Printcrime

I'm a big fan of Cory Doctorow's work, one of his short stories is called "Printcrime" and it's about a future in which desktop 3D printers are illegal.

The coppers smashed my father’s printer when I was eight. I remember the hot, cling-film-in-a-microwave smell of it, and Da’s look of ferocious concentration as he filled it with fresh goop, and the warm, fresh-baked feel of the objects that came out of it.

With real 3D printers dropping in price drastically it's only a matter of time before we all have one. Desktop Factory sells one for $5000, about what high-end laser printers went for four or five years ago and now sell for $1000 (about my buy in point unless I had a business reason). Several companies already offer "3D print on demand"; you send them your CAD file, they send you back your object in the mail. Gamers are signing up in droves to get their personlized online game figurines 3D printed at FigurePrints. This technology brings a personal factory into every home. What's over the horizon? 3D printing metal objects, which currently requires expensive lasers to "Selective Laser Sinter" parts. Another ten years will see that process drop to the same price levels...

Palo Alto and Mass Customization

Exciting times when the famed minds over at Xerox's Palo Alto start applying themselves to Mass Customization.

Xerox itself has had more than 55,000 patents in its history and still gets 10 a day, said Sophie Vandebroek, Xerox’s chief technolog officer. But the research isn’t scattered. It zeroes in on environmental technology, mass customization, and smart documents. Xerox invests $1.5 billion a year in R&D and it has more than 800 researchers. Over the last three decades, PARC’s technology has spawned 40 spin-offs.

Link

Mar's and "Made to Order" Candy

An interesting article regarding a product as mass produced as they get, candy, going custom, and offering customers the "Status Story" mentioned in the previous post.

We visited the M&M’S production facility in Hackettstown, N.J., where manufacturing follows the divergent paths of old and new. On the one hand is the continued commitment to the dedicated mass-production lines that have served Mars and its powerhouse stable of brands for decades. On the other is a newfound excitement about extremely short-run, rapid-changeover production of personalized, made-to-order “special occasion” products.

Link

A shift from mass branding to individual stories

Here's a facinating post from cooltownstudios.com regarding a shift from a brand conferring status on a consumer to "status stories" becoming more and more important.

Thus, as national brands are increasingly unable to tell a one-size-fits-all story to the masses, it is then up to the customer to tell those stories to sell that brand... Trendwatching.com calls these personal accounts status stories.

This idea has been around for some time regarding such things as vacations (exclusive destinations, adventure travel, unique destinations), but more and more products themselves will need to convey stories. The implications for manufacturers are vast. The traditional product life cycle will lose importance as a whole range of products will be small-run, individualized products, made by nimble manufacturers with a wide range of capabilities who are able to quickly and easily fabricate designs from napkin sketches to CAD models.

The infrastructure behind these abilities is here, it's cheaper and easier to run than ever before; $15,000 gets you an easy to run cabinet laser and you can fabricate just about anything over at Ponoko.com.

From Trendwatching.com

Interesting side effect: consumers moving away from familiar, trusted mass brands may soon find themselves truly addicted to everything niche. Consider this statement by the ever-inspiring Chris Anderson: “We equate mass market with quality and demand, when in fact it often just represents familiarity, savvy advertising and broad if somewhat shallow appeal. What do we really want? We're only just discovering, but it clearly starts with more.”

Link to cooltownstudios.com
Link to trendwatching.com page on status stories.

Ponoko

Continuing on the previous post re Custom Mass Manufacturing, I present Ponoko. This company has embraced distributed design as well as distributed manufacturing. This is Cottage Industry meets CNC which then meets the Internet.
From Technology Review published by MIT, Michael Gibson writes

"To be fair," Piller adds, "the offering Ponoko provides has been around for many years in the form of small workshops. But those came at the high cost of placing an order, negotiating a price, and also processing the order. At Ponoko, the system is much more stabilized."

For most companies, product design and development is a long process of trial and error, involving, among other things, in-house designers, committees, timed product releases, and, ultimately, customer feedback. Until a product sells, or if it doesn't sell, it takes up costly shelf space in either stores or warehouses.

But by letting individuals dream up, make, and then sell unique products on demand, Ponoko is attempting to eliminate the product-development wing. Ultimately, it hopes to eliminate the need for a centralized manufacturing plant as well, by recruiting a large enough community of digital manufacturers--people scattered around the world who have 3-D printers, CNC routers, and laser cutters. Link

Ponoko is almost the company I dream of starting, all it misses is a parametric element, meaning the ability to re-size products dynamically, or change materials dynamically, and have prices change in lock step.