Future manufacturing will be shaped by the consumer's desire for individually-tailored products that can be created quickly and on the spot, a futurist told an audience of engineers at this week's Medical Design & Manufacturing West Show.
"The future of manufacturing is local," said Thomas Frey, senior futurist for the DaVinci Institute. "It's hyper-individualized. It's hyper-customizable, with built-in electronics connected to the Web."
By 2030, the marketplace will be heavily influenced by the rise of 3D printing, Frey said. He cited the growing ability of manufacturers to create clothing, housing, food, shoes, and even pharmaceuticals using 3D printers. The capabilities for such systems are in the works today, he said, as researchers develop printers that can make products from plastics, ceramics, concrete, metals, and biological structures.
"You'll get your body scanned and a 3D printer will print your clothes," he told the audience. "Some day in the future, if you get tired of your house, you could grind it up and reprint it." He added that the first 3D-printed house is expected to be completed as soon as 2014.
Food producers will make similarly profound changes, Frey said. Today's easily damaged apples will be replaced by "perfect apples" from 3D printers using biological materials. The same will hold true for many other types of food. "Think of the printer that can first print the soup can, and then print the soup that goes inside it," he said.
Virtually all of the those new products will also be endowed with intelligence, Frey said, adding that by 2020, 50 billion "things" are expected to be connected to the so-called "Internet of Things."
The rise of such new manufacturing techniques will also have a dramatic effect on the workforce, Frey explained. Whereas today's 30-year-old worker has typically had 11 jobs during his or her lifetime, 30-year-olds in 2030 will have worked on 200 to 300 "projects." Such projects will be much shorter in duration than today's jobs, and will be set up around industries such as nano-tech, bio-tech, photonics, and gaming. Frey compared that work phenomenon to today's movie industry, where actors, producers, directors, and camera crews move from movie to movie, and then from production company to production company. He described such practices as more "organic" than today's corporate hiring practices.
For employees, the result could be a trend toward so-called "co-working spaces," where "people looking for that next temporary gig" will gather in offices that will provide more social contact than home setups. He compared that to the current trend toward remote employees working at public coffee houses. The co-working spaces, however, would be quieter and better suited to computerized work than today's coffee houses.
Frey added that the inevitable move toward automation needn't concern workers. He said that for every job eliminated by the Internet, 2.6 new jobs will be created.
The bottom line is that manufacturers must be flexible, ready to customize, and prepared to move to market faster. "If your next project is not aligned with the problems, needs, and desires of the future, the future is going to kill it."
Dave, you are correct, the futurist is just projecting trends. They really aren't that important. No one is going to do something based on what a futurist says. Mostly they publish books and give talks. That's alright. People like to read and listen. It's just harmless fun. I guarntee you that professional investors do not listen to them.
The things that happen (faster computers, cell phones, etc.) depend on people (engineers and scientists) developing new technologies and ways to apply and produce those technologies. Take the cell phone. It really needed a good low power CPU to power it. That is the ARM processor. That processor architecture was developed in the UK for an early personal computer called the Acorn (ARM originally stood for Acorn Risk Machine) in the early 1980s. After a long period of time, it came to the fore in the cell phone. I had an early smart phone which used an Intel processor. It was not bad, but battery life was limited and it was more of a hand held PC than a phone. But I digress,
As for the 3D printing, it will be significant for customized or mass customization products. In marketing they talk about three classes of product. Mass market (high volume, lower value) prodcuts, custom products (individual, very expensive) and mass customized. This last is kind of a goal. The main prodcuts we have in this category now are automobiles. Auto manufacurers have the ability to vary the options and features at a customer's request. Interestingly in the US we don't often take advantage of this. In Europe they do all the time. 3D printing brings this ability to lower value products where some variation might be useful. The big question is, why would I want to. How many things do you buy that you want to customize in design? Like cars in the US, do you really want to wait days, weeks or months for it?
Wow, Cabe, that 3D burrito printer is something else. But I think I prefer my burritos handmade, preferably in one of the taquerias I used to frequent when I lived in San Francisco. It will be awhile before I trust a robot to make me something delicious! (I do trust my blender to make me a delicious margarita, though, as long as I can put in the ingredients first. :))
Dave, I see your point. I marvel at the innovation of 3D printing and the possibilities, but I balk at the idea of a 3D printed house. Will that be structurally sound? Really? Perhaps somewhere down the line in the far-off future, yes, but for now I'm much happier with good old cement or wood surrounding me. Maybe I'm just a brick and mortar kind of gal.
I see your point though, with people only at jobs for 2.4 years before moving on, how is there any long term progress. But I would like to point out that the cell/smartphone exploded in development surpassing advancement of most everything else. The 3D printer is truly stirring everyone's mind in a similar way. It may just be the next big thing.
Okay, I'm sure that 3D printing will play a bigger role 17 years from now than it does today. And the trend away from stable employment towards short-term gigs will probably continue.
But this game of taking current trends, projecting them to absurd extremes, and calling it futurism, should be taken for what it is: a game.
Where's my flying car? Why can't I book an inexpensive vacation to the moon? How come I don't have a mini-nuclear power plant in my basement? Futurists predicted all of these things.
By the way, is the statistic about typical Americans holding 11 jobs by age 30 correct? I entered the labor force when I was 15, and was on my 8th job when I turned 30. (That was in 2009, so we're not talking about the "good old days," either). It always seemed like that was more jobs than most people.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Americans born between 1957 and 1964 held an average of 11.3 jobs between the ages of 18 and 46, with about half of those jobs being held between the ages of 18 and 24. That would mean about 7 jobs by age 30, which fits with my experience.
At any rate, I don't think I'll hold my breath for a 3D-printed apple or a 3D-printed can of soup. I'll give Mr. Frey extra points for creativity, though.
A new book by Thomas Edison's great-grandniece takes on the notion that he was a lone-wolf inventor and replaces it with an image of a man who ascribed great value to the ideas of colleagues.
In response to rising interest in autonomous vehicles, the federal government has called upon states not to authorize operation of self-driving cars, except for the purpose of testing.
With LEDs dropping in price virtually every year, automakers have begun employing them, not only on luxury vehicles, but on entry-level models, as well.
Using almost 200 light-emitting diodes in the front and back of the new 2014 CTS, Cadillac designers are showing how LEDs can change the character of a vehicle.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 5
Early in my career, I worked as a draftsman and remember the days of drawing on vellum with numbered pencils and Mylar with plastic lead. This was a fun experience in the sense that I ...
I've been using workstations for more than 10 years and love finding ways to get more performance from my system. With demanding professional applications that require more power each ...
A lasting memory from my first job as an engineer in an auto assembly plant is standing on hard concrete at six in the morning, vending-machine coffee clutched in hand, listening to ...
For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
To save this item to your list of favorite Design News content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
If you found this interesting or useful, please use the links to the services below to share it with other readers. You will need a free account with each service to share an item via that service.
Tweet This
23 
