Platonic Forms

03.12.14

Often machinery at the automotive plant needs to have custom alterations made to suit the exact functions and processes utilized.  In so doing, often an engineer or a project manager will identify the issues and develop an idea for the solution.  It gets made.  Usually, the solution then needs to be reworked a few times for it to really work well.  This is because often that initial solution is, in a sense, the “Platonic” solution.  It is a solution in some idealized conceptual sense.  But just as the Platonic oak tree does not actually exist, but only this or that type of oak, so too with these solutions.  Once the general prognosis is given, it needs to be reworked into an item or process with a more singular form and function than the conceptual addresses.