James L Adams—People and Products

Product Quality and High Heeled Shoes

  For those of you following the class discussion blog , which contains the student choices for good products and bad products in the various categories covered in the course—if you double click on the titles, you will get the complete write-ups including the “comment” space, should you care to enter the discussion. Over the quarter, the discussions wll follow the flow of my Good Products Bad Products book.

  The last class consisted of small groups of students commenting on the assignments to date followed by general discussion, and brought up a number of interesting points.  Several comments were made that in many cases human fit and craftsmanship are often neglected because other elements of quality are seen as more important by marketing.  But it is often, if not usually the case that they can and should be improved.  Several examples were in the area of fashion products and cheap knock-offs of same.  The emotional and cultural aspects of such products were seen to often swamp the functional,  and such things as comfort, durability, maintainability, and craftsmanship often suffer. 

  The case of high-heeled shoes came up, as it usually does in this course.  I know women who have spent many years in jobs in which high heeled shoes were standard wear, and, like many people, gained pleasure in following the path of fashion.  But they are now paying the cost of having spent so much time having their toes stuffed into an inadequate and artificially shaped container, and walking with their ankles bent at an unnatural angle.  The cost includes such things as hammer toes, bunions, sore ankles and other miscellaneous foot problems.

 Being a man who has never been accused of being a fashion plate, and one who would probably wobble in high heels, I don’t quite understand the love women have for Jimmy Choo and his colleagues, but I accept that many would, if properly funded, challenge the shoe collection that made Imelda Marcos famous (or infamous).  In fact, I would go further and suggest that looking at history from the binding of feet through the success of en pointe in classical ballet, to the size of Barbie doll feet and the staying power of spike heels high enough to leave the foot almost vertical, some women might be happier with no feet at all, or at least smaller versions relative to the leg, such as those possessed by horses.

 But I won’t go into this obviously unsophisticated male viewpoint, because I have learned that I always lose in the following discussion.  To me, it seems that it should be possible to produce woman’s shoes that not only fit and otherwise do their job well (athletic shoes, boots), but that are extraordinarily beautiful, lead in fashion, and are consistent with the plumage involved in “dressing up”.

 At the end of my Good Products Bad Products book is a simple matrix suggesting that products can be scored according to their success in all of the quality elements in the book.  My sentiments are clear.

 

Outsourcing/Offshoring to Mexico

The New York Times issue of Jan 27, 2912, contained an enthusiastic opinion piece entitled Mexico:  The New China, by Chris Anderson, the former editor of Wired Magazine, and founder of 3d Robotics, extolling the virtues of manufacturing in Mexico.  It is here. Mexico is indeed a fine place to do business, but that has been known for as long as I remember. When I first came to Stanford as a student in the late 1950’s, there was a formal cooperative arrangement between the Engineering School and the Monterrey Technical Institute in Mexico, and although biased toward agriculture and materials, there was a good bit of trade going on. And of course, as is still the case, immigrants from Mexico were doing much of the work in many fields in the U.S., in particular agriculture.  But China officially became communist in 1949, was closed to visitors for thirty years, and still has slightly awkward relations with the U.S.

Mexico is potentially better for us than a new China.  It is much closer linguistically, culturally and physically, and it has been a strong trading partner of the U.S. for many years. In 2012, U.S. exports to Mexico totaled approximately 200 billion dollars, and imports approximately 257 billion dollars, for a trade deficit of 57 billion.  To put that in perspective with our China situation, our exports to China totaled about 100 billion, and our imports, 390 billion, for a negative trade balance of 290 billion.  Our exports to Canada, incidentally, totaled 270 billion, and our imports 298 billion, for a trade deficit of 28 billion.

If we add our trade to Mexico and Canada, we find that our exports are approximately 470 billion dollars, and imports approximately 555 billion, for a trade deficit of 85 billion dollars.  So our trade with Mexico and Canada far exceeds our trade with China.  Our trade with China annoys us more, because we seem to buy a lot more from them than they from us.  And perhaps China bothers us more than Mexico because we fear that China is threatening our status as the world’s leading power, is culturally and governmentally different, and we remember that they chased us out of the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea in 1950, 

 I must admit I am a life-long fan of Mexico. In fact, I once thought I wanted to be reincarnated as a guitarron player in a Mariachi band. Also, I feel that we forced them out of land that was rightfully theirs. Those of us those of us who live in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Utah, Nevada, and parts of Wyoming, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Kansas, live in land that was initially claimed by Spain, but then became part of Mexico when it became independent. This land was later taken by the expanding U.S. through military force and a 15 million dollar decrease in the debt owed the U .S. by Mexico — Manifest Destiny.  More details of all that are here. I certainly don’t begrudge people from Mexico attempting to emigrate to land that we took away from Mexico by force and a few bucks.  And I like doing business with them.

