# Product cycles. **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 19, 2005, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/product-cycles/304592 "2005-05-19T15:44:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Fiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e274bd/32.png) [@Fiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiver)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2005, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/product-cycles/304592/1 "2005-05-19T15:44:45Z")
Please tell me if this OP uses the term “product cycles” incorrectly. I put gasoline in my truck on Monday. How long before then was it crude oil in the ground? I drank a beer last Saturday. How long before that was it grain in a field and water in a stream? On Tuesday I installed Mac OS X update 10.4.1. How long before that was the code written and compiled? If I put a slice of cheese on my sandwich tonight, how long before then was it inside a cow? And how long before _then_ was it grass in the pasture? Is there a website devoted to answering this sort of question? If not, someone should start it. ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2005, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/product-cycles/304592/2 "2005-05-19T15:50:59Z")
The way I’ve always heard it, the product cycle is the time between Mac OS X 10.3 and 10.4. ---
**Author:** ![Fiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e274bd/32.png) [@Fiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiver)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2005, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/product-cycles/304592/3 "2005-05-19T16:44:29Z")
Then I’m using the wrong term. ---
**Author:** ![JerH](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/bb73d2/32.png) [@JerH](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JerH)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2005, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/product-cycles/304592/4 "2005-05-19T17:15:01Z")
I’m not sure there is a term that fits what you’re looking for. For most products, it would be hard to figure out because of the complexity of ingredients. To take one of my employer’s simpler products as an example, you’d need to trace back: two different types of steel, aluminum tubing, rivets, and molded plastic parts. Unless you’re buying lumber or other raw materials, the answer would almost always be very complicated. ---
**Author:** ![Fiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e274bd/32.png) [@Fiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiver)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2005, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/product-cycles/304592/5 "2005-05-19T17:18:06Z")
> [@JerH](#): > > To take one of my employer’s simpler products as an example, you’d need to trace back: two different types of steel, aluminum tubing, rivets, and molded plastic parts. Unless you’re buying lumber or other raw materials, the answer would almost always be very complicated. Your employer makes blenders, right? ---
**Author:** ![cornflakes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9d8465/32.png) [@cornflakes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cornflakes)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2005, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/product-cycles/304592/6 "2005-05-19T17:20:03Z")
“Cycle time” can be used to refer to the time from when a factory begins assembling a widget to when the completed widget is rolled out the door. As said above, a product cycle refers to the time from introduction to obsolescence. ---
**Author:** ![spinky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@spinky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spinky)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2005, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/product-cycles/304592/7 "2005-05-19T17:37:25Z")
In my industry (software), the product cycle refers to the entire process of producing a single release. It starts with planning (e.g. “what features should we put in”), progresses to design, then the software actually gets written and tested (and written some more and tested some more repeatedly), then pressed onto CD’s (or however we want to ship it) and released to customers. Then it starts over. Hence, “cycle”. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Carroll](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3be4f8/32.png) [@Tom\_Carroll](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Carroll)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2005, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/product-cycles/304592/8 "2005-05-19T19:23:23Z")
How long before was it hydrogen in the emptiness of space… How far back to you go, guy? ---
**Author:** ![JerH](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/bb73d2/32.png) [@JerH](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JerH)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2005, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/product-cycles/304592/9 "2005-05-20T20:34:50Z")
> [@Fiver](#): > > Your employer makes blenders, right? No - that’s actually the parts list for a pop-up display frame for trade shows. (Though I did once work for a company that made parts for KitchenAid mixers, so you weren’t completely off.) ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2005, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/product-cycles/304592/10 "2005-05-21T02:10:29Z")
Well, _some_ of these have answers, even if they might require a little bit of waffling. > [@Fiver](#): > > I drank a beer last Saturday. How long before that was it grain in a field and water in a stream? There are four main ingredients in beer. Here’s where they come from and how long it takes… **Water** requires little or no processing before use. There may be some filtering or chemical additives to adjust pH levels and such, but these take virtually no time. **Malt** requires that the barley be reaped, dried, and malted, a process that could be done at home in a couple of weeks at the most. The malting is a combination of soaking and roasting. **Hops** need to be harvested and dried. In drying my own hops, I’ve been able to put the hops into the brew within about a week of when I took them off of the plant. **Yeast** is usually kept in an active culture, ready to use. If not, it’s a day or two to get a good culture going. Once the four ingredients are ready to go, you have a brewing process followed by fermentation. The brewing is quick (an hour or two). The fermentation can be as short as a couple of weeks for an ale or as long as a few months for a lager, or even a year for a barleywine. When fermentation is complete, it just needs to be bottled and refrigerated and you’re ready to go. With no bottlenecks in the process, you could be drinking a glass of ale within about a month of when the grain was waving in the wind. More likely, you’re drinking a commercial lager, which has shipping times and shelf times added on, and it could be many months.