The Magic Box of Pins (and its effect on my view of design)
“So why would a rational person, particularly a practical, left-brained engineer like me, assume that my box of pins was somehow magical? The answer is in how I came to own the box. ”
In a rush to prepare for some now-forgotten event or business trip, I realized that I needed some pins. You know the type: cylindrical bodies, a sharp tip on one end and a flat head on the other, like small nails. A typical box contains a few hundred pins, has a label describing its contents, and a clear lid with tape holding it closed.
An office assistant accepted the assignment to buy them at the university bookstore. There are two facts that must be understood before I tell you the rest of the experience: First, the bookstore was in the neighboring building. Second, the assistant was a full-time student and a wonderful part-time employee paid just above minimum wage.
The assistant returned fifteen or twenty minutes later and handed me the box of pins and the receipt. This seemingly ordinary incident happened over ten years ago, yet I still remember where I was standing when it all happened. I held the receipt in my hand and looked at the assistant. That’s when it hit me: it cost more to pay the assistant to walk to and from the adjacent building than it cost to buy the box of 400 pins! How can that be?
Consider what it took to make and deliver a box of pins: raw materials needed to be extracted or recycled, processed to have the appropriate composition and properties, extruded into a wire of the right diameter, cut to length, sharpened one end, flattened on the other end, likely plated in chrome, the appropriate number of pins put into the box and the plastic box itself had to be processed from petroleum to make a clear top and dark bottom that were molded into the right shape, thickness and transparency, then the label added to the box and the label needed to be processed from wood products and printed on with ink that required its own materials and processes, the tape applied and let’s not get into what’s needed to create the adhesive, the box placed with other boxes in a larger container, taken to the port, loaded into a shipping container (all of this by people doing the required logistics to get it in the right container on the right ship going to the right place), shipped across the planet’s largest ocean, unloaded from the ship, inspected by customs agents, separated from the other contents of the container, transported to a one-of-a-kind university bookstore where a price was determined, labeled, and put into the computer system, the box stocked on the shelf and manually checked out by an employee at the cash register. How many employees (including office assistants) were involved in all of those steps? How can any rational, level-headed, analytically minded person think that all that can be accomplished for less than the cost of the office assistant to walk to and from the neighboring building?
Magic.
Or could it be that the design of equipment, material processes, transportation, and supply chain logistics have become so advanced and sophisticated that unbelievable things are so common that we take them for granted?
As odd as it may seem, I’ve often considered this box of pins as I think of engineering design projects. We can design products, systems, and processes that seem impossible until they are done. This manifests itself in things as mundane as a box of pins, but has implications as broad as space exploration, nano-machines, life-saving medical devices, and other incredible systems that we may set out to create. Let’s engage the magic of engineering design to help make the implausible possible.
