Carts need horses

Sometimes a production process proves to be problematic even in the best of situations with products that have been made before.

With a new product, can one expect to spread production before the concept has been proven? Even with the best of analytics, could this be somewhat like the old adage of putting the 'cart before the horse'?

There are development issues to consider, too, especially with all the new capabilities that enable and lead toward efforts at a geographically-dispersed team.

The distributed model might expect suppliers to become expert quickly in a new area; attainment of expertise requires time (and one might add repetition, continued improvement, and other practices associated with the best efforts).

Farmed-out work has a worker and looker flavor needing insightful overview, hopefully with more than just the critic's role for the looker. Expertise is not a vicariously obtained attribute.

Too, would prudence suggest that production might need to lag behind progress on the proof axis?

In the past, the effort to create a physical product model helped the 'proof' advancement; with the onset of computer modeling, the question arises of how much the model may replace reality. Much about that question is still an open issue; when the product is complex and has stringent performance criteria, ought we expect a stronger temporal tie between analytical tests and physical tests throughout the process?

Remarks:

01/19/2011 -- Update1 and Update2. The focus now will be mostly the idiots of economics/finance.

09/02/2009 -- Lets face it, folks, undecidability needs to be discussed and adopted in any complex situational setting, especially if computers are involved. Only hubris pushes us to make loud exclamations about what we're going to do in the future.

07/14/2009 -- Nope, confounding continues.

05/18/2009 -- Testing in flight is within sight.

01/28/2009 -- A few related posts that came later: IQ and PIQ, Earned value, Hype cycle, Outsourcing as panacea. Expect a recap on this theme.

11/26/2008 -- Problems continued to arise in 2008. As of now, some static tests have been done. But, issues with supply management were troublesome. Of course, an IAM strike caused a little delay. But, there has been no test flight, as of yet, so functional issues remain more unknown than not. See Polls for an idea of opinion at various points.

Modified: 01/19/2011