Citations › Citation ID: 13

C13. BOOK: Daniel Konstanski, The Secret Life of LEGO Bricks: The Inside Story of a Design Icon (Unbound, 2022), p. 49.

Around the year 2000, a host of new moulds were created in a very short time for a number of themes that struggled in the marketplace. Many of the elements were highly specialised for a particular theme and were unusable when that theme ended. ... It was time to simplify the element library. Several veteran designers were asked to join a team to use their extensive knowledge of parts and colours to reduce the number of elements. They managed to reduce the number of moulds and parts needing storage by thousands. ... It took a whole decade, from 2000 to 2010, but by the end designers had assigned ID numbers to every element, created a company-wide database to manage its parts catalogue, called Easy Builder System (EBT), and began establishing standards for existing families of components that defined rules for when they could be added to.

By 2010, the company created clear standards for when new parts can be added to the catalog.