Simplification

Simplification has been a recent theme in my brain recently--and is coming at me from all sides via the extraordinarily complex electronic environment in which I'm nestled.

This is one of the most thought provoking concepts I've seen recently from this post on how Toyota wants to fundamentally redesign the car

Mr. Watanabe wants kakushin, or revolutionary change. He wants to cut the number of components in a car by half and create a new generation of fast and flexible factories to build these cars. Just think about that challenge for a moment... cutting the number of components by half. Think about your factory's products, or even the computer you're reading this on, and contemplate what that means. Basically a reinvention of the car itself.

What's interesting is the idea that one can set a simplification goal such as cutting the number of components by half. This is a great idea for some of the software and systems that I've built/deployed recently. If I had to cut the number of components by half, how would I go about that? Interesting.