Beyond Lean

Há anos que escrevo aqui sobre o advento de Mongo e o consequente impacte na dança entre produção e consumo:

• mais tribos;
• mais nichos;
• séries mais pequenas;
• mais flexibilidade;
• mais rapidez; 
• mais variedade;
• mais diferenciação;

Em paralelo há anos que se lê com cada vez mais frequência sobre a automatização da produção.

Em Mongo, a produção é muito diferente da do paradigma do século XX com séries longas e planeamento da produção feito com muita antecedência. Em Mongo o planeamento da produção é feito cada vez mais em cima e é mais volátil. Como é que a automatização e as organizações-cidade lidam com Mongo?

"With improvements in living standards and a transformation in people’s ideas of consumption, much of the current electronics manufacturing industry is confronted with market demands characterized by variety and volume fluctuation. Manufacturing system flexibility is useful to address such fluctuated market demands.
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Seru production has been called beyond lean in Japan and can be considered to be an ideal manufacturing mode to realize mass customization
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seru production relies on low-cost automation and has little automation. When reconfiguring a conveyor assembly line into serus, expensive large automated equipment is substituted with simple-structure equipment with similar functions. The reconstructed equipment can be easily duplicated and modified at a low cost, so as to avoid equipment-sharing conflicts among multiple serus and reduce investment in equipment.
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Factories that produce multiple electronics product types in small-lot batches tend to adopt seru production. Compared to mass production, which displays its superiority in the case of a narrow range of product types with high product volumes, seru production would be affected by low efficiency and high cost in such an environment.
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Using highly automated production systems, mass production factories can attain high production efficiency. However, they usually achieve low production flexibility. As both the variety and volume fluctuations of market demands increase, mass production factories may need to reconfigure their traditional conveyor assembly lines for their survival and development.
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Seru production is human-centered manufacturing. Multiskilled operators are important resources to implement seru production, more important than in mass production. The equipment used in seru production is simple and not automated. The effect and influence of equipment on the performance of seru production systems is less than that on mass production systems. Accordingly, a practical production planning system for seru production should consider multiskilled operators more than equipment. In a dynamically changing manufacturing environment, a dynamic production planning system is needed"

Anónimo da província mas muito à frente:

• Um mesmo processo automatizado é demasiado rígido para Mongo
• Mongo e a automatização... pois!
• "mas o essencial é que o mercado de massas desapareceu"

Cuidado com os media, desconfie sempre!

Trechos retirados de "An implementation framework for seru production" publicado por Intl. Trans. in Op. Res. 00 (2013) 1–19

"people have changed more than the business organisations"

Costumo escrever aqui que nos estamos a entranhar em Mongo. Estamos a abandonar o modelo económico do século XX baseado no eficientismo e na massa e, a entrar no modelo do século XXI baseado em nichos, em tribos, na explosão de heterogeneidade. Por isso, o sublinhar deste trecho:

"“The chasm is where we live today. We are living at a moment in economic history where people have changed more than the business organisations they must depend upon for consumption and for employment."

Continuando:

"A hundred years ago there was an emerging society of mass consumers. [Moi ici: Prefiro a versão de Seth Godin. A massa foi criada pela indústria, não era o que as pessoas queriam: "The factory came first. It led to the mass market. Not the other way around."] People who had basically no stuff, a little more than discretionary income and they wanted a lot more stuff. And breaking through the premium puzzle a hundred years ago ment inventing new ways to get people stuff at a prize they could afford. Thus was born mass production. Mass production was an economic logic that had never been discovered. And the one who finally put together the pieces of the premium puzzle was Henry Ford. Now a lot of the pieces were out there. But there was a day, in 1913 [Moi ici: "O século XX começo há 100 anos"] in the life of the 3rd incarnation of the Ford Motor Company when the engineers and the tinkerers and Ford himself looked up at each other at the end of the day that they had broken through to a completely virgin economic territory. And the economic logic in that territory was high throughput low unit cost.”" 

