"Welcome to the factory of the future: It's smaller, more nimble, and run by highly skilled Americans. Just as important, networks of these facilities could crop up across the United States, bringing manufacturing closer to your consumers and lessening your reliance on a crippled global supply chain."
Esta descrição de Mongo parece retirada deste blogue.
Trecho retirado de "The Factory of the Future Is Here--and It's Run by Americans (and Small Robots)"
No The Wall Street Journal de ontem:
"A major home builder is teaming with a Texas startup to create a community of 100 3-D printed homes near Austin, gearing up for what would be by far the biggest development of this type of housing in the U.S.
Lennar Corp. and construction-technology firm Icon are poised to start building next year at a site in the Austin metro area, the companies said. While Icon and others have built 3-D printed housing before, this effort will test the technology’s ability to churn out homes and generate buyer demand on a much larger scale.
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Skilled tradesmen are a dying breed,” said Eric Feder, president of LenX, Lennar’s venture-capital and innovation unit. “So there have to be alternative building solutions to help with this labor deficit.”"
Há anos que escrevo sobre Mongo, um mundo repleto de picos na paisagem competitiva.
"a return to the local. For decades, supply chains have been getting longer; production processes more international. The various components of a car might be manufactured in a dozen countries and assembled in more than one. In the future, however, manufacturing can happen near to the consumer. Thanks to the wonders of 3D printing, components can be produced locally; while the design might come from anywhere, the finished product can be crafted in a local workshop and handed to a customer who lives close by....We often assume that the more high-tech a society becomes, the more global and borderless it will be. And until recently, that has often been true. But not any more. Many exponential technologies lead to a return to the local. These breakthrough technologies favour the near over the far....The result is an era in which, once again, geography matters – with economic activity set to become increasingly local.There is an irony here. The economic paradigm that brought about the Exponential Age, globalisation, has fostered technologies that will lead to a return to the local. But our political and economic systems were not designed to cope with the new age of localism....Perhaps even more revolutionary than our newfound approach to raw goods is the shifting world of manufacturing. In the Exponential Age, manufacturing is becoming less about putting trainers, phones, car components or prosthetics onto standardised 20-foot containers and shipping them around the world. Instead, manufacturing is taking the shape outlined by Angelo Yu. The idea is shipped across the globe, but the building process takes place at a printer or fabricator close to the point of consumption....And so here we can make out a new system of global trade. Gone will be the world of poor countries manufacturing goods for rich countries, and shipping these products across the world. Instead, each rich country will begin to make its own goods at home, for a domestic market....Decreasing reliance on commodities could immiserate large areas of the global economy, bringing with it untold political instability....The key cause is, once again, the rise of the intangible economy – and the effect it has on labour markets. Value in this intangible economy is created through highly complex products."
"The era of export is coming to an end. Instead of making and sending goods, it becomes a trend to send money and data to make and supply goods locally. It means that the world is ending in a world where labor is cheap and raw materials are cheap.
The world economy in the era of the so-called 'post-corona' as predicted by German business thinker Dr. Hermann Simon.
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"The era of hyper-globalization, when exports amounted to twice the GDP (gross domestic product), is over, and we are now entering the era of de-globalization. “As local production increases through FDI (foreign direct investment), exports will decrease, and the restructuring of the global economy will accelerate accordingly,” he said.
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“Companies have learned how easily global supply chains can collapse (due to a pandemic). An alternative is to set up a production base overseas where raw materials and parts can be directly supplied, and operate it through an independent local corporation. In other words, instead of investing in the country where the head office is located, we invest overseas where there are demand sources or raw materials.
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In the past, it was not easy to set up a high-tech factory abroad. However, advances in advanced technologies such as 5G (5th generation mobile communication) and 3D (3D printer) are making this possible. “It is now possible to send data in real time to make things (with 3D printers) in factories on the other side of the world. There is no longer any need for products to be moved between countries. This means that the global supply chain (GVC) can be reorganized to be the center of the data flow (rather than the flow of parts and raw materials).”
