Appliance Technology

I would submit that we are fast approaching the end of manufacturing. Reason? The penultimate 3dPrinter. Just as desktop printers have been the death of corner print shops, so the 3d multi material printer will remake our world.

What will it be like when you don't have to wait for someone to decide what you need, design it according to lowest common denominator, manufacture it possibly violating labor laws, heath and safety laws, ship it to wholesaler, ship it to retailer, ship it to home, where you break it trying it get it out of the theft proof packaging that is 5 times sturdier than the item you were purchasing?

Maybe I'm weird, but I actually long for the death of manufacturing.

And where would we get one of these 3D printers, if it were not for manufacturing?

It is also too easy to switch on the TV, the cooker, the washing machine, etc, etc, which are all supplied by guess what....the manufacturing industry!

You rely on the skills of people throughout the manufacturing industry, to design, set up the products for manufacture itself, machine design to manufacture the parts, design and manufacture of the cutting tools, dies, forming tools, the the list is huge. I would very much doubt the average person who has the ability to work a 3D printer, would have the knowledge and experience to design and manufacture a TV, washing machine, car, camera, etc, etc...........

To say the manufacturing industry violates labour, health and safety, etc, the manufacturing industry has to "bend over backwards" to suit some of the red tape, implemented by Bureaucrats, most of whom are so out of touch with reality. This includes some of the legislation, which deals with packaging!

Okay, let just throw all the money at the banks, let them give each other huge pats on the backs for all the big bonuses that they hand out to each other, and sod everyone else. Have everyone sitting back in caves, with no electric, no running water, etc, etc...........

AND WHERE WOULD WE GET ONE OF THESE 3D PRINTERS, IF IT WERE NOT FOR MANUFACTURING?

The plan is to have them printed.

I print one for my family and friends. They do the same for their friends. Six degrees of separation means in very short order everyone has a 3dPrinter.

IT IS ALSO TOO EASY ...ALL SUPPLIED BY...THE MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY!

For now.

I WOULD VERY MUCH DOUBT THE AVERAGE PERSON WOULD HAVE THE KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE TO DESIGN AND MANUFACTURE A TV, WASHING MACHINE, CAR, CAMERA, ETC,

I disagree. I think that having access to the tools of creation motivates interest in creation and pride motivates learning what is needed to make ones designs better than the previous ones. And for the ones whose interest lay in different fields whose to say downloading print plans off the internet isn't an adequate solution?

TO SAY THE MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY VIOLATES LABOUR, HEALTH AND SAFETY, ETC,

I said they CAN do so without your knowledge. As a consumer you usually have no idea what you are supporting

Hi..

Manufacturing generates assets whereas services create wealth. The world will now tend more and more towards services. This trend won't mark the death kneel of manufacturing as those societies who are still underdeveloped require manufacturing to create their own assets. In the developed world, the people & their society have already created all required assets and do not need any more of them viz roads, hospitals, power stations and the machinery etc required to build these. Incase there is a World War III then all these assets are most likely to be destroyed. The process of asset building will then again have to start afresh. But, as long as peace prevails in our world services will continue to flourish & proliferate to encompass the whole society for greater benefit.

Anil Tiwari / New Delhi

Spoken like a true bureaucrat!

"In the developed world, the people & their society have already created all required assets and do not need any more of them..."

Assets wear out and must be repaired and/or replaced. Assets get damaged and destroyed by natural calamities and accidents (fire, collision, etc). Until we get massive sized replicators (ala Star Trek), heavy, medium and light manufacturing will be necessary.

IMO, "Services" create false wealth. There is no basis to services except arbitrary values that people assign to them. An example is derivative trading in, say, currencies or stock indices. A service industry like tax preparers in the US depends on the whims of the tax code writers to make more complex laws that the average citizen doesn't have time to learn and understand. That service could be wiped out with a quick stroke of the lawmaker's pen. Thus, again IMO, has no inherent "value".

Assets (and the resources required to make them) vary according to availability/ scarcity and demand. They have real (sometimes non-renewable) value.

Hooker

Hi...

Change is inevitable. It cannot be stopped. Societies or civilizations continue to evolve in time according to their needs & priorities.

2000 years ago it was a Shepard who was held in high esteem to be emulated. Be it a Christ, or a Moses or a Krishna..they were all Shepard's. Later-on farming or tilling the land helped create greater wealth including in the USA which was a agricultural country till the turn of the last century. The spices from India helped not just the locals to amass huge wealth but the traders as well who simply packed and carried these spices back to Europe.