A consequência dessa lógica levada ao extremo levou a excelentes resultados financeiros com uma contrapartida:

"“So the deal for high throughput low unit cost was [externalizing the] customer; you are now an exogenous [outside] variable to the business process, you’re on the outside of the business model. The only thing we owe you is efficiency. Because efficiency is what is going to make it possible for us to standardize and give you a low cost [product]. Now that model was extremely successful; concentrated assets, commmand and control, managerial hierarchy, standardization, interchangeability, consumer as an external variable. Very successful, created massive wealth, unprecedented wealth.”" 

Só que os clientes não querem ser plankton:

"“This is what I call the new society of individuals. The hallmark is a sense of psychological uniqueness … my destiny is not born in my blood. I am the origin of my meanings, I am the origin of my destiny. I think of this with thee headlines: sanctuary, voice and commitment. Sanctuary: I want to have control over my life, I want to be the origin of my choices. Voice: I want to have influence unmediated, and I want it to matter. Connection: I want to be connected to other people, but not with the conformity demand of the old feudal system, still characteristic of our large organizations.”"

O que entra em choque progressivo com o modelo do século XX:

"where as the low cost product and services of the 20th century, met the needs of the old mass consumer, they no longer meet the needs of the new individuated consumer. We need new kinds of entities operating on a new enterprise logic," 

Trechos retirados de "The Changing Content of Capitalism"

Uma novela sobre Mongo (parte VIII)

 Parte I, parte II, parte III, parte IV, parte V, parte VI e parte VII.

"The best average.
Mass retail by definition needed mass media to pull products from the shelf. It meant producers had to make the ‘best average’ (oxymoronic, I know) products they possibly could — average products for average people to support the price of the system. Pop culture could simply not support niche because niche is invisible and niche has no voice in a world defined by mass-media monologue. Big brands were created more by big budgets than by big ideas and amazing products. As marketers, the desire was for conformity of the masses. It made things easier and helped the balance sheet work."

Este é o mundo que estamos a abandonar. Este é o mundo dos Índices e Rankings uniformizadores. Este é o mundo que acaba com os big sellers e com os top-ten.

Tendências

Tendências há muito pressentidas e divulgadas neste blogue:

"the Post Mass Production Paradigm (PMPP) as a system of economic activity, capable of encouraging and sustaining economic growth without depending on mass production and mass consumption of artefacts. PMPP may be seen as a way of decoupling economical growth from resource /energy consumption and waste creation thus pursuing global sustainability.
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The markets changed from mass production to a higher variety and diversity towards customisation. Shorter life time, shorter time-to-market and higher functionalities are consequences of the technical development of products and market requirements. Mass production followed the migration to regions with lower costs of manufacturing. The structural change of manufacturing industries – driven by competition and technical innovations – is still going on.
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The manufacturing industries in Europe are fighting for competition because of high wages and costs of resources. Companies learned to concentrate operations towards customisation and niches of higher profitability. Taking into account the high skill of workers and engineers customisation changes the structure of manufacturing:
• increasing variants and customer specific products,
• lower batches and resulting costs for transformation,
• increasing complexity of products,
• increasing costs of product development.
The transformation from mass production to customised production is the new challenge of manufacturing."

O que é que há de novo nos últimos dois anos?
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A par desta evolução que se mantém e acentua, cresce em paralelo o retorno de produções de preço da Ásia para a Europa.

Trechos retirados de "The ManuFuture Road Towards Competitive and Sustainable High-Adding-Value Manufacturing" de Francesco Jovane, Engelbert Westkämper e David Williams.

Exemplo de "exploration" em busca de subida na escala do valor

No livro "Confessions of the Pricing Man How Price Affects Everything" de Hermann Simon encontrei esta figura:

"How would the profits of selected companies from the Global Fortune 500 change, if they raised their prices by 2 %? Figure 5.2 shows the changes in profits for 25 companies, based on data for their 2012 financial years."

