[NoMoreNicksLeft]

> In real-life product engineering, though, every gram saved is worth celebrating.

I would like to point out that I'm old enough that I think I've witnessed how aluminum soda cans have become much thinner over the years. Their contents are of course under pressure and that makes them a bit sturdier; they can be stacked 10 feet high with no problem. Usually. But someone tosses a case a little too hard, packing them in a truck, the angle that the force of that jolts off a few degrees... something, and the can just explodes and makes a mess. And the economics may mean that even with that loss it's still better financially, but this seems wrong to me somehow.

If it were only disposable cans I could probably ignore it. But everyone's shaving milligrams here and there, to the point that you'll get a potato peeler at the store because the last one broke, to bring the new one home and compare it... only to find out it was stamped out of even thinner steel. It breaks next month. You can't shop around and find a better one, they're all pumped out of the same no-name factory that a forensic accountant probably couldn't track down if he had access to all of the supply chain's paperwork.

A friend and I were discussing just a few weeks ago whether or not duct tape was of vastly different quality when we were small children (late 1970s) compared to today. I of course realize that 4 yr old me might have a much more difficult time tearing off a piece of identical duct tape that 50 year old me could tear without trying... but I seem to remember even my dad having to put a little too much effort. You really did have to rip into the stuff.

When you shave these milligrams off of items, it looks like it is win/win, that you're reducing cost without reducing any quality that anyone cares about, but I think that it might be true that you're shaving little pieces off of everyone's lives. Too little for them to complain about, but the sum total of that unpleasantness must be vast. I am not inclined to celebrate it.

[A_D_E_P_T]

Ultimately, I think that it depends entirely on the type of product and how it's used.

If you take an aluminum can from 17g to 12g, that may represent some cost savings in manufacturing and transport, but the average soda drinker won't notice a difference.

But if you take an umbrella from 1700g to 1200g, that's the difference between something that's entirely unusable, to something that has practical utility -- if only barely. 500g would be much better. All else being equal the optimal weight for an umbrella is probably around 100g. Enough to know it's there, but not enough that extended use by the fifth-percentile human would be difficult or metabolically demanding.

If a human has to wear or carry it, and if there's a meaningful weight/comfort threshold associated with the product's use, every gram counts. Duct tape and aluminum cans don't fall into this category -- but, at the same time, this is why hiking and camping equipment tends to be extremely light, and why the athletic shoe companies keep researching lighter and better foams.

The problem is heightened in aerospace and automotive engineering, where fuel economy mandates tend to impose hard weight caps -- and getting a design in at well under the cap is a real engineering accomplishment. Offhand, I recall hearing that there was once a program where ~$15M dollars were spent on efforts to make a commercial airplane lighter. This resulted in about 20kg shaved off the aircraft's weight. That doesn't sound like much of a value, but the program was considered a great success.