Social Acceleration: faster – making time
In deze gastbijdrage onderzoekt filosoof Oliver Sutton de idee van social acceleration, de ogenschijnlijke versnelling van het leven. Vandaag het tweede deel waarin Sutton zich buigt over het managen van tijd.
Earlier in the book Gleick talks about the “fast cycle time” system of production, exemplified by the practice of “just in time delivery”. Increasingly manufacturers seek to eliminate profit-sapping inefficiencies within the production system by keeping the chain of production in perpetual motion. The key to this is to avoid the time wasting and unnecessary investment in fixed assets associated with storage of parts while they await assembly. Rather the production system is calibrated such that at every stage, delivery of parts dove-tails as tightly as possible with the assembly process. If you enquire about reserving products on the Ikea website, you receive the following message;
“We receive merchandise daily and that is why we usually have in our shops all the items the customer may need. We would need to have an extra store for the reserved items and this would increase the prices of the products”.
Ikea operate a system of “just in time delivery” so as to reduce costs and, of course, maximise profits.
