I posed this question to longtime correspondent Joe H., who recently retired from a career in the U.S. auto industry: could 3-D fabrication technology lead to a re-Industrialization of the U.S.?
Joe's response addresses aspects of industrialization that receive little attention:
"One item to consider is that resilient structures have underloaded "fibers" that can take up load as parallel paths fail. In structure-speak, they are structurally or mathematically indeterminate.
As such they are not optimum from a mass standpoint. So there is an economic incentive to make structures truss-like....i.e. to minimize underloaded fibers.
I can make a case for the industrialization of the economy as an elimination of "underloaded fibers." The full-time workers get overworked (to dilute the mandatory fixed costs) and the marginal workers either get dumped or given so few hours that they slide under the fixed costs.
Question: Would you classify re-industrialization via 3D fab machines as the re-introduction of underloaded fibers?
My initial thoughts:
Fixed costs are evil. All costs are genetically programmed to become fixed costs.
3-D fab machines are an elegant way to avoid fixed costs. It is elegant because it addresses the fixed cost footprint with agility instead of starving the Clydesdale (the punchline about a frugal Scot). Dip in. Dip out. Instead of 10,000 square feet, crucibles, 3 pattern makers, 3 machinists, wages, benefits, etc.
I don't know if the 3-D machines qualify as a commodity like a 2-D printer or a digital camera. But they may be well on the way.
The other side of the equation is having a large enough base of efficient users or high-level software that makes model creation "intuitive."Thank you, Joe, for introducing key aspects of re-industrialization. Underloaded fibers can perhaps be understood in terms of redundancy and "slack" in the system: the current global production model places a premium on long supply chains and "fully loaded" single suppliers. This model maximizes single-source manufacturing but at the tradeoff cost of increasing systemic vulnerability to disruption of the supply chain.
3-D fabrication enables massive redundancy of productive capacity but at no loss of flexibility.
The fixed-cost footprint of fully loaded, no-slack suppliers is high; that is the tradeoff cost of high-productivity centralized production.
Once 3-D fab equipment becomes a commodity (i.e. low-cost, widely available), the fixed costs of productive capacity decline rapidly. At this point, as Joe observes, the key becomes design/fab software tools that are low-cost and intuitive to use.
Once the digital instructions for fabricating a specific part are online, anyone with access to the web could download the instructions to a networked fab machine.
There are limits, of course, to what parts of an industrial product can be fabricated on a commodity 3-D machine: large-scale steel beams, for example, and multi-layer CPU chips that require many steps and very costly machines (i.e. fabs costing $1+ billion) do not lend themselves to low-costs commodity 3-D fabrication.
Despite these obvious limits, 3-D fab machines open up opportunities for a new model of industrial production, one based on low-cost underloaded, decentralized commodity fabs: redundant, distributed, networked and stripped of fixed costs.
The Nearly Free University and The Emerging Economy:
The Revolution in Higher Education
Reconnecting higher education, livelihoods and the economy
With the soaring cost of higher education, has the value a college degree been turned upside down? College tuition and fees are up 1000% since 1980. Half of all recent college graduates are jobless or underemployed, revealing a deep disconnect between higher education and the job market.
It is no surprise everyone is asking: Where is the return on investment? Is the assumption that higher education returns greater prosperity no longer true? And if this is the case, how does this impact you, your children and grandchildren?
We must thoroughly understand the twin revolutions now fundamentally changing our world: The true cost of higher education and an economy that seems to re-shape itself minute to minute.
We must thoroughly understand the twin revolutions now fundamentally changing our world: The true cost of higher education and an economy that seems to re-shape itself minute to minute.
The Nearly Free University and the Emerging Economy clearly describes the underlying dynamics at work - and, more importantly, lays out a new low-cost model for higher education: how digital technology is enabling a revolution in higher education that dramatically lowers costs while expanding the opportunities for students of all ages.
The Nearly Free University and the Emerging Economy provides clarity and optimism in a period of the greatest change our educational systems and society have seen, and offers everyone the tools needed to prosper in the Emerging Economy.
Kindle edition: list $9.95
Things are falling apart--that is obvious. But why are they falling apart? The reasons are complex and global. Our economy and society have structural problems that cannot be solved by adding debt to debt. We are becoming poorer, not just from financial over-reach, but from fundamental forces that are not easy to identify. We will cover the five core reasons why things are falling apart:
1. Debt and financialization2. Crony capitalism
3. Diminishing returns
4. Centralization
5. Technological, financial and demographic changes in our economy
Complex systems weakened by diminishing returns collapse under their own weight and are replaced by systems that are simpler, faster and affordable. If we cling to the old ways, our system will disintegrate. If we want sustainable prosperity rather than collapse, we must embrace a new model that is Decentralized, Adaptive, Transparent and Accountable (DATA).
We are not powerless. Once we accept responsibility, we become powerful.
Kindle: $9.95 print: $24