Category: Lighting Commentary

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Lighting Commentary

The Complex Lighting Supply Chain

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Since moving into her first home, my niece has undertaken a beautiful renovation of her charming house. Upon her request, I suggested some appropriate lighting fixtures months ago and recommended a local supplier who could help her. (We’re in different states.)

Jump ahead nine months. She sent photos of her completed bathroom renovation, with a “thank-you” included. It took a few minutes to register the fact I had anything, albeit minor to do with this fresh new space. I completely forgot because, unfortunately, she was caught up in this crazy “supply chain” mess that has remained a news story for almost one year.

Shortly thereafter, the New York Times published an article, “4 Bed, 3 Bath, No Garage Door: The Unlikely Woes Holding Up Home Building,” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/15/upshot/homes-garage-door-shortage.html?referringSource=article  The article dug into the complicated reality of building a home in a global economy. While the story spotlighted garage doors, as I dug deeper I learned that lighting fixtures have an even more complex supply chain than the doors featured in the headline. They were in fact in first place! I guess, “4 Bed, 3 Bath, No Lighting” didn’t have the punch needed to grab readers!

Why Lighting?

Prior to retirement, I spent 35 of my 47 working years in the development of residential lighting fixtures. I had been responsible for the drawing, engineering and product management of hundreds (OK, I’m old, thousands!) of luminaires. While this supply chain information might come as a surprise to many, I’m not one of them. Over the years I spent weeks and months in factories all over Asia. When not in another country, each day, emails, faxes prior to that and telex message before that arrived on my desk, asking for answers to unexpected issues. Today it is supply chain, fifteen years ago it was plating in China. (At that time, due to newly installed EPA-like regulations.) Like Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say, “…If it’s not one thing, it’s another.”

Humans

If you have observed lighting for any period of time, you will likely note that there are tens of thousands of different designs in the market. With that massive quantity of products, it might not surprise you to know that many of the components have far less automation involved in the production than you might imagine. There is NO automation in the assembly of lighting. Each piece is hand-built. Sales quantities of even the best sellers do not warrant robotic or automated assembly. Because of this, lighting is desperately reliant on humans. When humans disappear from the equation there is slowdown.

While the numbers continue to mount, COVID has taken a massive toll on the human population. Laborers have been much more vulnerable to acquiring the disease and dying because of that contact. Add to that number, the amount of “baby-boomers” who decided, or were “invited” to retire early and you have a massive chunk of the functioning human supply chain simply out of the picture. These are numbers that cannot easily be rebuilt.

Chinese New Year

To most Americans, Chinese New Year (actually, the lunar new year) is a time to visit your favorite restaurant and perhaps watch a small dragon dance in their parking lot. For companies, it is a HUGE annual business interrupter. It is no exaggeration to state that the “entire” country shuts down, reconnects with family, relaxes and celebrates. If you have not seen the documentary film, “Last Train Home” you may not realize the magnitude of disruption the Lunar New Year has on factories. Somewhere between 10% and 25% of workers do not return to the company after the holiday. To prepare, American companies order and Chinese factories build extra inventory to cover a six to eight week interruption. When added to an already strained system, there is no other way to go, than down. Training a large, new quadrant of employees every spring, also slows the restart process.

Cheap, Please!

Americans, over the last twenty years have been on a toboggan ride to the bottom of price; the price on everything and anything. To provide customers the cheap they expect, manufacturers have had no choice but to run, pell-mell into Asia (next stop, Africa!) for inexpensive goods. What is the weak link in that shift? Everything must be boxed up and shipped, via container, in the hull of massive cargo ships. Ships have become the funnel, the weak link in the chain. Ships are also expensive and take long to build, so you just can’t go to “ocean-freighter.com” and order a new one. With a waning pandemic, a good economy and record-high employment, there is pent-up demand and plenty of money for everything. That “everything” must now pass through the funnel of a freight container.

USA Manufacturing

Making goods in America can surely help, IF customers will pay a bit more. When I started in the lighting world, around the time of the Coolidge administration, every lighting fixture was made in the US. Same with the components. Some glass was produced in Mexico. A lot of glass came from France, Spain and Greece, but the majority was manufactured in America. That was great until the largest manufacturer of US lighting glass experienced a devastating fire. The industry was decimated for almost two months. There wasn’t a container, or container of dollars that could help.

Et Al

Supply chain disruption can happen at any time and for a number of reasons. While I am intimately familiar with the problems of lighting, you can take the above factors, adjust and apply them to appliances, windows and garage doors to understand the reason why things are not now available when they are needed. Keep that in mind next time you watch the national news.

