It is very cool that Houston is doing some “time of day” metering that sends real-time pricing signals to houses. Generally these residences get some sort of “fixed” discount off their utility bills (maybe 20%) for participating in the program. These programs move up or down the thermostat and cycle some air conditioning (I’m not an expert) at peak times. Managing the peak is critical for the energy markets since their peak determines total capacity needs which has an outsized impact on capital spending.

Back to the subject at hand, I am not an expert in the world of manufacturing products but from a services perspective we seem to be a long way before the day when the internet brings down costs and dis-intermediates the supply chain. Under Sarbanes the needs for accountants and financial people has exploded and these tasks can hardly be outsourced (on a mass scale). There also is a big run on programmers – a while back there were a lot of people chasing jobs but in general if you have up to date credentials there are a million opportunities in cities like Chicago right now.

I still can’t fix any appliances, though, I am a hopeless mechanic :)

Never say never. Get some more bandwidth on line, and people will start getting remote controllable robots to do things for them.

Then an HVAC tech in India will hook into your customers’ robot and have it fix their air conditioner.

Houston TX is already installing a system of “internet over power lines” that routes TCP/IP packets as UltraWideBand signals over the local electrical grid. So the generators and house-hold eletrical meter can start talking to each other and pricing for a watt of electricity can vary based on the moment-to-moment market. So next your HVAC system will be checking not only the inside thermostat before starting up a heat or cool cycle, but the current meter price for a watt of electricity, and a onboard computer will do some consumer-option’d algorithim to decide whether or not to buy that watt right now. NEXT, of course, the ob-board computer will track the performance of the compressor, motor, exchanger — just like the chip in your auto hooked up to the “SERVICE ENGINE SOON” light does for gasoline engines. And so about the end of March this year somebody will be offering you to hook up your dispatcher’s call board a system that will schedule service calls to modern HVAC systems whose onboard systems have reported over the powerlines that the belt is slipping and needs to be replaced … You will know that sometime the first week of April to have laid in an inventory or parts to take on a pre-plannned route to service all the HVACs in an area BEFORE they go wonky.

Oh wait — that’s Houston. Wisconsin? I think that future won’t arrive up there until, oh, maybe about September …

That said, the Internet is doing for knowledge-based jobs what the introduction of electric motors did for manufacturing. Instead of the array of pulleys and belts that were needed for a water-powered factory, each individual machine could have its own motive power. Smaller installations and stand-alone machines would not have been possible without this.

Now each of us has the equivalent of a research staff and marketing department of a large company of the 1960′s. It’s making a difference.

I don’t want to ruin your day but I think the internet has changed your business in a way you can’t see from your perspective. Speaking from personal experience, it is easier for non-specialist to use the internet to affect their own repairs.

Pre-internet, one had to spend a lot of time finding a hardcopy resource that could even begin to point a beginner in the right direction to start repairing something like an AC. Now it takes just a few minutes. Finding parts was also a challenge but the internet has solved that pretty much as well. I have repaired several major appliances around my house. It started mostly just for fun but I ended up saving a lot money.

I would guess that the next innovation in onsite service might come with the wide availability of web cams and smart appliances. Appliance repair might start to look more like computer technical support where a remote technician troubleshoots the problem over the phone before the onsite guy goes out.

I, too, have been struck by how much the newest technology on the internet has led to domestic practices that are more thrifty, more respectful of “things”–we are less a throwaway society. And those old quite ordinary things we loved for some reason can be found again.

Mitch,
And about the library at our fingers: now when my memory fails me & facts or words are just beyond my grasp, I google; I’m sure it’s in my imagination but it is like the synapses in the head are firing again, alive again.

By the way, how does inventory fit into this? It seems to me that slimming down the route may lead to less waste & loss.