Week 8: Diagnosing the Factory

Brownouts and solar sizing, a real method for finding bottlenecks, and a case study in the everlasting chip shortage.

21 September 2026

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Outline#

• Brownouts — what happens when power demand outstrips supply, and why a brownout is often the first visible symptom of a problem that started elsewhere.
• Solar and accumulator ratio — sizing a solar field against accumulator storage so the base survives the night.
• Identifying bottlenecks — a method, not a guess: checking machine utilisation, buffer levels and belt saturation in order, from the symptom backwards to the constrained step.
• Parallel versus series production — adding another identical line against speeding up one, and why they aren’t interchangeable once ratios are already tight.
• Discussion: the everlasting chip shortage — circuits as the base’s perennial bottleneck, and why “build more green circuits” is rarely the whole fix.

Assignment 1 is due this week.