Dr. Simon said, "These days, quite a few CEOs (CEOs) say that it is 'like a miracle' when they see companies running well without business trips or face-to-face meetings." This experience is not just a surprise, but leads to a 'sympathy' between the business owners and professional managers that 'it is okay to give more autonomy to overseas branches and manpower'. “It doesn't matter where the headquarters is anymore. Now, the important thing for CEOs of global companies is to find a region that is optimized for 'the industry we are good at'."
Trechos retirados de "“The era of living on exports will end after Corona,” a world-class business scholar warns"
"In the 1960s Roy Amara, a Stanford computer scientist, observed that “we tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run”....Supply chain managers in industrial companies will be busy right now studying alternative sources that are more local. They may trade efficiency for robustness. They may be looking at automation. Back in February, they may not have seen the need to fix what did not seem broken. But now it is..A recent 3D printing industry survey found that companies are looking at the technology differently, with more of them now considering using it for end production rather than just prototypes..A German study in 2015 predicted that the economic impact of 3D printing would be to lower barriers to entry, making it easier for companies to serve different markets and cutting prices for consumers. It would constitute what economists call a positive supply shock....More localised production would also cut the cost of transport and contribute to the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions....There are downsides. Export-led growth has been the business model of developing countries. More localised manufacturing would hurt them. Automation will improve the employment prospects of some but reduce those of others. A mechanical or chemical engineer can perhaps retrain and find niches in other high-tech areas....Like many technological inventions of the past, this one could also give rise to new forms of inequality. Economies with strong high-tech investment such as the US and China would do well. European countries would probably not be at the forefront — to put it mildly — but there may be niches for those with a strong technological focus,"
"Many short-term emergency measures will become a fixture of life. That is the nature of emergencies. They fast-forward historical processes. Decisions that in normal times could take years of deliberation are passed in a matter of hours. Immature and even dangerous technologies are pressed into service, because the risks of doing nothing are bigger. What happens when everybody works from home and communicates only at a distance? What happens when entire schools and universities go online? In normal times, governments, businesses and educational boards would never agree to conduct such experiments. But these aren’t normal times."Move fast, break rules, break things!
My column today on what the virus could mean for America pic.twitter.com/T3i6HBGYOi— Bruno Maçães (@MacaesBruno) March 22, 2020
"Exurbia had stumbled on what could be roughly described as the “Napster of Things.”Ontem, na parte I, referi: "Coronavirus, a Brescia manca una valvola per i rianimatori: ingegneri e fisici la stampano in 3D in sei ore".
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A New, Web-Enabled Industry
Companies like TeeChip are known as print-on-demand shops. They allow users to upload and market designs; when a customer places an order—say, for a T-shirt—the company arranges the printing, often done in-house, and the item is shipped to the customer. The technology gives anyone with an idea and an internet connection the ability to monetize their creativity and start a global merchandising line with no overhead, no inventory, and no risk. [Moi ici: Reparar na ligação com a parte I]
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CafePress, which launched in 1999, was among the first print-on-demand operations; the business model spread in the mid-2000s along with the rise of digital printing. Previously, manufacturers would screen-print the same design onto items such as T-shirts, an overhead-intensive approach that usually requires bulk orders to turn a profit. With digital printing, ink is sprayed onto the material itself, allowing one machine to print several different designs in a day, making even one-off production profitable.
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Many print-on-demand companies are fully integrated ecommerce platforms, allowing designers to manage easy-to-use web stores—similar to user pages on Etsy or Amazon. Some platforms, such as GearLaunch, allow designers to operate pages under unique domain names and integrate with popular ecommerce services such as Shopify, while providing marketing and inventory tools, production, delivery, and customer service."
