For all the skeptics out there questioning the utility of crowd-sourcing as a means of effective product design, here's an example that actually hit the radar screen of President Obama.
Local Motors bills itself as an open-source car company, which means it leverages the spirit of Web 2.0 to bring together transportation designers, engineers and industrial designers, and car enthusiasts to "co-create" a vehicle, which it then produces, in limited runs, at a local micro-factory. Eschewing the capital-intensive, volume-production model of traditional car companies, Local Motors' main design horsepower comes from this online community, which innovates based on an initial set of specifications provided by Local Motors and tuned to a very specific target audience.
Think of the process like an American Idol for car development. People join a community, and designers and transportation engineers submit designs based on the initial set of specs as part of a competition. The broader user community votes on what car will be developed, and the concept with the most votes enters the co-create process, where the community at large collaborates on everything from choosing the body styling to picking interior components. All designs are protected with a Creative Commons license.
There are different car projects, i.e., competitions, for different local regions, and so far, the first co-created model to be produced is the Rally Fighter, an off-road vehicle that is being manufactured at a microfactory in Phoenix. Local Motors only builds 2,000 of any one vehicle, and customers participate in the actual manufacturing process at the local microfactory.
I know, the model is a bit quirky, to say the least. But there is something to be said about what Local Motors has been able to accomplish. As opposed to the multiple years it takes the automotive giants to produce and ship a new model, Local Motors says its crowd-sourced-based process for car design takes a mere 18 months from concept through production. It's an accomplishment that won firm accolades from President Obama last month when he visited Carnegie Mellon University on a tour to promote the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership, a program uniting industry, universities, and the federal government to jumpstart the manufacturing sector.
Local Motors partnered with DARPA on the XC2V to explore the concept of crowd-sourcing for defense system design.
President Obama's remarks about the Local Motors process was in response to the Combat Support Vehicle (XC2V), a proof-of-principle project between DARPA and Local Motors to explore the potential of crowd-sourcing on a military vehicle design. More than 150 credible designs were submitted by the Local Motors community, and the vehicle concept for XC2V was created and delivered in six months.
President Obama hailed the process as a cheaper and faster way of innovation, particularly for defense system design. "Instead of having a 10-year lead time to develop a piece of equipment with all kinds of changing specs and a moving target, if we were able to collapse the pace at which that manufacturing takes place, that could save taxpayers billions of dollars," he said in comments during the AMP announcement event.
Nice perspective Mario. It does appear the model hits on many of the hot disciplines and trend manufacturers are grappling with. Now the question remains, can they pull it off?
Sometimes I think we fail to recognize the automotive industry for the efforts they make to lead engineering in new directions. And personally I think outside of the box thinking and different ways of doing things are keys to advancing our field. I think outside of the box engineering and advancing the way we do things are the greatest ways young engineers can grow. And for people that read this article who happen to be in a management position, understanding that allowing people to try different things as well as different ways to do things is great motivation that will result in increased ownership of the design and thus increased productivity.
Very few people really like to hear, work harder and longer. I think most engineers work as hard and as long as they feel they need to. However, when given the opportunity to work more efficiently I believe a lot of engineers will begin to feel the ownership of not only the design but the process. And I think that's an area that we fail to see.
Quite often we allow the engineers to feel ownership of the design but we fail to allow engineers to feel ownership of the process. By allowing ownership not only in the design but in the process we can encourage polynomial growth rather than just linear growth.
I think that is why you see the automotive companies being such big adopters of PLM and being among the first to branch out of the traditional PDM (engineering data management) focus that marked the early adoption of that tool set. With PLM now encompassing requirements, portfolio management, and voice of the customer types of modules and functionality in an integrated platform, perhaps organizations will have more success getting to the heart of what customers' are seeking and when they're seeking it and letting that guidance more effectively steer product development.
I agree with you comment. It is the streamlining and implemenation of best practices that needs to be incorporated into the R & D processes (more than ever in today's business environment) for companies to survive. Companies can no longer afford to spend months going back and forth in meetings and discussions that lead to delay.
In most of the R & D projects I have been involved in a timeline is used to monitor the progress of a project. It will tkae 3 months to tool that part. It will take 1 week to sample that part. So forth and so on. The uopfront work must also begin to work on such a timeline. We just can't afford to spend months and months up front trying to decide which product we want to give to the customers. We need to understand the market and the consumers and then build the design around them.
This is not easy. For quite often there are several different opinions of what the customers want. And what is selling in today's market because the customer wants it now, may not be selling in the marketplace by the time your product gets to market.
@jmiller: I think your observation is keen about how this process can streamline much of the back and forth that goes on with R&D projects that only serves to derail critical decisions and push companies off their engineering schedules and time-to-market deadlines. While I don't believe for an instance that major automotive companies or other sectors can effectively embrace such a model for large-scale production, there are certainly best practices to be gleaned and work to be done to integrate some of the more effective processes and disciplines from crowdsourcing and open development into traditional R&D and engineering practices.
What I love best about this is the way it follows a strict timeline and decisions have to be made. It's not like they had 20 meetings after the decision was made to decide to make the decision they all agreed on in the beginning. Once the votes are in they proceed. This allows the quick timeline. I don't know if there's anything more annoying to an engineer than having to wait for a decision to be made regarding a design decision.
Agreed, not the most sleek and aerodyanmic, Doug, but remember, one is a military vehicle and the other an off-road vehicle. Ugly, but camel-cool for those markets!
It is certainly an interesting model and one I'm sure the big guys will keep their eye on. Local Motors isn't trying to gear up to mass production format--they are committed to limited run vehicles, designed by the greater design community, and will only produce 2,000 of each car model.
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