 I grew up in Southern California when the main business was citrus, and our favorite relatives farmed in Somerton, Arizona, which was a stone’s throw from San Luis, Mexico.  I grew up with people from Mexico. The Mexican population was particularly large in the agricultural Southwest, Spanish was a common language, and we were very aware that the nearest big city was El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río de Porciúncula .  Now I live on the Stanford Campus, which is on one side by a street called El Camino Real, and on the other by Junipero Serra — Mexican influence?  I am married to a woman whose mother left the U.S. for Mexico when her husband died, re-married to a U.S. citizen living there, and spent most of the rest of her life  there.  I have spent a relatively large time working and playing in Mexico, and in my opinion, most U.S. people know it mostly because of its resorts, food, border towns, and of course, tequila.  But a bit of time in Mexico City changes that impression. 

 Incidentally, Mexican towns on the U.S. border used to be lots more fun before our present concerns with immigration and their invasion by the drug business (supported, after all, by the high prices generated by our “war on drugs”.)  But these formerly small and marginally paved cities are no longer small and unpaved.  As an example, Tiajuana now has a population approaching 2 million. Mexico is a large and growing country, and in many ways a successful one.

 As an end note, the richest person in the world ($75 billion, even more than the $64.4. billion of Bill Gates or the $48.5 billion of Warren Buffet), is a Mexican telecom tycoon with the wonderful name of Carlos Slim, who lives there along with a very large number of successful manufacturing companies, including 16 automobile assembly plants, and Cemex, the world’s largest supplier of construction materials and 3^rd large producer of cement. Viva Mexico!

Human Fit, Craftsmanship, and Good Products Bad Products

At this time, the students in the Stanford Good Products Course have read the first five chapters of my book of the same name, are working on a field research paper, and have turned in their first assignment from the book, which asked them to select a product that they consider to be of high quality and one of low quality as far as both human fit and craftsmanship are concerned, and to write a short essay justifying their choices and perhaps suggesting how to improve the products of low quality.

If you would like an insight into their thinking, there is a blog here which will give you that. You should find it both thought provoking and entertaining. I cannot include all of their essays, because of space limitations, but you will get the idea.  The topics of the first product assignment are human fit and craftsmanship, the content of Chapters 4 and 5 of my book. 

 The first two chapters in the book have to do with the nature of quality and reasons why product quality could and should be improved.  The third chapter is an argument for thinking more deeply about cost, price, and performance, a relationship that is often overly simplified by both producers and consumers.  The problems in the book for the first three chapters are not assigned to the class this year, because of time constraints. 

 Human fit, the topic of Chapter 4, is one of the more obvious and important aspects of product quality, and one that is often overlooked, partly because of the perceived higher priority of short term factors such as cost and schedule in the development of products, and partly because of the tendency of designers to design for people like themselves with respect to such things as age, size, sensory and physical ability, and the tendency of consumers not to give adequate attention to the fit between product and user at purchase. This latter phenomenon can be seen from customers briefly (with embarrassment) lying on a mattress in a store, when at least a full night’s sleep is probably necessary to determine whether their back will be angry with them in the morning.

 Since one goal of my book is to break the non-quantitative aspects of quality into more  approachable topics, I subdivided human fit into physical fit, sensory fit, cognitive fit, complexity, and safety and health.  Much is known about the first three, but often not applied.  Cognitive misfit is especially noticeable in the internet.  Digital electronics and increasingly sophisticated software are resulting in rapidly increasing access to information and communication modes, but Moore’s law does not apply to the brain.  We need a better match, and it is not going to come from  doubling the number of neurons in our brain every two years.  Finally, both the complexity of modern life and health are becoming increasingly important problems.

