how do they do it: Lego

[sdy284]

so i'm watching how do they do it on the science channel, and they have a bit on Lego. It's pretty interested but this one fact blew me away.

 

Lego's tolerances are so tight on their manufacturing, only 18 out of every MILLION bricks are defects

 

holy crap

[LoArmistead]

I think I saw that show. I was blown away. They said that's why they are so expensive. They could cut QC and make their products cheaper, but it would result in more defects, which they want to avoid. If I were still a kid I'd still be out pushing a lawn mower to just have enough money to buy the new pirate ship.

[kingdingeling]

Operations Management right there, they're probably using x- and r-charts to monitor their production...

[sdy284]

I think I saw that show. I was blown away. They said that's why they are so expensive. They could cut QC and make their products cheaper, but it would result in more defects, which they want to avoid. If I were still a kid I'd still be out pushing a lawn mower to just have enough money to buy the new pirate ship.

 

http://ldd.lego.com/

[Avinexis]

The bricks are so versatile that just six of them can be arranged in 915,103,765 ways

 

No way, that can't possibly be right o.o Can it?

[TheHippi]

No way, that can't possibly be right o.o Can it?

It might not be that much but it's a really big number. There's 21 ways to put two of them together.

21^5 is over 4 million, and that not counting identical ways.

Edited March 12, 2010 by TheHippi

[kingdingeling]

It might not be that much but it's a really big number. There's 21 ways to put two of them together.

21^5 is over 4 million, and that not counting identical ways.

That's what I was thinking! There's a ton of different ways to be using 6 lego bricks!