"A questão de saber se haverá um efeito de histerese é muito interessante. Este é o nome de um fenómeno na Física em que um impulso temporário tem um efeito permanente. Um exemplo bem conhecido é a magnetização. Depois de uma peça de ferro ser magnetizada, ela permanece magnética por algum tempo. Portanto, a crise temporária levará a mudanças permanentes no comportamento do consumidor."
"The technology gives anyone with an idea and an internet connection the ability to monetize their creativity ... with no overhead, no inventory, and no risk."Num mundo sem patentes, não se ganha a vida a cobrar rendas por peças. Num mundo sem patentes:
"Num mundo sem patentes... tudo é acelerado.
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A única forma de uma empresa se manter à tona é nunca parar, é estar sempre à frente da onda."
"According to a recent study, two out of ten German companies with more than 100 employees is already using 3D printing and another 23 % are planning to do so. Germany's leading industries, i.e. automotive, mechanical engineering and chemicals, are pioneers in 3D printing.Impressionante a velocidade a que a coisa se propaga.
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The representative study concludes that 3D printing is one of the most important topics in the German economy. According to the study 19 % of all German companies with more than 100 employees, has already started to use additive manufacturing.
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According to the Bitkom study, the automotive industry is also a pioneer in 3D printing, with 41 % (22 % in 2017) of companies already using it. Currently, car manufacturers are using additive technologies mainly for prototype and tool making. Trials of additive series production are conducted more frequently.
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38 % of machine and plant manufacturers are already using 3D printing. In 2017, only 26 % of the companies used this technology. This increase can partly be explained by the possibility of optimizing the functionality of additively manufactured components, such as optimized cooling structures.
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In the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, 38 % of companies also make use of additive manufacturing - twice as many as in 2017 (19 %)."
"Corresponde a uma lógica de economia circular com uma pegada ecológica “pesada” ao manter carros pouco eficientes em funcionamento"
"A Associação Europeia de Fabricantes de Máquinas-Ferramenta (Cecimo) vê a produção aditiva, a impressão 3D, como a principal tecnologia para uma economia circular. Por um lado, isso aumentará a produtividade, mas também economizará recursos de forma sustentável. Consumidores e utilizadores poderão beneficiar de produtos mais duráveis e que consomem menos energia. A eficiência do material, a reciclagem, a funcionalidade aprimorada dos componentes e a descentralização são alguns dos benefícios que a impressão 3D traz para a Economia Circular."A impressão 3D baixará as barreiras de entrada e democratizará a produção de peças e componentes. O artigo refere:
"Em breve todas as empresas de artesanato e todas as oficinas deverão explorar as possibilidades de tecnologias de impressão 3D descentralizada e funcionalmente optimizada."[Moi ici: Deixei de propósito a tradução mixiruca do Google Tradutor, "empresas de artesanato", porque vai ao encontro do que penso e escrevo - aqui, aqui, aqui e aqui, por exemplo]A impressão 3D elevará para outro nível o potencial de bailado entre produtores e clientes:
"Just as electrification did more than simply change the power source, leading companies to revamp their factory layouts, additive manufacturing will do more than increase flexibility and simplify assembly lines. It will allow for the overhaul of the industrial geography.Trechos retirados de "Jabil’s manufacturing leap".
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Because additive manufacturing doesn’t depend on economies of scale, as conventional manufacturing does, factories can be much smaller. [Moi ici: O que dizemos aqui há anos!] They can focus on local markets rather than global demand — and then take this production to a new level of customer responsiveness.
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“Today, Jabil has over 100 factories throughout the world,” he said in an interview. “Ten years from now, we might have 1,000 factories — or 5,000 factories — all smaller, and each closer to where our end markets are and where people buy products. This would allow us to make products fully on demand, which is ultimately the most compelling aspect of 3D printing’s value proposition.
