Help me solve a riddle

Ok, please give me 5 minutes of your time, put on your consultant hat and help me solve the following case study

The challenge

The Profitable Company wants to increase its profitability by increasing production and lowering cost. 

Background

The company has three types of Machines. The first type, let’s call them Publika machines, gets used 36% of the time. The second type, let’s call them Komerco machines, gets used 58% of the time. The third type, let’s call them Privata machines, are in use 65% of the time. 

History

Over the years the Profitable Company has streamlined its production by putting the Publika, Komerco and Privata machines in separate buildings and using their patented a?to system to transport goods between them. 

The Profitable Company has faced alarming increases in the cost of machines every year for the last 5 and this year doesn’t look to be any different. The a?to system also gets slower every year and regardless of how much they add to it clogs up very quickly again. 

The last consultants from Konsultisto told The Profitable Company that there was a chronic shortage of Privata machines and that the only way to increase it was to extend the Privata building into the company’s rose garden and Koi pond. 

Do you agree with their assessment of the situation? 

Perhaps you don’t, and you think that there isn’t a shortage of machines since none of them are in use 100% of the time. You might also find the a?to system wasteful and suggest that the company consider merging some of the production lines to lessen the travel time. 

Would you still think this is the answer if we change the wording of the challenge to the following? 

A country has three types of buildings. The first type, let’s call them public buildings, gets used 36% of the time (12 hours a day 5 days a week). The second type, let’s call them commercial buildings, gets used 58% of the time (14 hours a day 7 days a week). The third type, let’s call them private buildings (homes), are in use 65% of the time (14 hours 5 days a week and 20 hours per day on the weekend). These different types of buildings are often kept separate by zoning laws and only connected by overstretched highways. 

Using 100% of all buildings 100% of the time might be impossible but perhaps we can still use our resources in a smarter way? 

Might we be able to creatively combine buildings? Would it make sense to combine offices and apartments with schools that double as social venues at night? After all we can’t physically be in two places at once. 

By restructuring cities we could also eliminate some of the time, money and energy wasted on getting from A to B.

This is not a new idea, but rather a forgotten one. 

In New York tenements in the 1800’s, front rooms on the ground floor served as commercial space and back rooms served equally as private space, space for political meetings or a place to conduct business. In our extraordinary affluence over the past 70 years we have forgotten to be thrifty. 

Construction is expensive and resource intensive so by rethinking what, where and how we build I believe that we can see a huge boost in productivity. 

If this is how we would approach the problem if it was in a company, why not reintroduce this solution into our cities?

Ingi Finnsson is passionate about data, economics and cities. He loves complex data but he loves complex data made simple more. He spends his days making real estate valuation models.