 Craftsmanship is also critical.  But unfortunately we tend to use  the term more on products involving a large amount of hand labor (the “crafts”).  For a number of reasons, craftsmanship in industrial products, which over time require less and less hand labor, is increasingly important.  Not only does improved craftsmanship often result in improvements in performance, reliability, and durability, but it is aesthetically pleasing and we closely associate it with quality (well-made objects).  Chapter 5 goes into the topic in detail.  The subdivisions of the chapter are (1) Why Do We Care About craftsmanship,(2) The Pleasure and Pride of Craft, (3) The Industry and Culture Problem, (4) The Nature of Craftsmanship, and (5), Some Suggestions of How to Improve Craftsmanship in Industry.

 

 

Outsourcing, Offshoring, and the Stanford Good Products Bad Products class

The Jan 19^th-25^th edition of The Economist focuses on outsourcing and offshoring in its special report, as well as in a short article here.  I will talk more about this in a future post, but as wages in countries such as China and India rise, the advantages of operating overseas become more due to operating in countries that provide customers and that have good supply chains and sources of labor, than to low labor costs.  U.S. companies will therefore not leave such countries as India and China, and they in turn will  operate more in the U.S.  Foxconn is on the way and Cemex has been here for quite a while. 

 The ME 314 course at Stanford has now settled down.  Students at Stanford are allowed to “shop” for courses at the first of every quarter, which means that they can sit in on several for a few meetings before committing to their choices.  This makes for more satisfied and motivated students as well as a bit of extra learning.  The downside is to the professors, who are not quite sure who is in the class for a week or two.

 The class has met three times since the introductory session, with four guest speakers, assigned readings, and assignments for the future.  The first speaker was Stephanie Phillips, who I mentioned in my post of January 15th.  Dave Beach is a believer in the use of video not only for communication, but also for analyzing products, and one of the assignments the students have is to do a bit of field research using video.  The speakers following Stephanie were Scott Doorley and Jonathan Edelman, both with experience in doing such things.

 The fourth speaker was Peter Dreissigacker, who founded a company called Concept 2 with his brother Richard.  Peter was a student of mine in my early teaching days, and remains one of my favorite people.  They both received M.S. degrees in engineering at Stanford in the 1970’s, Peter in Product Design, and Dick in Industrial Engineering.  They were/are both outstanding rowers. Dick rowed in the Olympics, and Peter in the try-outs.  In 1976 they founded Concept 2  in Maine to make competition oars out of composite materials.  They later added a rowing ergometer, and still later a skiing ergometer.

Concept 2 is dedicated to having its products be the best in their class, and have generally succeeded.  Their oars are widely used in top competitions, and their ergometers are top of the line.  A look at the Concept 2 company website gives an indication of some of the things in which they are involved in their quest to not only make extremely high products, but spread  rowing more widely as not only an exciting sport, but also as wonderful exercise. As an example, the photo shows one of the indoor rowing competitions using their ergometers that the company has been sponsoring for 30 years.

Concept 2 is a relatively small company/family with long-term employees.  It is a happy place that is proud of its work.  Needless to say, the employees are unusually healthy, since Dick and Peter set the tone by remaining highly ranked in their age group in the international internet competitions based on concept 2 ergometers.

 This is a  company whose income depends on product quality.  And through their activities, such as the indoor competitions,they have gone far beyond their primary customers (high-level rowers) to expand their community of users.  Even I had one of their  ergometers in my house for many years, and it still is doing yeoman service with my kids and grandchildren.  And I daresay, none of us are being sought after by competition crews.  In fact, i have proven conclusively that I cannot even balance a single scull. 

Product Quality, Invention, Innovation, Economics, and Outsourcing.

  There were a couple of provocative articles in the last issue of The Economist.  The first and lead article is here.  It has to do with the present swell of interest in ideas, creativity, innovation, and such things.  I had  two reactions to it.  First, I certainly agree that such things are essential to us.  But there seems to be a feeling nowadays that lots of ideas are magic that can result in gloriously successful startups that then result in our fantasy of full employment, rapidly growing GDP, etc. etc. etc.  As mathematicians might say, ideas are necessary but not sufficient.  Linus Pauling, my beloved freshman chemistry teacher, used to say that the key to creativity is to have lots of ideas and throw away the bad ones.  When this appears as a quote, somehow the last part of the sentence is often omitted.

 The second gives a bit of insight into our national policy vagueness on manufacturing.   It is here.  It discusses the field of economics, the extent at which economists agree with each other, and the extent that the public agrees with the economists.  It includes the figure shown below.