As the use of instruments & machinery slowly spread and their power was harnessed by mankind for producing value added goods manufacturing became more and more important. All those societies which had a strong manufacturing base started to command respect. Manufacturing helped in value addition of goods. In-case value could be added quickly and cheaply it helped the manufacturer to become richer and richer. This has been going on for nearly 300 years now. First in Europe, then in USA and now most of Asia. The profits from manufacturing currently being generated has to find a place to park itself and also grow to create wealth in the process. Manufacturing cannot help this case at all. It is Services which help in creating the wealth and absorbing the excess profits. The current period to which we now belong is a sort of transition phase from manufacturing to services or something mixed. At this moment we cannot say with certainty how long this phase would last...10years, 50years or a 100years. Our society is now changing. It's priorities are now changing. Maybe a small piece of art could fetch a much higher price than a 500MW power station!

Everybody in society tries to get hold of that some thing which will be long lasting and could be easily passed on to the next person or generation. In the finer sense, goods cannot be preserved for long periods. Goods tend to deteriorate with time. They are also highly prone to obsolesce. Cars & electronic products are examples of how quickly products can age in style and appeal. It is only MONEY which does not age or deteriorate or loose its charm over time. Wealth being Money can be preserved for long time and can easily be passed on to the next generation for their use. Hence we see the importance of wealth or services and the decline of manufacturing. Of course, wealth comes from demand for which manufacturing and production is necessary. But, what I wish to clear is that as the world will become more and more wealthy Engineers will command less and less value as the guys capable of creating wealth get to become more and more important. For Example: A shirt manufactured for $10 will be sold in the market for $150 with a designer label or a celebrity endorsing a moter car will carry home more money than the engineer who built it!!!

Our solace will be that after all it couldn't be achieved without us. We needn't crib because in-case an American engineer does not perform or demands a higher price for himself the job will go to China or India. If Engineers in China/India acts similarly then their jobs would go to Bangladesh or Vietnam, South America etc....and we have the whole of Africa still waiting!

Anil Tiwari / New Delhi

"It is only MONEY which does not age or deteriorate or loose its charm over time. "

Actually, Inflations steals the wealth out of money.

milo

"Keeping the politics out of the discussion" Would almost be impossible. Manufacturing has a bad rap for political reasons, Our Educational System promotes academics(even though we rank 8th or higher) and frowns on manufacturing. "Blue collar" as if it's a dirty word. Today there is such a shortage in Toolmakers & machinists. The average age is like 47 yrs and may be higher, and the numbers of youth coming into these trades is to small to make a difference. Many Votech schools have dropped there manufacturing programs. And company sponsored apprenticeship programs are non-existent today. The field of Mechanical engineering is not much different. They say some manufacturing is coming back. Will we be able to handle it? We need to start promoting these skilled jobs, the demand is growing. Unfortunately it's very political issuse.

Jim C

Manufacturing will continue to matter as long as we sit in manufactured chairs, live in homes that use manufactured roofing, eat food stored in manufactured containers, drive manufactured cars, use manufactured computers......

Of course manufacturing matters. We still do a huge amount of manufacturing. Maybe less per person than before because in the developed countries we already have a lot of manufactured stuff that we didn't have in previous years when we started consuming manufactured stuff. It's just that we need fewer people per unit to do it and maybe 2x fewer Americans to do it.

Why fewer people in general? Three reasons: Better product design, improved materials and labor saving machines and methods. Why many fewer Americans? Because labor is cheaper in other countries and besides, we freely tell the rest of the world how to produce stuff. This should be no news, especially to the appliance industry, who have over the last 75 years done a spectacular job of improving the design and manufacturing efficiency of their products.

There is a huge motivation to reduce the labor cost in producing stuff. Not only fewer man-hours; but also lower skill levels of the required workers. That is inevitable. As long as average individual prosperity and/or population increase manufacturing will increase and while the labor costs per unit go down the net employment will be a second order function depending on the increasing demand that those two factors produce.