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Lighting Commentary

Eyes, Light and Sometimes, Brain

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In an episode of the “Revisionist History” podcast (“The Dog Will See You Now” Revisionist History, Season 6, Episode 10) host, Malcolm Gladwell dug into the fact that different species rely more heavily on one of the five primary senses. In the story he tells of the amazing success dogs have had detecting the presence of diseases and viruses in humans. This is primarily due to the superiority of the dog’s nose. A dog’s nose is hundreds, perhaps thousands of times more powerful than a human’s, so they can pick up the subtleties of scents that humans cannot even comprehend. Dogs can and do easily sniff out weapons in airports and have been proven to detect the presence of colorectal cancer, prostate cancer, COVID and hundreds of other disease. They are 99% accurate, far superior to human-created methodologies.

Humans, on the other hand, are sighted beings, hence, we rely primarily on our sight. Because of that, we develop medical tests that allow us to see evidence of the physiological problem. An x-ray is taken, a doctor reviews the x-ray and when an issue is seen, the diagnosis is established. Because of the narcissistic nature of humans, we assume dominance of our intelligence. Dogs are unfamiliar with egalitarian structures. They understand a trainer seeking out a particular smell. Their superior nose can easily provide that information. A pat on the head and a doggie-treat and they are on to the next exam.

Dogs don’t understand the excellence of their nose, it’s just their nose and sniffing is what dogs do. Humans could come to terms with the hierarchical relevance of their scents, but don’t. Our inability to prioritize the right light, in the correct location, at needed times of the day is within our grasp, but we ignore it.

It is time for humans to pay more attention to the needs of their dominant sense. We rely more heavily on sight, but we don’t act like it. We accept light glare knowingly, we contort our bodies into odd configuration to grab a touch more of the light that has been poorly positioned and we pay little attention to the color, despite our bodies needs and wants. We then complain, unable to connect cause and effect.

Dogs don’t ask for “more scents” they simply push their head out of the window when they are lucky enough to enter a car, knowing a rush of interesting, life-affirming smells will be coming their way. Humans are smarter than dogs, but we don’t necessarily act like it all the time. Especially, when it comes to lighting.

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Lighting Commentary

Lighting Found In A Crystal Ball

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Perhaps the most well-attended educational program at LightFair is a survey of progress in the lighting industry. One of the speakers started their portion with a reminder of Amara’s Law. I think it a great place to begin this assessment also.

“We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.” – Roy Amara

Think back when LED was new. It was a panacea. Light would last 100,000 hours. Cancer would be cured. Cost would be reduced to pennies. Over-estimated? Check. The first half of the law is true.

Today, LED technology is saving millions of dollars in energy costs. The color of light is now more in-tune with the designed environment. LED can be wavelength configured to the demands of edible plants and thereby increase growth and yield, resulting in a reduction in hunger. Science is moments away from stating unequivocally that specific colors of light at specific times can aid in a variety of health concerns, sleeplessness and wellbeing. LED is poised to be a vehicle for increased home automation, better wireless communication and even more paradigm changes. Yet, we think of LED as a different type of light bulb. Under estimated? Check. The second half of the law is also true.

To bounce us from this complacency, here are a few of the things we can expect in the future. LED and solid-state lighting should not yet be taken for granted.

  • Expect better dimming, better color, more color tuning opportunities, tighter tolerances (variations) in output, and smaller physical size of the light source.
  • More granular lighting controls, down to each and every luminaire in a huge office complex, controlled via a smart phone app or computer program. If available already, added simplicity is around the corner.
  • The LED will become a critical sub-function of the much more complex communication technology employ into the future. More “processing” will be built into each luminaire making the actual lighting fixture a vehicle by which the building or home operates. This will increase the building’s operational efficacy and increase the occupant’s satisfaction.
  • Thanks to LED, wireless communication will increase its occupation in the visible light portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, thereby expanding the capacity by huge percentages. LiFi is on its way to become bigger than WiFi.
  • Autonomous vehicles will not require street lighting, further reducing electric demand. Even if driverless cars are not fully implemented, street lighting can be switched to an “on demand” mode via communication between the lamp post and the vehicle.
  • All of these changes within a category we can call, “lighting” will open the floodgates for bigger changes in quantum computing, brain interface computing and building-based, low-voltage electricity.         

Could all of this slip right into the primary phrase of Amara’s Law again? Have I and the futurists overestimated the impact of light in the next twenty years? Check back on my blog page in November of 2041!

