Production processes: A lightbulb moment
The emergence of “personalised manufacturing” promises to resolve the contradiction. Using computerised designs, techniques such as three-dimensional printing will enable businesses based in Birmingham or Belize to make complicated parts for products from forklift trucks to space rockets that could be assembled virtually anywhere. Customer choice over how the artefacts look will increase, with only minimal compromise concerning quality or cost.
This development places the world on the brink of the fifth era for manufacturing: “mass personalisation”. In 3D printing – also called “additive manufacturing” – machines based on advances in electronics, laser technology and chemistry build up complex shapes from granules of plastics or metal.
“It adds up to a new industry which reduces immensely the gap between design and production,” says Ian Harris, from the Additive Manufacturing Consortium, a US-based industry think-tank. “Manufacturers will be able to say to their customers, ‘Tell us what you want’ and then they will be able to make [specific products] for them.”
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