Manufacturing’s New Frontier

It has sliced and diced business markets with the efficiency of a Ginzu knife toting mercenary. The dissected industries of publishing, broadcasting, journalism, and b2c commerce have at finally recognized the Internet’s potency, while scratching the surface of its potential. Like the killer in the night, the Internet has found a new target – manufacturing. This point is highlighted in an article by Chris Anderson in this month’s Wired Magazine. (Read it when you have 15 minutes, but do read it.)

If the past 10 years have been about discovering post-institutional social models on the Web, then the next 10 years will be about applying them to the real world. – Chris Anderson

In a twist of fate befitting a Dan Brown novel, the very entity that vaporized atoms (real things) into the cloud (Web) is now enabling the manufacturing platform for tomorrow. The platform allows the curious, the dejected, the mavericks, and the DIYers to create products with a sophistication, cost, and scale never before possible. Manufacturing can now be dispersed, global, expertly crowdsourced, and small batched. This is where dreams can come true, not Disneyland.

Printers, who are not afraid of technology and change, stand to be rewarded by taking a bite out of the bits. While photo sharing and printing sites have been around for years, the Internet provides a massive amount of data that can be printed that is growing daily. Sites like Lulu or Booksmart allow you to print your XML blog into a finished book. Anything that can be digitized and standardized (such as XML) can be printed.

The printer’s arsenal of equipment could also be another cog in the self manufacturer’s toolbox. With the right software and hardware combination, these DIYers could virtually rent time or purchase sheets (aka click charges) to print schematics, marketing materials, or anything needing ink on paper. Such a business model would require extreme automation in job submission, production, tracking, billing, and shipping. These are not futile dreams of the imagination as a New Zealand company, Ponoko, is already proving the business model with CNC machines.