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Lighting Commentary

LightFair 2021

Untitled – Robert Gober 1991
How many lighting pros who attended LightFair in New York, visited The Whitney Museum and commented on their brilliant name for this unsettling, untitled sculpture? “Foot-candle” anyone?

For those of you unfamiliar, LightFair is an annual tradeshow dedicated to lighting. Twenty years ago, when America started to seriously consider energy efficiency, the aging show received a needed jolt of purpose. Booth after booth featured creative ways to use fluorescent light. HID lighting gained more respect. Even Cold Cathode lighting briefly reappeared. Then, LED arrived.

The introduction of white LED again energized the lighting business. LightFair took on even more value. For the first time in 130 years, we were going to reconsider general lighting with new technology. The show was abuzz with thousands of people talking about light. For a guy who spend a career engulfed in lighting, nirvana had arrived. Change was coming to a dinosaur industry. LightFair provided a platform for displaying, marketing and learning about all the things necessary to create great light with LED. For the next five to eight years, it became THE place to go. LightFair was indispensable.

While the technology continued to improve, growth spurts were soon replaced with marginal, more predictable, year-over-year improvements. LightFair turned in a “connectivity” and “Smart” conference. That lasted until our understanding of the needs of plants grew and horticultural lighting had become the prom queen and king of the show for a year or two.

That brings us to the 2021 edition, just wrapped in New York. Radically smaller and in some ways less self-assured, it was a general disappointment. Sure, much can be blamed on travel reluctance on the part of companies and attendees. The few people there repeated the hopeful mantra, “Wait until Vegas.” (Las Vegas will host the 2022 edition, June 19-23.) While it might be better, almost anything will be, I’m not so sure we will see the vigorous enthusiasm witnessed in the near past. Here are a few reasons.

The End of Seismic Change

This year we again saw growth in efficacy, better understanding of “smart” communication protocols that span products and brands, better color, tighter binning and exciting implementations, the changes were smaller steps than we have enjoyed for almost twenty years. With fewer “ah-ha” moments and stunning discoveries, will attendance return? A 3% growth doesn’t warrant a trip to a trade show. Incandescent-like changes are the reason the show was melting just prior to the demand for better efficacy.

Deteriorating Trade Show Value

I remember the excitement and value that was brought from trade show attendance twenty years ago. This was pre-internet. Catalogs were carted back home via an empty piece of luggage, brought for that specific reason. Companies showed “brand new” products for the first time. Attendance meant you were getting a sneak preview of the next big thing. After returning back to your office, it took a few days to decompress and fully embrace the things just learned.

That is not the case today. Very little “new” is displayed. Booths are filled with flat screens (just like the internet!) to detail the products offered. Catalogs are not displayed, because they are not wanted, or needed. The information is available online. Booth workers appear bored, their heads buried in their mobile phones. With little sizzle to sell and see, what is the point?

Human interaction was however, very much on display. After our long world nightmare, that is surely understood. I must admit, it was nice to catch up with the few people I did know. Does a casual fist-bump, an update on family/golf handicaps or an exchange on work and company justify attending a trade show? The positive evidence is shrinking.

A New Generation of Workers

Trade Shows are a byproduct of the Boomer Generation and the tail end of the Silent Generation. When the economy tanked in 2008. Boomers did not bring the next generation along to shows. They were left in the office to work without information gleaned from shows. This forced them to double-down on unearthing information from online sources. As the economy righted itself, boomers retired and Gen Xers never took their place at shows. They simply did not need information presented in this fashion. They didn’t need the social connection either, having gathered their own circle of influence, also online. An alternate informational and social path is now in play. Millennial and Gen Z workers are even further entrenched in this new medium. It’s too late to change now.

What Happens Now?

Trade shows will likely limp along. As more and more Boomers disappear, smart companies will understand the diminishing returns provided by participation. Shows might consolidate to remain viable for a few additional years, but ultimately, they will die like traveling circuses, Howard Johnson restaurants and incandescent light bulbs.

That said, the next few blog post will reiterate some of the exciting things I picked up during the educational programs presented at LightFair. I’d like to think the educational aspect might keep trade shows alive, but alas, attendance there has always been slimmer than floor attendance. It was even more exaggerated this year. I know from personal experience that online education is more and more in demand. The attendance of my monthly training sessions is ten-fold of what I could attract in-person at any of the scores of trade shows I appeared over the years. The disappearance of LightFair does not mean technology and research will stop. We will simply learn of it in a different way. Sound familiar?