Pela posição que a Hitachi ocupa percebe-se que compete muito pelo preço. Por isso, faz todo o sentido esta evolução estratégica:

"Mass production is out, customization is in. For the century-old conglomerate and engineering behemoth Hitachi Ltd, “customization” and “collaboration” are the new trends in business, particularly in the area of social innovation—the business of solving the world’s most pressing problems.
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“Commodity, mass production, mass consumption, these are no longer for the era that we live in. Now it is mass customization,” Hiroaki Nakanishi, Hitachi’s chair and CEO, said in an opening speech during the recent two-day Social Innovation Forum 2015 here.
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“We want a product that will truly suit yourself. That is the direction we would like to pursue,” Nakanishi said."

Trecho retirado de "‘Mass customization’ new name of the game"

A marca do século XXI

Tantas ideias que tenho em mente para este postal que, sem disciplina, daria para um longo capítulo de um livro sobre Mongo.

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O material começou a ser recolhido na passada quinta-feira, durante uma viagem de comboio ao princípio da noite, com a leitura de "Protecting IP from 3D Printing: What Companies Need to Know".

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O autor parte do exemplo de como a indústria musical não se soube proteger do digital, para dar conselhos às empresas grandes sobre como protegerem a sua propriedade intelectual, num mundo em que os bits comandam a adição de átomos, através das impressoras 3D.

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Quando li o texto no Cabinet, escrevi:

Então, perante o advento das impressoras 3D em cada casa, em cada bairro, em cada Staples, em cada Worten, o autor só pensa em copiar, só pensa que as pessoas vão copiar!?!?!?! Come on! Copiar é burrice, a produção numa impressora 3D é mais cara que a produção em massa.

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Depois, sexta ao fim da tarde, no Twitter, descobri este gráfico:

Em 1875 existiam nos Estado Unidos mais de 3500 produtores independentes de cerveja. Depois, o comboio, a Revolução Industrial, a produção em massa, o marketing de massas, e a consolidação eficientista começaram a concentrar a produção em cada vez menos produtores, cada vez maiores e mais eficientes. Então, o presidente James Carter, nos anos 70 do século passado, publica uma lei que liberaliza a produção, permitindo que pequenas unidades independentes possam produzir e comercializar cerveja. E foi um Big Bang!!! 

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Agora, em 2015, o número de produtores de cerveja volta ao nível de 1875 e os produtores independentes já representam 11% do mercado.

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Apesar do poder do marketing, apesar da eficiência, cada vez mais gente opta por beber cerveja artesanal. E a cerveja artesanal, copia os sabores dos produtores grandes?

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Não! A sua força está na variedade, na experimentação, no sabor.

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Ainda ontem à tarde, durante uma caminhada, encontrei este artigo sobre as impressoras 3D em África, "The 3D printing revolution":

"In February, a young Togolese entrepreneur, Afate Gnikou, stunned the world by winning first prize at the 10th International Conference of Barcelona’s Fabrication Laboratory. The winning technology was a 3D printer. The design did not come from one of Africa’s top universities or research institutes. Gnikou and his team assembled their prize-winning printer from electronic waste collected in dumpsites around the Togolese capital of Lomé.
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The technology turns traditional manufacturing upside down. Instead of centres of mass production, it makes possible decentralised production by the masses.[Moi ici: Voltar atrás e reler este parágrafo]
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The potential for printing other household products is only limited by people’s imagination and the size of the printer.
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The power of 3D printing lies in tapping into local needs and inspiring creativity. It does not require formal structures to do this, and everyone can participate in the technology. For example, 3D printing can enable rural women to rapidly prototype agricultural tools adapted to their culture, cropping systems and environments."

Em "We Are All Weird - Um manifesto sobre Mongo" sublinho, com as palavras de Seth Godin, algo que escapa a muita gente.:

"The mass market — which made average products for average people  was invented by organizations that needed to keep their factories and systems running efficiently.
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Stop for a second and think about the backwards nature of that sentence.
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The factory came first. It led to the mass market. Not the other way around."

Com as impressoras 3D, com a cultura DIY, com a IoT ou IoE, com a democratização da produção, com a criatividade em acção, por que haverão as pessoas de copiar o que as empresas grandes vão oferecer? Os prosumers vão ignorar a oferta da massa, como os consumidores de cerveja artesanal fogem do "lowest common denominator"
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Esta é a revolução que vai marcar o século XXI, o fim da massa:

"mass market. About mass politics, mass production, mass retailing, and even mass education.
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The defining idea of the twentieth century, more than any other, was mass.
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Mass gave us efficiency and productivity,
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And now mass is dying.
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We see it fighting back, clawing to control conversations and commerce and politics. But it will fail; it must. The tide has turned, and mass as the engine of our culture is gone forever."

