Geekology

Why does MIT excel at innovation? After spending the last couple of months in the basement of the machine shop in building 48, I think I know the answer. MIT students have access to an incredible array of supplies, tools, machine shops and labs. Most of students take advantage of this as professors, advisors and technical staff look on with a mix of mild bemusement, curiosity and pride. "Let the kids learn from their own mistakes", they seem to be saying.

I experienced what it's like to be a true MIT geek (not just a graduate student in a management program) while helping build the solar energy prototype this summer. One of my tasks this week was to mount a pulley to a motor shaft. First I had to pry the pulley off of a power steering pump using some brute force cutting.
Next, I had to attach the pully to the motor shaft shown below.
An off-the-shelf coupling would do this easily, but in true MIT fashion, the coupling had to be hand built. "Why buy it if you can build it?", seems to be mantra around here. In the real world it could be a recipe for disaster, but this is MIT and a true lesson in geekology required that I build my own coupling from a rod of aluminum 2" wide and 3" long.

I began my journey by acquiring the material from the central machine shop in buiding 36. This is a warehouse stocked with any material you can think of. The central machine shop seems to have a mystical significance around here. Everyone knows where it is, but it's a secret only known to those MIT students who care about this kind of stuff.
Next, I had to machine the part to make two holes of different diameters to fit the two shafts. I don't think I've ever used a lathe before, but after a 30-second introduction course, I was ready to go. Another discovery: MIT students love to share their knowledge and help you get on board with the tools and the labs.

And the final result: a nicely machined piece of aluminum. Total time to do this? About 1 hour (from the time I went to the stock room). I would've probably spent as much time researching and ordering the right coupling on-line.

After drilling and tapping four holes on the side, I attached the shaft and tested the whole assembly. It worked like a dream! The motor and the pulley will be used to turn the parabolas to follow the sun. Pretty exciting!

501(c)(3)

We've done it! We've finally incoporated the non-profit organization. It is officially called Solar Turbine Group International, Inc. The principal aim is to provide financial, technical and intellectual assistance to sustainable energy projects for communities in the developing world.

I know! It sounds like a lofty goal, but it's a humble beginning. The main reason for incorporating was to provide a legal foundation for the project we're doing in South Africa and from there we extended it to include projects anywhere in the world. 501(c)(3) is the IRSs code which provides us with the tax exempt status. Most charitable organizations (but not all) fall in this category. However, our main goal for incorporating was not to take advantage of the tax exemption status, but to provide us with limited libility protection in case anything goes wrong. The world is a litigious place and we must prepare for anything.

What is my role in all this? Well, I'm a director of the organization (there are five of us). The directors are the ones who manage the affairs of the organization. It doesn't mean much right now because we're not going to be activelly raising funds and growing the organization (at least for now). But as a directors, we have the fiduciary responsibility to make sure the organization follows its goals and there are no conflicts of interest that could undermine the non-profit or tax-exempt status.

It's pretty exciting! I'm learning a lot about the non-profit world. For example, most non-profit organization end their fiscal year on Sept 30. Why? Because the end of September is the off-peak period for tax filings so the non-profits could get their accounting done for less (or even for free). My... they think of everything!

Our next step is to incorporate a separate for-profit organization later this fall to commercialize the technology developed by the non-profit organization.

Vacation Time?

Summer session is finally over and I should be on vacation. But I'm really not. I've been working pretty much ever day on the solar energy project. We MUST finish it by Sept 7 when the core of the team leaves for South Africa and we still have a ton of work to do. After a quick start, we got bogged down on the little details of design and implementation (and there are a ton of them). This is not a simple system!

I'm not complaining, though. It's been a lot of fun and I think I'll look back at this as one of the most productive summers I've ever had. The other day we installed the solar concentrators and let them "float" freely. It was a major cause for celebration (never mind that we had to take them down the following weekend to redo the piping). Oh well, two steps forward, one step back.
Here's what the system looks right now (that's me trying to warm up a slice of pizza; the first real application of our solar energy system :).

System Dynamics

System dynamics has turned out to be one of the best classes this summer. System dynamics uses the concept of feedback loops and simulation models to explain organizational, economic and social system behaviors. It was invented here at MIT by Jay Forrester who was a guest speaker at our class last week (it's amazing that at the age of 87, he is still just as fired up about system dynamics as he was when he invented the concept). System dynamics has taught me some of the most useful and practical concepts which I plan to use in my thesis (and to think that I almost didn't take the class...)

One of the simulation exercises we did was the so-called Beer Game. The game (which unfortunately doesn't involve actual beer) demonstrates how system dynamics comes into play in a simple supply chain compsed of a brewery (the manufacturer), a warehouse, a distribution center, and a retailer. A small disturbance in the customer order rate at the retailer end can cause havoc throughout the supply chain . Soon the order rate perceived at the manufacturer end begins to swing wildly even though the customer order rate at the retailer stays constant after a small, initial increase. Besides demonstrating the workings of the feedback loops, the game also shows what happens when people ignore the supply chain and make short-term decisions (the so-called bullwhip effect).

Our team actually won the beer game, much to our surpise. We managed to score below the average level (a lower score is better). The perfect score in this game I think is 200, but the average is about 2000 (which shows how badly people do in this game). Even though we did better than average we still experienced a significant bullwhip effect (the graphs on the right are our results compared with another team's results on the left; you can see the difference in the oscillations; we managed to keep ours at a lower level by being conservative in our ordering policy.