 Each week since Sept 1911, the University of Chicago has asked a group  of economists associated with leading schools whether they agree or disagree on certain statements.  The figure, taken from an article entitled “Economic Experts vs. Average Americans”, written by Paula Sapienz and Luigi Zingales, also of the University of Chicago, compares these responses with  those of a group of non-economists, who seem to be "comparable" to the economists in most respects.  One might expect the non-economists to have  somewhat similar responses to those of the economists, since we are, after all, intelligent and well informed and the economists are highly trained  professionals in topics having to do with money. The economists generally agree with each other reasonably well, despite their tendency to attack each other in the media.  But the non-economists do not seem to agree with them.

With regard to manufacturing, look at the difference in response to the bottom statement —The “Buy American” policy is good for manufacturing employment”.  A mere ten percent of the economists agree with that.  A resounding 75 percent  of the non-economists do.  The public in a democracy such as ours is assumed to be reasonably intelligent.  So are specialists such as economists.  Does this explain Washington to some extent?  And us?  All of the economists seem to agree that “It is hard to predict stock prices”.  Only half of the non-economists seem to agree. And how about the one on the cost of methods to cut emissions?

 

 

Marketing, Advertising, and Product Quality

The first guest speaker in the Stanford Good Products, Bad Products course was Stephanie Phillips, educated in biology and anthropology, who does qualitative behavioral market research for various agencies.  It was a very good talk, in which she did an outstanding job of detailing what is required to gain insights into people’s desires and needs.  Afterward, Dave Beach and I had a discussion about the power of the methods she uses and the ultimate use of conclusions reached from work like hers.

 In business schools, there is great care to separate marketing (study of people to more clearly define what they want and need - what Stephanie does) from sales (selling the product). This is not universally true.  If I look at the definition for sales in my Apple dashboard, it tells me that sales is “the exchange of commodities for money”. Clear enough. But marketing is defined as  “the action or business of providing and selling products or services, including market research and advertising”.  Many (most) people not professionally involved in marketing blur marketing and sales.

 The type of knowledge that such people as Stephanie Phillips unearth can be used in many ways.  As far as developing good new products and improving the quality of existing products, it is invaluable. In promotion and advertising it can result in powerful insights useful in increasing the sale of products. This is good if the product is presented honestly— less so if is not. This was the topic of my discussion with Professor Beach

 If you follow this blog, you may detect that I am fairly cynical about advertising.   There was a very popular song in the 1940’s in which the words encouraged the listener to “accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative”­—possibly resulting from the war that was underway, and certainly applicable to the media and entertainment of the time. It definitely applies to advertising.  In fact in much advertising, the positive is emphasized to the point where we have “truth in advertising” laws.  In general, large companies abide by such things, but how about situations in which individuals and less established commercial ventures are advertising their wares over the internet, and the advertising of insurance, investments and lottery tickets?

 Stephanie was impressive in her talk and very likeable, and I couldn’t help but wondering what might be the result if use car dealers and sellers of cubic zirconium jewelry could hire people like her.  Or even worse, someone with her skills and shady ethics.

 My personal resentments of advertising are such trivial items as its besmirching of the landscape, fouling of the internet, causing most of our mail to hit the recycle box without being opened and ringing our phone during meals, destruction of the flow of such things as magazines, sports and movies on TV, and often , if not usually, exaggeration of the nature and capabilities of the products it represents. Advertising is necessary, if for no other reason to make products and services visible.  Without advertising we would have to pay more for many things, such as internet services, TV and other entertainment, and periodicals, and we would lose a lot of jobs.  And some advertisements are actually entertaining and educational.  But I think that advertising in the U.S. is becoming obnoxious, and perhaps less effective for that reason. How many people are like me in that they increasingly forgo even considering products that interrupt their football game with repeated stupid ads or announce themselves by jumping up and down on the side of the weather report?

 

 

 

Stanford course ME 214-314 schedule and introduction

As I promised, the rough schedule that shows what will occur in each meeting of the Good Products Bad Products course is shown here.

At the first meeting of the class, Dave Beach, Adam Grosser, and I first said a few words about ourselves and our interests in quality.  Dave is responsible  for the course and Adam is helping him teach it, and the course uses my Good Products, Bad Products book.  A short resume for Dave is here, and one for Adam is here.  They are old friends and both interested in product quality, but have had very different careers, so they should be a dream team.

