Welcome to the age of democratized industry, where the most powerful players in manufacturing are handicapped by overcapacity, aggressive competition, a lack of new ideas, and cheaper, more accessible technology, creating a new field of play.
This is the world, according to Chris Anderson. The editor-in-chief of
Wired writes in an
audacious cover-story for the February issue that in the age of the Internet and DIY cultures, micro-factories are the future of American manufacturing. "As ideas go straight into production, no financing or tooling is required," Anderson writes.
That might be a tad simplistic, but it does raise a compelling question: what is the future of manufacturing and has its very definition been changed by the advent of new technologies?
The manufacturing landscape has certainly been fundamentally altered by the instant relaying of data on the Web; by the evolution of supply chains, which are now able to accommodate manufacturers of any size; of factories in any country being able to provide custom work at the click of a button; and highly sophisticated tooling, such as CNCs and 3D design tools, reducing substantially in price.
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Anderson says that anyone with an idea can churn out a prototype in minutes and send it to China for production. The problem is this vision is entirely design-centric. His model certainly might apply to an individual with a garage, a golden idea and ambitions limited to producing small-volume products. But when applied on a broader scale, the truth is a little more complicated.
"I don't disagree with some of what Anderson points out," says Douglas Woods, president of the Association of Manufacturing Technology. "His model is great if you're a guy making small quantities and just want to prove you can do it. It's great for prototyping and initial design. But when it comes to making large quantities and doing it with quality and customization? The argument falls a little flat."
Nor does it answer some of the deeper, more complex issues of how to revitalize America's struggling manufacturing base. As an employer of roughly 12 million workers in the domestic economy, manufacturing has eroded under the weight of a sputtering economy, the steady off-shoring of production to low-cost countries, and an emerging group of dynamic competitors.
According to Woods, the economic model by which American manufacturing policy has been crafted for the last 30 years has been deeply flawed.
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