Monthly Archive for January, 2011

Complexity reduction

Published on January 31, 2011 in Sustainability. Closed Tags: complexity, six sigma.

Having spent a bit of time over the last number of years trying to increase my previous employer’s already vast profits through leading and mentoring Six Sigma projects, I know that one of the avenues where a huge amount of costs can be eliminated is in complexity reduction. That may sound easy enough and indeed in some cases it is – why offer three flavours of Vanilla when one will suffice? You do need to gain a fundamental understanding the topic which you want to simplify which can be accomplished using several different tools. It helps if you can also limit the scope of what you’re looking at. We always tried to ensure that once we had managed to define a reasonably narrow scope for a project, that we stuck to that scope and didn’t try to be all things to everyone and fix everybody’s problems – which we likened to trying to cure world hunger. There are an uncountable number of variables, problems, issues, bureaucracy etc. etc. to be overcome in order to cure world hunger, so much so that it would be virtually impossible to do.

Taking just one aspect of Sustainable Development, in this case Climate Change, we broke into groups and brainstormed ideas under seven headings -

The topic tackled by my group was Conflict.

Whilst obviously not an exhaustive review, bottom line – there’s an awful lot of potential for conflict when speaking only in relation to Climate Change.

The most interesting exercise came once we had all completed our brainstorms and we were asked to physically link our topic to the other topics if we thought a connection existed. Upon completion of this exercise the classroom looked like spaghetti junction with links criss-crossing the room and clearly demonstrating the complexity of just this one aspect of sustainable development. Once again I stress that this was in no way an exhaustive review of climate change or the seven headings we reviewed. I think the biggest stumbling block to this exercise was simply where to start and also the limited amount of time we had to conduct the exercise in. Ironically one of the areas we touched on was food production which of course would lead one to look at world hunger.

Sustain – the alliance for better food and farming

Published on January 27, 2011 in Food. Closed Tags: fish, Fish Fight, pollock.

Another topic other than transport which is near and dear to my heart (or should that be stomach) – Food!!!

http://www.sustainweb.org/

From their website – “Sustain advocates food and agriculture policies and practices that enhance the health and welfare of people and animals, improve the working and living environment, promote equity and enrich society and culture.”

I came across this crowd through Hugh’s Fish Fight site. There appears to be a huge number of real world project and campaigns that they are working on. And they have some interesting, and in some cases downright challenging, recipes and publications. How does “Bake Your Lawn: Grow it, mill it, bake it, eat it” sound? I’ll let you draw your own conclusions on that one. I need to read the site a bit more to get a handle on what exactly they’re involved in, but I do fully support Hugh’s Fish Fight. It’s not bad enough that we, the Irish, practically gave away our fishing rights in our own waters so that foreign factory ships can come in and plunder the fish stocks here, we also have the fish quotas and practice of discards affecting the fish stocks.

Returning to a system of landing what you catch as opposed to dumping everything that you catch but don’t have a quota for and broadening the range of fish which we consume is extremely important to the balanced survival of all fish species, not just the 5 or so species which we regularly consume. Try some Pollock, with a little Thai fish sauce and dill herbs, wrapped in tin foil and popped in the oven. It’s beautiful and best of all really cheap as Pollock is regarded by many as a fish you can’t eat or with no taste, which is just a stupid old wives tale.

Jaguar’s self proclaimed sustainable supercar

Published on January 25, 2011 in Transport. Closed Tags: EV, hybrid, jaguar, jet jurbine, micro jet turbine, transport.

Jag’s new showcar, the C-X75, an hybrid electric vehicle, which they have dubbed a sustainable supercar. Jaguar also feels it needs to be relevant. To what? It’s a 200 mph supercar. On first inspection it’s not exactly relevant to anything. Except going very fast. But it is beautiful and possibly a real view into the type of hybrid technology which could be appearing in cars in the future! Run using purely battery power the range is a miserable 110 kilometers. Using the twin Bladon Jets micro jet turbines to top up the batteries and under certain circumstances to power the electric motors directly, this range increases to approximately 900 kilometers.

Even TopGear approves. But that IS irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that the technology showcased in this car is VERY relevant to the future of transportation. I first came across Bladon Jets more than a year ago whilst researching Stirling engines which are commonly used nowadays in CHP plants. At that time they had just brought their micro axial turbines to market and they were touting them for use in any number of applications, automotive being just one of them. Of interest was the use if the turbines in small, and I mean briefcase sized, portable power generator which could be used for example in remote villages in third world countries to supply electricity. They’ll run on just about anything combustible, so the use of bio-fuels would obviously be possible with them and presumably the preferred choice.

But of course for the majority of those of us dwelling in first world countries I believe that we will see this kind of technology in our cars in the future. Existing hybrid vehicles don’t really catch the imagination and use current internal combustion piston engines which are heavy. Pure electric vehicles (EV) are hampered by existing battery technology leading to limited range. So in the absence of a step change in battery performance the only practical solution is the use of hybrids. As is often the case it is the technology unveiled in showcars which will trickle down in to the more mundane cars which we all drive daily. To see what features will be available on the average family car in 5 to 10 years, simply look at the most recent incarnation of whatever tecchnology is released by Mercedes in their top of the range model.

Therefore it is likely, perhaps not neccessarily in 5 years or even 10 years, that we’ll be driving around in Toyota Yaris’ or similar, powered by a hybrid of jet turbine engine and electric motors. Viva The Jetsons!