other than for books or CDs,
where you generally already know the title and/or author, it is a tremendous
hassle to just browse for merchandise online. Clicking your way through
page after page of whatever type of gadget, looking for something to fill
your need is downright painful. Visiting a physical store is MUCH easier.
Figure out how to solve *that* problem, and you can make yourself lots of money.
--
David Schilling
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: eBuisness Model
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| (...) Natch :] (...) I think my novel won for pure density of mental spewage ;] (...) Well, I didn't mean to say that. For this to work TLC would *have* to skim down on their printed matter. (...) I'm missing the reference to UCS and Liberty not (...) (24 years ago, 10-Dec-00, to lugnet.dear-lego)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: eBuisness Model
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| Amnon, I think you may have misinterpreted my message, likely because I misinterpreted yours :] I assumed you meant that any average Joe consumer off the street would be able to design their own sets, set up a site, and sell them. This I think is (...) (24 years ago, 10-Dec-00, to lugnet.dear-lego)
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