Não vai ser fácil, muita gente que trabalha no mercado de massas, que vive do mercado de massas, que imposta o mercado de massas, vai rebelar-se contra a possibilidade de uma liberalização económica anárquica, local, relacional, co-criativa.
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Seria interessante ter um POTUS libertário... nesta altura chave do processo.

Plankton e comoditização

Este texto "You Don’t Bring Me Flowers: The Truth About Commoditisation" fez-me recuar a esta figura:

Uma empresa do século XX optaria por trabalhar para onde está a maioria dos clientes, para o mercado A, para o interior da caixa normal:

À medida que Mongo se instala:

Os mercados E e B da figura vão-se afastando do centro. da "normalidade", e passa a ver mais mercado fora da caixa do que dentro da caixa.
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Quem se situa no mercado B e olha para as prateleiras e só encontra a oferta para o mercado A, pode achá-la insuficiente, "chata", velha, aborrecida, ultrapassada, ... pode achar que está à ser tratado como plankton.

"In many industries, commoditisation is something to be feared. It turns propositions that were once unique and valued into generic, low-margin products and services. Yet in sectors that seem commoditised, some companies (think Dyson, or Southwest Airlines) can either charge huge premiums or thrive happily. How? It’s because when customers say: “Just give me more, for less”, they could in fact want something else."

Quintas-feiras e quando não há independência e liberdade (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.

Mas nem tudo está perdido, sintomas que dão esperança através de Mongo:

"In the popular resort town of Cannes, Fromagerie Céneri is one of only two cheesemongers left. The owner, Hervé Céneri, stocks 98% raw milk cheese. “Here in Cannes, I have spotted a trend back towards proper cheese. I believe there is a growing recognition that our heritage is in grave danger and people are now coming back. Our great tradition, despite a concerted attempt to destroy it, is still out there. When people like Sébastien Paire, with his 100 sheep in the hills above Nice, continue to make fabulous cheese, there is always hope.”"

A tecnologia, desde que os Quintas-feiras, objectivamente ao serviço dos lobbyes, não interfiram, pode salvar a tradição. Ver "How the Internet Saved Handmade Goods":

"Some old technologies, after being rendered obsolete by better and cheaper alternatives (indeed even after whole industries based on them have been decimated), manage to “re-emerge” to the point that they sustain healthy businesses.
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Consider the re-emergence of artisanal goods.  No doubt you are aware of the explosion of the market – some call it a movement – in handcrafted products.
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Who are these makers if not the revivers of dying or, in some cases, long extinct technologies? Yet it’s thanks to new digital tools such as Etsy, an Internet marketplace selling hand-made goods from around the world; and Kickstarter, the “crowdfunding” site that mediates donation-based funding for a range of products and services, that these artisans can now find and serve their tiny, global markets of customers.  These are segments that would have been impossible for individual artisans to organize in a cost-effective way before the rise of the Internet and electronic communication tools that cut out expensive middlemen and asset-heavy enterprises.
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The point is not that most consumers will ever care enough to choose soap that is made with goat’s milk, or lard, or without any animal product. On the contrary, the point is that it isn’t necessary for most consumers to do so. With handmade soap selling for $4-6 a bar, while mass-produced soap retails for about $1, sellers can do fine with small, loyal customer bases."

