Billy Bookcase
Low cost, functional and brilliantly efficient, an Ikea Billy bookcase is produced every three seconds.
Low cost, functional and brilliantly efficient, an Ikea Billy bookcase rolls off the production line every three seconds. There are thought to be over 60 million of them already in service. Few could find the Billy bookcase beautiful. They are successful because they work and they are cheap. And – as Tim Harford explains in this fascinating story – brilliantly boring efficiency is essential to the modern economy. The humble Billy bookcase epitomises the relentless pursuit of lower costs and acceptable functionality.
Producer: Ben Crighton
Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon
Last on
Sources and related links
Rolf G Larsson - Ikea’s Almost Fabless Global Supply Chain – A Rightsourcing Strategy for Profit, Planet, and People, Lund University, Chapter 3 in Lean Management of Global Supply Chain, edited by Yasuhiro Monden and Yoshiteru Minagawa, World Scientific, 2015Β
Broadcasts
- Sat 14 Jan 2017 19:50GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service except Americas and the Caribbean, East and Southern Africa, News Internet & West and Central Africa
- Sun 15 Jan 2017 11:50GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service except News Internet
- Mon 16 Jan 2017 04:50GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service Australasia
- Tue 17 Jan 2017 23:50GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service Americas and the Caribbean
Podcast
-
![]()
50 Things That Made the Modern Economy
The stories of inventions, ideas and innovations which helped create the economic world