But as any specific production technology matures the total labor costs will drop (barring the presence of incompetent management or other bad luck) and the skill sets required to continue the business will gradually shift from technical and skilled trades to management, finance, marketing, logistics and production management. But no matter what labor costs must go down and that means fewer American jobs. The onset of a recessionary economy does not help

This all begs the question of just what is manufacturing? There is a tendency to view manufacturing as the statistical groups tightly defined by the US department of commerce. Or as the general public sees manufacturing it is factories consisting of buildings where materials and hardware come in one "door" and get converted within by workers and machines into discreet physical products that get packaged and shipped out the other "door".

Take a look at what goes on in the dentist's office. For dental fixtures like crowns, bridges, orthodontic fixtures what is manufactured and what isn't? The dentists used to prep a tooth for a crown, take an impression to send to an outside lab to create the finished crown from gold or a ceramic molding compound and then pick the right fitting temporary stainless steel crown from a standard assortment made by a specialty supplier. Now the dentist makes a custom plastic temporary crown with a special process right there in the office while you are there. The question here is what is a service and what is manufacturing in all of this? The same kinds of questions can be posed in the face of numerous enterprises in our everyday life. Look at building a house. There's another example of what is and isn't manufacturing.

The bottom line here is that job skills needed of workers evolve and change. And we need to be training young people as well as older folks facing decreasing demand for dated skills for the new work. We need to carefully assess what skill sets we will need in the future and do what it takes to prepare our population with those skill sets.

This starts with realistic expectations on the part of our high school students and some serious curriculum changes. Schools both secondary and university need to be more about serious preparation of people for life and work and less about sorting out the 5% or 10% who will be the winners. Do that and there will be no problem motivating people to train for work in the world of making stuff.

Globalization is here to stay. Container ships, large jet cargo aircraft, modern communication technology and integration of the global financial system have given us that. The effects it has on the labor market will not go away. And as long as we have a propensity to consume "stuff" there will be a need for someone to produce it.

This silliness about rapid prototyping technology turning us into the ultimate "do-it-yourself" or on the other hand the idea that all we need is a set of "Foxfire" books to survive is just that....silliness.

Ed Weldon

Might I suggest you read Fablabs by Neil Gershenfeld

http://www.ted.com/talks/neil_gershenfeld_on_fab_labs.html

It's not only prototyping anymore. The range of materials to print with is ever expanding.

We can print with:

Insulators

Conductors

Semi-conductors

(and therefore print processors)

magnetic materials

optical materials

piezo electrical actuators

and metal (google LENS)

(So we could print robots)

And they are also printing with live cells to make organs.

(So we could print a human)

So yes, quite silly.. in a deadly serious kind of way.

Nice dream Zed. You should enjoy science fiction. You can create all kinds of impossible and near impossible things in your imagination without having to concern yourself with how to turn them into physical reality. That's fine. Without folks like you there would be no explorers, gamblers willing to take a chance that they might invent something really new and useful.

That said, your imaginative ideas about printing anything need a reality check when it comes the issue of taking the place of what we call manufacturing. Manufacturing involves a whole lot of other activities. But the biggest barrier to the so called "replicator" idea is the ability of humans to create and package the necessary "recipes" to make it happen without intelligent human intervention at any but the highest levels.

There are lots of other barriers having to do with engineering design, materials technology, cost, safety (in a broad sense), etc. You don't need an engineering degree and a lifetime of experience to understand this; but it helps.

In the meantime, keep dreaming. We need folks like you. But don't expect us hands on real world types to take everything you say seriously.

I should diverge a bit here and suggest that there is nothing new abut the idea of printing things; i.e. the process of putting one material on top of another in a relatively thin layer and a controlled pattern. Or, likewise, removing material. Archeologists have ample evidence of such human activity going back thousands of years. The coordination and assembly of these processes at the same time making of them more efficient in terms of utilization of labor, material and time to build that is what characterizes the growth of manufacturing. Throughout that development the presence of management by human intelligence has taken on increasing importance. The idea that most or all of that can be replaced by machine intelligence ignores the reality of the limits of computer programming capabilities as we see them today. Already the idea of artificial intelligence is beginning to lose some of its luster after years of promise in the eyes of computer scientists. That may not last but is what we are looking at today.

BTW, I have a friend who has one of these 3d "printers". Fascinating what he can do with it. Also I have made a personal retirement grubstake doing engineering work for a company that makes machines that print things in programmed patterns layer by layer as well as etching them off in patterns. We can dream about the average person who doesn't know which end of the screwdriver does work having a replicator in his kitchen to take the place of having to go to the store; but that scenario is about as far off as vacations in nearby star systems. Fun to dream and write fiction about. Of little use for any serious expenditure of resources directed into eventual construction.