Quintas-feiras e quando não há independência e liberdade (parte II)

Parte I.
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França!
Terra da política agrícola comum, com todas resmas e paletes de apoios e subsídios.
Terra habituada ao papel do Estado central como orientador bem intencionado de tudo um pouco.
E terra de origem de grandes marcas da distribuição grande, sempre focadas na eficiência e nos custos baixos.
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Paraíso para a actuação de Quintas-feiras.
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Depois, temos coisas como esta "French Cheesemakers Crippled by EU Health Measures":

"90% of the producers have either gone to the wall or are in the hands of the dairy giants. This is thanks to a mixture of draconian health measures in Brussels, designed to come down hard on raw milk products, and hostile buyouts by those who want to corner the market.
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Unpasteurised milk, which gives a unique earth-and-fruit flavour, has been gradually marginalised on false public health pretexts after intense lobbying by the food processing industry, to the detriment of the consumer but the incalculable advantage of those producing cheese made with pasteurised milk.[Moi ici: Será ingenuidade minha pensar que são Quintas-feiras ingénuos manipulados pelos Golias?]
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The cheese war is particularly savage in Camembert, an area where there are now only five authentic local producers left. It has fallen victim to a culture that favours a production line that can churn out 250,000 Camembert cheeses a day.[Moi ici: Vómito industrial]
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“The big industrial producers will not tolerate the existence of other modes of production. They are determined to impose a bland homogeneity upon the consumer – cheese shaped objects with a mediocre taste and of poor quality because the pasteurisation process kills the product,”
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Around 95% of French cheese is sold in supermarkets and even here the specialist counters are fast-disappearing in favour of aisles featuring brands of spreadable, chemical and artificially flavoured products."

Acerca de Mongo e os makers

Um excelente artigo, "A movement in the making", bem sintonizado com o que se escreve há anos e anos, neste blogue, sobre Mongo:

"The scales haven’t tipped yet. While alternatives exist to almost any mass-produced item, most US consumers haven’t yet explored the full range of possibilities. However, it is only a matter of time before large firms begin to feel the impact of this changing landscape.
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the impact of the maker movement will eventually permeate society, shifting identity and meaning from consumption to creation and blurring the boundaries between consumers and creators. These makers are the consumers of the future and likely the future of consuming.
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This future calls for companies to imagine ways to serve as a platform to connect far-flung consumers with the products they desire. [Moi ici: Conseguem encaixar nestas tendências a recente decisão da P&G? Parece claramente uma resposta a isto antes que seja tarde demais] It means designing new products and services with the help of the people who will ultimately benefit from them.
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the increasing number of niche providers that are competing with large companies for share of wallet. Now that building new products and reaching new customers is easier than ever, competition can and will come from everywhere, not just your biggest competitors.
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The sellers of these unique products are building not just on new production and distribution platforms but also riding the trend of consumers demanding more customized products and services.
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The scales haven’t tipped yet. While alternatives exist to almost any mass-produced item, most US consumers haven’t yet explored the full range of possibilities. However, it is only a matter of time before large firms begin to feel the impact as multitudes of niche products collectively take market share away from generic incumbent products. Ignoring niche products won’t reverse the trend."

Leu aqui há vários anos...

Leu aqui há vários anos... e só agora está a chegar ao mainstream.
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As implicações assimétricas de Mongo, do Estranhistão, para as empresas grandes e para as PMEs e artesãos, em "Is This the Death of the Mass Brand?":

"Brands were created to convey information about products at a time when it was hard for consumers to get information. But our hyper-networked and data-engorged era is killing the very reason for mass-market branding. This leaves big brands vulnerable to hordes of quirky little unbrands. Today’s technology gives the advantage to companies that have deep relationships with consumers, and there are two key ways to get those relationships.
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to be small and intimate enough to connect with customers on a personal level, like craft brands on Etsy or apartment owners who rent their places through Airbnb. Coke, McDonald’s, Ford and the like can’t easily go in either direction. They’re kind of screwed.
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In fact, in this age of consumer information and relationships, a big brand can be a negative. A brand conveys consistency and safety; it says a can of Coke will taste the same whether in Syracuse or Strasbourg.
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As we get better information about small-scale competing products, people feel safe seeking out the unique, the undiscovered, the unbrands. [Moi ici: We are all weird!!!] Hilton becomes vulnerable to Airbnb’s one-of-a-kind dwellings. Tiffany becomes vulnerable to jewellery makers on Etsy.
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The result is a developing societal shift, as authors Itamar Simonson and Emanuel Rosen describe in their book, Absolute Value: What Really Influences Customers in the Age of (Nearly) Perfect Information. We used to want the brands everybody else had. We’re moving toward mass individualism, wanting stuff nobody else has."