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Instead of drawing from global supply chains, the local factories that Dulchinos envisions will make most of their parts in-house. They will also need fewer parts and less assembly, though they will always need feeder materials. Thus, 3D printers integrated with software platforms promise to make countries more self-reliant in manufacturing. Companies will depend less on the flow of goods across continents, which would limit the damage from trade disputes. And they will do all of this while better giving customers what they want, on demand.
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Thanks to the versatility of later-stage Industry 4.0 production systems, these local factories will likely also make products across multiple industries. [Moi ici: Uma espécie de cooperativas ou makerspaces]
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Each local factory will therefore serve customers across many product categories and beat its focused, single-industry rivals. This “pan-industrial” approach would give an already diversified company such as Jabil a major competitive advantage over focused rivals. If this progression continues, at some point in the not-too-distant future a typical retail store will consist of a showroom in front and a factory — managed by Jabil or others — in back. The store clerks would be like industrial consultants, conferring with customers and making products to order for them on the spot." [Moi ici: Proximidade para assegurar co-criação]
"O economista-chefe do BNP Paribas diz que os robôs ou a imigração são a solução para a escassez de mão de obra."Perspectivar o futuro como uma continuação linear do presente costuma dar maus resultados.
"heralding a new era for manufacturers, marked by totally integrated factories that can rapidly tailor products to individual customer needs and respond instantly to shifting demands and trends. This fully digital factory can be a catalyst for a kinetic growth agenda delivering gains in productivity, financial and operational performance, output, and market share [Moi ici: LOL!!! Até parece que Mongo vai ser terra de competir por market share!] as well as improved control and visibility throughout the supply chain.O trecho que se segue parece retirado do discurso do meu parceiro das conversas oxigenadoras:
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98 percent of respondents still view digitization somewhat blandly as a path for increasing production efficiency. [Moi ici: Conheço esta gente. Muitos são boa gente, mas estão de tal forma moldados pelo modelo mental anterior que não conseguem fugir dele. Também por isso vão ser vítimas do que esteve na base do seu sucesso no nível anterior do jogo] But at the same time, a whopping 74 percent of companies named regionalization (being able to set up or expand factories in markets where their products are sold and where opportunities exist to widen revenue streams through customized products and improved service levels) as a primary reason for digital investments. [Moi ici: Uma fábrica para cada continente, dizem algumas multinacionais mais dinâmicas, mas não estão a ver que não é uma questão de eficiência, é uma questão de interacção, de customização, de relação, de proximidade]
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Moreover, in a sharp departure from the recent past, the possibility of being able to immediately tailor products to match customer preferences and to offer customers the option to “build” their own products appears to be driving production decisions more strongly than slashing labor costs. [Moi ici: Q.E.D.] Indeed, only about 20 percent of respondents now plan to relocate manufacturing facilities to low-wage countries in Asia, Eastern Europe, and South America; nearly 80 percent are looking at Western Europe (where their largest customer bases are) for new digital factory capacity."
"One of the more intractable obstacles to a successful digital factory is the makeup of the workforce itself. This type of advanced production approach represents an entirely new model of human–machine interaction, one that not many workers — or manufacturers — are prepared for. In our view, understanding the impact on the people in the company is at least as important as calculating the financial benefit of the digital factory, in part because the former will ultimately impinge on the latter. Employees who feel marginalized by the emphasis on new technologies or who are not equipped to work in that environment will compromise the factory’s chances for success."
"Factories will still exist in 2050: buildings where people operate machines that make particular products. It’s difficult to fully imagine the economic structures of a world where cheap, high-volume, mass-production 3-D printing is commonplace. But we can hazard some guesses. Designers will be more esteemed than machinists. Products will be adapted for local needs and preferences, and organic in appearance. There will be fewer warehouses. Factories themselves will be more numerous, smaller, and mostly dark, their machines quietly tended by a highly technical guild."Fábricas do futuro sim, mas com uma interpretação diferente para o que entendemos por fábrica.