In other words, silly. .................Ed Weldon

"But the biggest barrier to the so called "replicator" idea is the ability of humans to create and package the necessary "recipes" to make it happen without intelligent human intervention at any but the highest levels."

Agreed. So why do you call it fiction? It's just a new marketplace niche. The "problem' you cite is engineering, NOT manufacturing. Who would suggest that 3dPrinting would do away with engineering? Not me! I wasn't broaching the topic of A.I. and although I'm much more optimistic in the area than you are it is off topic. I get the impression you are scared of losing your secure engineering position at a firm that does manufacturing.

These technologies and others are coming at us full tilt. I hate to say it, but we can only ignore the future developments in nanotechnology for so long. The feasibility study was a resounding success:Biology. Do you want to enter the economic upheaval that manufacturing through nanosystems will bring on that day or would it be better to enter the world of downloadable printable goods and approach that nanotech economy from this similar (but much safer) format?

I do see why so many people fear it. They think manufacturing will go the way of the music industry. When people can just D/L designs and 'play them' on their printers how do you as an engineer get remuneration for your IP in "matter is software" world? That grubstake you mentioned is your acknowledgment of that.

I'll be frank with you. I've been an avid user of SecondLife™ since March of '05. I got into it because the idea of a world wide availability of a platform for collaborating on 3D designs which could in principle be format converted to be printable intrigued the hell out of me. Sure I've been disappointed by the slow progress in this area, but then I remember the words of Ray Kurzwiel the rate of technological change is not linear but exponential. Things really are changing faster than ever before. It's not just an illusion of personal perspective.

(BTW, sorry for the ribbing, but when you take a jab at my credibility expect returns)

Well if you want to claim that the subject of 3dprinting making manufacturing obsolete is off topic, then I think you are trying to force your opinion on the matter. Far be it from me to lay claim to the threads' topic just because i was the first poster. Still I do not think it's off topic, but i will cease further discussion on this matter which you seem to find so disturbing.

Zen -- Don't go getting so prickly over my comments. I don't want to force my opinion on anyone. And I don't want to dominate this discussion.

Lets hear from others their feelings about this and other new technologies that might diminish our demand for a product or products manufactured by someone else. We've already seen how digital cameras and high resolution cameras have affected the photographic film and film processing industry. And the effect of computers and the Internet on printed media are enormous. What other examples have we seen and what are the possible future candidates?

Ed Weldon

Ed and Jerry-

It sounds to me like you have both studied Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged". Both of you get GA's from me (and NOT because I like your choice of literature- but because you pretty much hit the nail on the head). Years ago, I voted with my feet, and now enjoy living in a country where I CAN run my business from my home (well, OK, I still have to answer to the tax man...)

Wow, what a rush. I'm in the middle of reading Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" and your posting could be a preface for it. Good job.

Hooker

Thanks all. Though I've never read Atlas Shrugged I guess I'll have to now.

Over the last 300 years, manufacturing has been the way that the MOST people have created the MOST value to society. It hasn't always been that way, and won't always remain that way.

in order for something to take it's place, we need to ask ourselves some really pointed questions so that the basic "value creation" equation continues or expands...

--What is valued?
--How do we personally create value for society?
--Are our creative endeavors valued by society in return? (Ask a teacher...)
--What is the best way for me to create more value...and get more value in return?
--What's the best way for the masses to create more value and be valued in return?

Again, it may not be manufacturing, but it damn sure isn't those functions that simply move assets from one ledger sheet to another (see AIG). It may be real services like healthcare, but they are in the business of sustaining value (aka life) not creating it. It may be video games, for all I know, but that seems like nothing to build an economy on.

I don't have the answers, but not even the talking heads are asking the right questions.

Seamus Ennis

What can we do to bring it back?

Help our young people understand that there is both a joy and dignity making things that is not achieved by mere symbol manipulation bureaucracy jobs that can be done over a wire on a computer.

Currently most trades after 4 year apprenticeship are paying a couple of multiples over what a 4 year business degree pays, and there are no college loans to repay...

As long as parents Brag about college degrees instead of their children's capabilities, manufacturing will always be held in lower esteem. Thus paying more than "college work".

milo