DEFYING PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE: PARADIGM CHANGE FOR MACRO LEVEL SUSTAINABILITY
OF SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

B. Gültekin Çetiner 1 and Mete Gündoğan 2
1

Department of Industrial Engineering
Marmara University, İstanbul, Turkey
drcetiner@gmail.com

2
Department of Industrial Engineering
Yıldırım Beyazıt University, Ankara, Turkey
mtgundogan@gmail.com

ABSTRACT
Planned obsolescence with products designed to fail has become the main drive of modern
consumption based economies based on the paradigm promoting growth as an essential activity
for survival. Engineers face nowadays a dilemma when concerning sustainability in problem
solving during engineering applications. They are stuck between the growth, or survival of
businesses through planned obsolescence and the sustainability issues.
For sustainability, majority suggests ways such as optimizing product life (meaning a delayed
planned obsolescence), recycling through waste collection and reprocessing of the resultant
products (reverse logistics), more efficient ways in supply-chain management systems etc. This
is a paradigm paralysis and a paradigm shift is needed for really sustainable world and macro
level sustainability of supply-chain management systems.
This paper analyzes the real root cause of the problem and shows how the unlimited growth
paradigm promoted by the modern money creation called Debt Based Monetary System. It then
suggests a paradigm shift towards defying planned obsolescence for macro-sustainability of
supply-chain management systems.

Keywords: Planned obsolescence, sustainable supply chain management systems, reverse
logistics, industrial design

FULL PAPER: imss14-cie44-201-DEFYING PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE- PARADIGM CHANGE FOR MACRO LEVEL SUSTAINABILITY OF SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

CIE44 & IMSS’14 Proceedings, 14-16 October 2014, Istanbul / Turkey, Pages: 2315-2323
DEBT BASED MONETARY SYSTEM

M. Gündoğan 1,1 and B. G. Çetiner 2
1
Department of Industrial Engineering
Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences
Yıldırım Beyazıt University, Ankara, Türkiye
metegundogan@ybu.edu.tr

2
Department of Industrial Engineering
Faculty of Engineering, Marmara University, Istanbul, Türkiye
gultekin.cetiner@marmara.edu.tr

ABSTRACT
Application of systems engineering can be modelled in such different layers respectively as
product, project, business, industry and socio-economic systems. A bottom-up view reveals that
many products constitute a system. Many projects constitute a business. Many businesses
constitute an industry. Many industries may constitute to a socio economic system. In a general
application, industrial/systems engineers take this bottom-up view to their problem solving
efforts as well as educational/training syllabus. It is assumed that a top-down view would result
in similar consequences.

From a top-down approach, a socio economic system is an integrated system. One part of it is
dealing with the production of goods and services and counter part of it is dealing with the
production of money. Production of goods and services is a well-studied and well-defined scope.
On the other hand, production of money is not well-studied by systems/industrial engineers.
Having the concept of reciprocity in mind, production of money is creating significant problems
that cannot be underestimated. Current production of money is based on a Debt Based Monetary
System (DBMS) whıch is behaving irrespective of the production of goods and services.
This article is explaining the DBMS and its deficiencies to support its reason of existence i.e.
production of goods and services. Furthermore, it advises some fundamentals to come up with a
sustainable socio economic system.

Keywords: Debt Based Monetary System, Systems Engineering, Fractional Reserve System,
Fractional Reserve Banking.

FULL PAPER: imss14-cie44-579-DEBT BASED MONETARY SYSTEM