"Since the robot does all the work, there are no labor costs, it’s feasible to manufacture in the U.S. or Europe and avoid the carbon footprint of shipping bike componets across the ocean.Não faz sentido terminar com:
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Bike brands can design their own new bikes using the system, and the same software could be used to create custom frames for customers within a bike store.
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“The beauty of 3D printing is you can build something with the economics of one unit, because there’s no tooling required,” says Miller. “Not only can we tailor the size, but we can also tailor the ride characteristics, too. Some people want a harder bike or a stiffer bike; some people want a softer, more compliant bike. Because that’s all software controlled, ultimately, we just dial that into the software recipe and then we print that particular recipe out.”"
"The bikes will be in mass production next year."Ou alguém percebeu mal ou há um gato escondido com o rabo de fora.
"Mass customization.
This model takes product variation to the extreme. It entails creating one-off products that are precisely adjusted to the needs or whims of individual buyers—adjustments that can be carried out by simply uploading each customer’s digital file into a 3-D printer. Thanks to the efficiency and precision of digital technology, these products cost less than conventionally manufactured items but fit individuals’ specifications more exactly.
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Mass customization is suitable for any large market in which customers are dissatisfied with standardized, conventionally produced offerings and it’s easy to collect customer information. ...
This model can rapidly and significantly affect an entire industry. With hearing aids the shift happened in a year and a half, forcing some manufacturers into bankruptcy.
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The main competitive challenge is to reduce the cost of acquiring individual customers’ information. Hearing-aid companies first needed a scanning device that audiologists could easily use. In this case, customers were willing to go to an audiologist to be measured. In contrast, buyers of custom orthotics and insoles didn’t want to visit an expensive podiatrist to be measured. That’s why SOLS Systems, which innovated in this area, couldn’t make it on its own; it was acquired in 2017 by another footwear company, Aetrex Worldwide. But the development of smartphone apps that allow people to measure their own feet is overcoming the information-collection obstacle. And HP Inc. has devised a 3-D scanning solution, FitStation, that can be placed in stores. The market is poised to take off."
“Healthcare is on its way to becoming more preemptive instead of, as it is today, reactive. Newborns will routinely have their genome sequenced, and that data will help predict diseases. IoT devices will be able to monitor your vital signs and activity, spotting problems at a very early stage. You’ll be able to get an initial diagnosis from an AI software “doctor” app via your phone or some other device, and the AI will guide you to a specialist if needed. Healthcare will be flipped on its head, shifting from treating health problems after they arise to spotting and fixing them before they develop. That should cost a fraction of what healthcare costs today, solving one of America’s toughest financial squeezes.
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As entrepreneurs remake the energy sector, more homes and buildings will generate their own power using cheap and superefficient solar panels on roofs and high-powered batteries in basements or garages. The batteries, like those now being manufactured by Tesla, will store power generated when the sun shines for use when it doesn’t. “Each of these buildings will be connected to a two-way power line that can allow anyone to sell excess energy or buy needed energy in an eBay-style marketplace. If you do own a car, it’s likely to be electric, and your home solar panels and batteries can charge it.
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Trends suggest that you will get more of your food from small local farms or urban farms built inside old warehouses and shopping malls. The food industry spent the twentieth century scaling up agriculture, making farms bigger and more corporate, tended by enormous pieces of machinery with very few actual farmers. In the coming decades technology will help small, local farms operate at a profit, while breakthroughs in producing test-tube meat will vastly reduce the acreage needed to graze cows and raise chickens.
The technology of 3D printing is beginning to unscale and reimagine manufacturing. Within a decade, if you order a new pair of shoes or a chair, it might not come from a far-off mass-production factory; instead, many companies are going to custom produce items in small batches as they’re ordered, and the factories will operate akin to AWS—offering companies as much or as little manufacturing as they need.
Unscaling will leave few industries or activities untouched.”