BTW, Itamar Simondson e Emanuel Rosen não me convencem, não creio que o problema seja das marcas por serem marcas, o problema está no que o marcador "hollowing" conta, marcas que para chegarem ao maior número possível de pessoas se tornaram tão ocas, tão vazias, tão medianas que já só vivem da fama de outros tempos.

BTW2, há dias no Twitter favoritei a mensagem de Saul Kaplan:

"Turns out the mass market was an industrial era illusion."

Plankton?

Os Golias, as empresas que apostam na produção em massa, gostam de olhar para os que estão dentro da caixa, os clientes-médios:

Os Davids do Estranhistão preferem olhar para uma tribo que esteja fora da caixa:

Esta metáfora de Seth Godin é muito boa "Are we not plankton?":

"Whales have to eat a lot of plankton. A whale needs an enormous number of these tiny creatures because, let's be honest, one plankton just doesn't make a meal.
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It's unlikely the whale savors each plankton, relishing the value that it brings.
For most modern marketers, quantity isn't the point. What matters is to matter. Lives changed. Work that made an actual difference. Connection.
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You are not a plankton. Neither are your customers."

O século XX começou há 100 anos

Em tempos ouvi uma discussão na rádio em que alguém defendia que o século XX tinha sido um século curto, um que começou em 1914, com a I Guerra Mundial, e acabou em 1989, com a queda do Muro de Berlim.
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Olhando para este título, "Um século de produção em massa", não deixo de pensar... 1913, foi nesse ano que começou o século XX:

"A 7 de Outubro de 1913, a produção do modelo que se viria a tornar o clássico dos clássicos mudou para Highland Park."

A produção em massa!!!
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À medida que nos embrenhamos no século XXI, à medida que Mongo se instala, dando origem a um novo paradigma de consumo e produção, as linhas de montagem vão-se retirando:

"Canon now has no assembly lines; it ditched the last of its 20 kilometers of conveyor belts in 2002, when a line making ink-jet printers in Thailand was shut down."

Interessante, no ano em que se comemoram os 100 anos do nascimento da linha de montagem, é o mesmo ano em que Detroit declarou falência.

As forças que nos afastam do século XX (parte II)

Parte I.
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A primeira força que Krippendorff cita é uma velha conhecida deste blogue:

"1.The Erosion of Economies of Scale
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Previously, a company that wanted to create a new product would have to invest millions to build or retool the factory. Today that company can go to Alibaba.com and find a manufacturer ready to provide the product with minimal incremental cost. In other words, with a few mouse clicks and e-mails, an entrepreneur today can achieve the economies of scale that used to require months of planning and millions of dollars.
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The way to wealth was once to build a factory so big that no one could match your investment; to standardize parts and platforms so that no one could touch your volume; to establish a brand so widely recognized that no one could afford to pull customers away. For more than a century, industrial conglomerates have depended on such economies of scale to keep their competition at bay. Today that advantage is eroding. Even in production-heavy industries, of which there are fewer, factories grow smaller, more specialized, and they are easily turned on and off. Products grow more customized, turning standardization into liability. Niche brands pop up and, at very little cost, pick off small segments of the market from incumbents who invested decades in building mass loyalty. A new form of competition that draws strength from sources other than scale is emerging."

Trecho retirado de "Outthink the competition" de Kaihan Krippendorff

As forças que nos afastam do século XX (parte I)

"When Henry Ford began producing the Model T, most people viewed it as simply a new, inexpensive car - but his innovation would transform so much more. By proving the superiority of mass production, which coincidentally was able to cut the price of an automobile by 6o percent, he inspired a major shift in business. Soon, industry after industry changed from collections of small workshops into a few huge factories.
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Starting with Ford, the basis of competition shifted from craft to economies of scale, from talent to asset intensification. That has remained largely unchanged to this day. The existing paradigm, what Kuhn would call the normal science phase, gives established companies certain tangible, sustainable sources of advantage. In addition to superior economy of scale, they have exclusive access to critical sources of supply. We have lived with this formula for decades, with managers and strategy experts tweaking our understanding of this paradigm but not altering it in any significant way. But several forces are pushing us beyond the Ford paradigm."

