Charlie Masi

Pros and cons of global outsourcing

Outsourcing, in general, is the strategy of contracting with a third party to add significant value to your standard products. The primary reason companies outsource is the dictum, “Do what you do best, and leave everything else to the rest.” Put more succinctly by one of my management professors, David Bohm: “Stick to your knitting!” Outsourcing makes it possible to ass...

Matching moments of inertia

Actuators have to develop forces to overcome both dissipative forces (friction) and inertial forces. That is, to move anything from position A to position B, you have to first apply force to accelerate the thing from a state of rest to some state of motion, then apply (usually smaller) force to maintain it in the accelerated-motion state against friction, and finally apply a force to decelerate...