in recent years some new technologies for generating electricity on a smaller scale have appeared. The

traditional coal-burning electricity plants needed to produce 300 to 600 megawatts of power to exploit
economies of scale fully. However, high-efficiency turbines to produce electricity from burning natural gas can

produce electricity at a competitive price while producing a smaller quantity of 100 megawatts or less. These

new technologies create the possibility for smaller companies or plants to generate electricity as efficiently as

large ones. Another example of a technology-driven shift to smaller plants may be taking place in the tire

industry. A traditional mid-size tire plant produces about six million tires per year. However, in 2000, the

Italian company Pirelli introduced a new tire factory that uses many robots. The Pirelli tire plant produced

only about one million tires per year, but did so at a lower average cost than a traditional mid-sized tire plant.
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