Trecho retirado de "Outthink the competition" de Kaihan Krippendorff

Em busca de um pouco de realidade

Um excelente artigo sobre Mongo, sobre as vantagens competitivas de um povo informal, com uma cultura de artesanato e pouco propenso a padronizações e produções em massa "The Story Behind The Stuff: Consumers' Growing Interest In "Real" Products":

"Sure, your sweater might be genuine wool. But can you trace its fibers back to the very sheep from which it was shorn? This is the granular level of "realness" consumers now increasingly seek. What is your company doing about it?"

Em Magnitograd, paradigma do modelo de produção do século XX, a produção é em massa... imaginem linhas de montagem a "vomitarem" milhões de produtos indistintos, sem mácula, cheios de "qualidade = cumprimento integral das especificações".
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Em Mongo temos a revolta contra a padronização, contra a superficialidade... quem produziu? De que sobreiro veio a cortiça desta rolha? Quem foram as pessoas que pisaram as uvas deste vinho? Posso ver a sua cara? Posso ser um dos que pisa o vinho?

"There’s evidence all around us--whether it’s watching someone gush over the sleek design of a new phone and then seek out the perfect hand-carved, petrified-jungle-wood case to put it in, or the proliferation of farmers markets in big cities--people are looking for, and need, realness. There is a powerful urge to get in touch with what they believe is a more “real” world, and it’s leading us to a place where signs of realness take on greater value"

Como escrevi na passada quarta-feira é para este mundo que a PME-tipo portuguesa se deve virar, um mundo mais caótico... estou a escrever isto e estou a visualizar o trânsito num cruzamento, numa cidade da Índia ou do Vietname, para um outsider parece caótica... mas não há nem um acidente e o trânsito flui misteriosamente.

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Um mundo mais caótico mas um mundo onde o nosso ADN cultural, o nosso desenrascanço, a nossa tradição de comerciante estão como peixe na água.

Para o arquivo com os sintomas de Mongo

• "Impressora 3D para design"
• "Home 3D Printing Is Killing The Manufacturing Industry"
• "There Is No Reason For Any Individual To Have A 3D Printer In Their Home"
• "I am for the mad ones"

E não é só no digital:

• "Why James Dyson Invested $8,000,000 In A Student Incubator"

E para lá da tecnologia, como no "Convém levar o racional até ao fim", a par destas transformações virá a implosão do Estado central:

• "Venetian protesters demand independence from Rome"
• "The European Disunion: The Richest Increasingly Want To Fragment From The Poorest"

Se, como defendem alguns marxianos, foram os jovens estados centrais que fomentaram e promoveram a produção em massa, dificultando a vida às pequenas empresas no início do século XX, faz todo o sentido que também os estados não resistam, na sua forma actual, ao fim da produção em massa.

O desafio da proliferação (parte I)

Assim como o morcego desenvolveu o sonar, assim como o leopardo desenvolveu as suas pintas, assim como o rinoceronte desenvolveu a sua couraça, os humanos desenvolveram a economia.

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A economia e a biologia tratam da mesma coisa.

"Spencer’s principle of “the instability of the homogeneous” (Spencer 1900). Given a homogeneous object, different accidents will happen to different parts of it, producing a heterogeneous object, (Moi ici: A metáfora da Torre de Babel) or, in the terms we develop in this book, a more complex one." 

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"The history of life presents three great sources of wonder. One is adaptation, the marvelous fit between organism and environment. The other two are diversity and complexity, the huge variety of living forms today and the enormous complexity of their internal structure. Natural selection explains adaptation.

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E fazendo lembrar a evolução da  Dr Kid (reposicionamento) e das árvores cladísticas:

"Diversity and complexity could also be mutually reinforcing. As species diversity increases, niches become more complex (because niches are partly defined by existing species). The more complex niches are then filled by more complex organisms, which further increases niche complexity, and so on."