After we talked, Dave spent an hour running the students through an exercise meant to show the difference in sensitivity to quality between merely talking and reading about products and using them.   He used two citrus juicers, one a traditional electrically powered one, and one the rather unconventional one designed by Philippe Starck, a very well known designer, shown in the  photo

The students discussed the two of them at great length, easily bringing  up good and bad  points about them.  But then he had had volunteers from the class actually squeeze  juice with them and comment about their reactions to the process as they did it.  As usual, an entirely different and perhaps more insightful set of issues appeared.  And the class heavily turned against the Starck model, even though it is unique, an eye catching design, has no breakable moving parts, requires no electricity, and is perhaps the highest selling product in Alessi stores—Beach and I of course love it.

 In my brief talk, I offered the following reasons why product quality might not be as high as possible; complacency, short-term profit motivation, tradition, lack of priority in education and in industry, and lazy customers.  My book goes into more detail on them, but the last is one of my favorites.  Why do we settle for less quality than we should?

 We consumers tend to be swayed by increasingly sophisticated advertising and “deals” and do not pay enough attention to the long-term usage of products.  Even though I am deeply involved in the issue of product quality, I find myself making decisions with little if any experience in using the product I am thinking of buying.  I too make decisions on the comfort of chairs or beds after sitting or lying on them for a minute or two, and seldom spend a reasonable amount time trying out a product I am considering purchasing —especially because it is often difficult to find the opportunity.

 When I decided my pickup had run its course a couple of years ago, I considered restoring and upgrading  a 1960’s pickup I own that had belonged to my father.  But I did not think I had the time to spend at that point, so I bought a new one.  I took a longer than usual demonstration drive in the city, on some dirt roads, and on the freeway, and of course found it much more impressive than my old one (not surprising since it was brand new, and my old one had definitely run the course). As I said in my post of Jan 16, 2012, which you can see below, my main complaint was that it was too large. But I liked the truck and figured that I could find parking spots that allowed the doors to swing enough to let me enter and exit, that I could put running boards on it to make it easier for my wife to enter and exit, and that I could keep the stuff that ended up behind the seat organized.  And I figured that I could open the tail gate and get in and out of the bed from the back to reach objects.  But I did not test all of these assumptions before I bought it.

 Had I tried to park it in a tight lot, get stuff out from behind the seat, help older people get in and out of it, and gotten in and out of the bed a couple dozen times myself —in other words, better squeezed the oranges— my decision would probably have been to re-work the 60’s truck, since for my use all modern 8 foot bed (full-sized) pickups are difficult to use because they are much larger than they need to be.  This summer I will attack my 60’s truck. 

The Stanford University 2013 Good Products Bad Products Course

January 8^th, 2013, is the first day of the winter quarter Good Products, Bad Products course (ME 214, 314) at Stanford University.  I began this course in the 1980’s, and it has gone through several changes in name, course number, and department base since then.   David Beach has been teaching it since I retired in 1999, and has changed it in many ways, although he has kept the intent of the course the same.  He has continued to use my notes, and now that they have been published as a book, he is using it as a text in the course.  Although it is listed as a graduate course in the school of engineering, it will include students from other parts of the campus as well.  The majority of the class will consist of regular Stanford students, although there will be some part-time students who will be taking it remotely over the internet. 

 Classes will include a number of guest speakers representing companies and individuals concerned with and producing high quality products, lectures from David Beach, and discussions of the reading material, the speakers, and whatever other product-quality related concerns arise during the quarter. They will not only be reading and discussing my book, but will be  doing exercises similar to the ones listed at the end of the chapters.  They will write short papers on each, and I will talk about them and include some of the more interesting ones on this blog. I will attach a rough schedule to my next post to give  you an idea of what occurs in each class meeting.

The course concludes with a series of consistently impressive presentations on the material in my book.  Groups of students select the topic areas, do appropriate research, and being a bright and talented bunch with a love of media, come up with presentations that are entertaining as well as educational.  I obviously cannot deliver the entire course in a  blog to those of you reading my posts, but not taking the course.  But I will keep you in touch with the course, forward student work when appropriate and interesting to you, and in doing so hopefully expose you a bit to the thinking of present day Stanford students.  I will also continue to write posts on aspects of product quality design and manufacturing, and other topics not covered in the course.  Please comment  on my course-related posts, and I will forward the comments to the class, should they fit the activities that are under way.  The more diversity in input to the students, the better, and any comments you make should result in lively discussions.

