Much of the problem, notes Tom Rubin, a former chief financial officers for the MTA's predecessor agency, stems from the shift of funding priorities to trains from the city's more affordable and flexible bus network.

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At Ford Motor, Cisco is helping to network flexible factory lines at four plants, with each plant aware of which parts are on their way from suppliers.

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Details of exactly how these high-tech tailor's dummies work are closely guarded, pending patent protection, but the basic idea is that a network of actuators inside the dummy will push and pull a flexible outer shell into different shapes.

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Each network gets the rights to three Super Bowls and NBC maintains its flexible schedule on Sunday nights during the second half of the season.

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What no one was doing, Workman realized, was producing a cheap, flexible and easy-to-maintain product that can handle the less essential tiers of data on any kind of network.

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