… so long as it is black.
This is one piece of advice from the early 20th century that we should not have forgotten in the early 21st. Maybe if a few more companies remembered this, they would not be in such dire straits. Consider the case of PolyOne Corporation that we discussed in a recent post on coming back from the brink to cash in the bank and how the complexity of too many manufacturing locations producing too many product variants was running them deep into the red.
Now consider the case of Apple — one iPad with 2 network connectivity options and 3 memory options. That’s only 6 variations, with only 2 components different in each variation. They’re “you can have any iPad you want, as long as it’s white” produced the best selling pad/tablet PC this year (with sales in excess of 2 Million units in less than 60 days, before it was available outside of the US), just like their “you can have any iPhone you want as long as it’s black” produced the best selling phone three years ago.
I was reminded of this while reading a recent piece on getting a handle on complexity which offered up a four step approach to reduce complexity, which, while workable, lacks the simplicity of:
You can have any color you want, so long as it is black.
Remember this, and you just might get your complexity, and associated costs, under control.