From the course: Universal Principles of Design

Unlock the full course today

Join today to access over 24,100 courses taught by industry experts.

Modularity

Modularity

From the course: Universal Principles of Design

Start my 1-month free trial Buy for my team

Modularity

“

- [Jill] Hi, I'm Jill Butler, and this is the Universal Principles of Design. In this movie, modularity, or the power of thinking inside the box. You may be surprised to learn that the motorcycle manufacturing capital of the world is not in the United States, or the U.K., or Germany, or Japan, but in China. The city of Chongqing, to be exact. Home to more than 130 motorcycle manufacturing companies producing roughly 12 million motorcycles a year. Now, making this many motorcycles year after year creates an interesting problem. How do you make enough parts to meet this kind of demand? One company making all of these parts isn't really feasible at this level of production. So the only way to do it is to outsource the manufacturing to external suppliers. And that's where one of the world's largest manufacturers, Dachangjiang, did something interesting. Rather than following the traditional method of designing all the parts and then outsourcing their manufacture to a vertical chain of…

Contents