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"In any evolutionary system in which there is variation and heredity, there is a tendency for diversity and complexity to increase, one that is always present but may be opposed or augmented by natural selection, other forces, or constraints acting on diversity or complexity."

Trechos retirados de "Biology's First Law - The Tendency for Diversity & Complexity to Increase in Evolutionary Systems" de Daniel McShea e Robert Brandon.
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Continua.

Estilhaçar o conluio

O capítulo "Moloch: The Sloanist Mass Production Model" faz pensar. Pensar no conluio que foi necessário, entre os Estados e as empresas grandes, para criar o mercado de massas necessário para as viabilizar...

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Pensar como a coisa continua até aos nossos dias.

"Mass production required large investments in highly specialized equipment and narrowly trained workers. In the language of manufacturing, these resources were "dedicated": suited to the manufacture of a particular product—often, in fact, to just one make or model. When the market for that particular product declined, the resources had no place to go. Mass production was therefore profitable only with markets that were large enough to absorb an enormous output of a single, standardized commodity, and stable enough to keep the resources involved in the production of that commodity continuously employed. Markets of this kind... did not occur naturally. They had to be created.
….It became necessary for firms to organize the market so as to avoid fluctuations in demand and create a stable atmosphere for profitable, long-term investment."

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"Under the Sloan system, if a machine can be run at a certain speed, it must be run at that speed to maximize efficiency. And the only way to increase efficiency is to increase the speed at which individual machines can be run. The Sloan system focuses, exclusively, on labor savings "perceived to be attainable only through faster machines. Never mind that faster machines build inventory faster, as well.""

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"There is also the regulatory state's function, which we will examine below in more depth, of imposing mandatory minimum overhead costs and thus erecting barriers to competition from lowoverhead producers.
State spending serves to cartelize the economy in much the same way as regulation. Just as regulation removes significant areas of quality and safety as issues in cost competition, the socialization of operating costs on the state (e.g. R&D subsidies, government-funded technical education, etc.) allows monopoly capital to remove them as components of price in cost competition between firms, and places them in the realm of guaranteed income to all firms in a market alike."

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"Mass production divorces production from consumption. The rate of production is driven by the imperative of keeping the machines running at full capacity so as to minimize unit costs, rather than by customer orders. So in addition to contractual control of inputs, mass-production industry faces the imperative of guaranteeing consumption of its output by managing the consumer. It does this through push distribution, high-pressure marketing, planned obsolescence, and consumer credit." 

Mongo vai ter de defrontar este conluio. Mongo está a minar este conluio. Mongo é o estilhaçar do mercado de massas e a explosão da diversidade.... e isso implicará estilhaçar o Estado como o concebemos?

Na Economia o factor tempo conta, não é um universo newtoniano

"In the prior Age of Mass Markets, which occurred throughout most of the twentieth century, revenue maximization was the win strategy. Companies had relatively uniform pricing (for much of the period, manufacturers could actually set retail prices), cost to serve was relatively uniform as the product was just dropped at the customer’s receiving dock, and economies of scale meant that large production volumes led to diminishing unit costs. And diminishing unit costs meant more profits.
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In this situation, product management was indeed driving the boat. Their job was to maximize revenues. Most consumer product companies were characterized by a relatively small number of high-volume brands. In this situation, the cost of the small “tweaks” in products and packaging were small compared to the huge gains in scale.
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Over the past thirty years, however, our business system has changed enormously. We have entered what I call the Age of Precision Markets. In this new era, companies have instituted complex pricing varying from customer to customer, and even product to product. Cost to serve varies again by customer, and even by product within a customer. Products have proliferated into all ecological niches, and flexible manufacturing and outsourcing have enabled many niche products to achieve minimum efficient scale.
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Today, profit maximization requires a deep understanding of the interaction between pricing and cost to serve on a very granular basis (individual products within individual accounts). It also requires the tight integration of product management with the groups responsible for the second-order costs it so often produces. Chief among these are the critical costs of sales inefficiency and operations complexity – just what the top operations managers and sales reps were so concerned about."
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Trecho retirado de "Unlikely Operations Heroes – Sales Reps" de Jonathan Byrnes.