Although I have been retired from active teaching for many years, I continue to occupy an office on campus, drink the coffee,  and heckle the people who continue to do the work.  I still find the opening of winter quarter to be exciting.  Although California weather is hard to complain about, it becomes a bit wetter in the San Francisco area, and the general energy level of the academic enterprise picks up a bit because it is not as much fun to go out and play. Hopefully I can convey a bit of this to you.

Welcome aboard!

New Year's Resolution for People Making Industrial Products

I resolve to do what I can to improve the product I am working on —in fact to strive to help it become the best of its kind in the world—or if I think it is already is the best of its kind in the world, to work on improving it anyway, because someone is close behind.

 In doing so, I resolve to consider not only the more easily measurable aspects of quality discussed by David Garvin in his now classic November 1987 HBR article (performance, features, reliability, conformance, durability, serviceability) but also the more qualitative aspects covered in the Adams Good Products Bad Products book (perceived performance, performance/cost ratio, craftsmanship, consistency with human users and cultural values, aesthetic issues,  sensitivity to finite resources and the environment, and finally emotional appeal. (Garvin did mention aesthetics and perceived quality in his article, which was entitled Competing on the Eight Dimensions of Quality, but brushed over them as being functions of individual judgment—Adams says hooray for individual judgment).

 Finally I resolve to remain aware of the two cultures (the scientific and humanistic) mentioned in the Adams People and Products post of  Nov 1, 2012, and to the extent that I have a bias, for instance, toward quantitative reasoning and logic (which are good)  and away from aesthetics and feelings (which are not only good but powerfully affect people’s judgment of quality), or vice versa,  I will do my best to get over it.

Baling (farm/soft/hay/tie/re-bar) Wire — A Wonderful Product

I have some large equipment on a friend’s farm that I cover with plastic tarpaulins, usually held down with sisal cord.  But this year a heavy windstorm broke many of the cords, so I spent yesterday replacing them with baling wire, and in the process, realized I have spent most of my life working with baling wire.  In fact, one of the first jobs I can remember in my life was straightening baling wire for my grandfather, who had talked the local dairy into saving it for him, and used it for every purpose from fastening broken objects together and holding up mufflers and exhaust pipes to tearing down spider webs and making bizarre constructions to unclog drains.  I studied  under him!

 Baling wire is made of steel that is high enough in carbon to be strong, but has been annealed so that it is easy to bend.  It comes in many sizes, and many lengths, and although sometimes plated, it is usually black in color and lightly oiled. In an urban area it is best known as re-bar or tie wire, and a major use is to tie together reinforcing bars while concrete is poured over them. This photo shows a small quantity purchased from Home Depot.  It is still used to hold bales together in agricultural areas, although it has generally been replaced with plastic cord.  I don’t bale hay, and don’t pour concrete that often, but I can’t imagine living without it.  I have a lot of sophisticated tools and adhesives, but bailing wire is the most flexible of them all.  And even though it is possible to purchase fancy devices to twist it together and otherwise form it, all you need to use it is a pair of pliers (lineman pliers are a luxury), or if such a thing is not available, you can often get by with your bare hands.

 It has been around in for a couple of hundred years, although it first became plentiful in the late 19^th century with the invention of the hay-baler.  The photograph  below shows part of the clutch lever on a large 100 year old track-laying tractor that I have owned for 40 years.  It was clearly starting to crack at the point where the pivot hole for the rod leading to the clutch was drilled, and the natural solution by the original owner was to fasten a large nail to the lever with, of course, baling wire.  The tractor was a basket case when I acquired it, and I dutifully restored it, but no-way was I about to weld the crack on the lever and remove this typical farm- type repair.

  In fact, baling wire was so prevalent on farms that produced or used large amounts of hay, that in many cases it became somewhat of a hazard because of its ability to poke holes in things (including human flesh), and if wadded up and discarded in quantity, to form indestructible tangles (you’ve heard the term haywired?).  But the good news, was (and is) its easy availability to solve endless problems.  In fact, I remember encountering a saying when a kid, that it was possible to repair anything with baling wire and spit. 

 In my book, anything that performs as many functions in an unchanged form for 200 years and is cheap and easily available is a wonderful product.

 Finally, the right team won the Rose Bowl.  Happy New Year.