"Daqui a menos de 20 anos, um em cada dois produtos industriais será impresso em 3D. [Moi ici: Acreditemos nestes números só para pensarmos nas consequências. O que vai acontecer ao modelo de produção herdado do século XX? O que vai acontecer ao modelo de emprego gerado pela Revolução Industrial? O que vai acontecer ao ecossistema do comércio herdado do século XX? O que vai acontecer à receita da impostagem sobre os circuitos comerciais do século XX?]Conseguem imaginar o festival de ANTRAIS a pedir aos governos que proíbam a impressão 3D para salvar os modelos do século XX listados lá em cima?
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“quando a Internet foi inventada, poucas pessoas imaginaram o impacto enorme que ela teria na forma como vivemos e trabalhamos. A impressão 3D pode ser uma repetição da História“. A frase é de um economista do banco holandês ING que elaborou um relatório aprofundado sobre a impressão 3D e sobre as últimas inovações nesta área, capazes de levar esta tecnologia da “infância” atual para uma revolução comparável à Internet. Uma preocupação fundamental do relatório é a seguinte: quando tudo for impresso em 3D, localmente, o que é que vai ser do comércio entre os países ou, por outras palavras, com que é que se vai encher os navios-contentores? ...
com a impressão 3D podem evaporar-se até 40% das trocas comerciais entre os países — não só as que viajam em navios-contentores mas por qualquer outra via. Se a impressão 3D evoluir tão rapidamente quanto se prevê no estudo, quase metade dos produtos irá deixar de ser fabricada num país e, depois, viajar até mais perto do consumidor final. [Moi ici: Interessante, os holandeses concentrados no modelo de negócio principal do país, porto de mar de entrada e saída de bens da Europa]
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A impressão 3D é mais do que um método de produção alternativo — pode ser uma revolução na forma como quase tudo é produzido, uma revolução no modelo económico que irá permitir mais personalização (e, portanto, mais valor acrescentado e mais receitas) e tempos de entrega mais rápidos, com a produção mais próxima do consumidor. [Moi ici: E mais do que a personalização, a co-criação. Eu, utilizador posso trabalhar em conjunto com o especialista em programação de sapatos para fazer a sapatilha à minha maneira e para o meu pé]
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Um modelo de produção em impressão 3D envolve menos mão de obra. Conforme os setores, pode poupar-se muito em todo o processo, desde menos pessoas a trabalhar em linhas de montagem até menos funcionários necessários para transportar matérias-primas e produtos.[Moi ici: Um modelo de produção em impressão 3D precisa de empresas ao estilo do século XX? Posso aceder a programas livres ou comprar um serviço de programação a um especialista/designer e ir fazer a impressão na makerspace cooperativa da minha zona]"
It only takes a few minutes for this robot to make a shoe pic.twitter.com/2g4ClBQQJQ— Mashable (@mashable) December 19, 2017
"Wittmer makes about four pairs of shoes per month at her three-person workshop, called Saskia, starting at about 3,000 euros ($3,540) per pair, including 500 euros for the last, which always stays at the cobbler."Sobre as formas:
"The most challenging step in making a bespoke shoe isn’t selecting the leather, perfecting the stitching, or ensuring that the heel is weatherproof. The toughest part, cobbler Vivian Saskia Wittmer says, involves something that you won’t wear, ever.
It’s creating what’s known as the “last,” the foot-shaped block that gives the shoe its shape."
"As manufacturing shifts from offshore mass production to customized, local fabrication, new jobs will open up for human workers, some of which have yet to reveal themselves. “We used to have distribution built around manufacturing,” Mandel says, referencing the centrality of offshore factories, “and now I think that manufacturing is going to be built around distribution.”"Será que a unidade do futuro será mesmo a distribuição? Tendo a pensar que a unidade do futuro será a relação, será a interacção, será a co-criação, e todos os modelos de negócio que a fomentem e potenciem serão importantes.
