by Theodore Kinni
We’ve been treated to various versions of manufacturing in the past couple of decades. There’s manufacturing as an exercise in financial arbitrage — a link in a global supply chain that is reforged whenever and wherever people will do more work for less pay. There’s the maker movement, populated by hordes of entrepreneurs laboring away in shared shops. There’s Industry 4.0, where we inefficient humans need not apply. There’s the revitalized rust belt, polished to a mirror’s shine with tariffs. And now there’s Tuck School of Business professor Richard D’Aveni’s vision of manufacturing, detailed at length in The Pan-Industrial Revolution, a book that starts out strong but eventually bogs down in speculation.
D’Aveni’s version of manufacturing could be labeled “when dinosaurs rule the Earth once more.” He thinks that hulking tyrannosaurs like battered General Electric are going to rise up and roar in the years ahead. If he’s right, the Dow Jones Industrial Average might actually become industrial again.
D’Aveni weaves this new vision on an intricate loom. Its weft is composed of additive manufacturing (AM), which includes all the evolving forms of 3D printing in combination with other production technologies, such as lasers and robotics; its warp is digitized, AI-powered management systems and platforms.
AM is a game-changing family of technologies, and D’Aveni illustrates them with a host of gee-whiz examples. Lockheed Martin can 3D-print the entire body and interior of its 12-ton, 50-foot-long F-35 fighter jets in about three months, compared with the two to three years it takes to make them using traditional technologies. (It’s now working to cut production time to three weeks.) Electronics parts supplier Lite-On is using 3D printers to make 15 million smartphone antennas annually, demonstrating the technology’s potential for cost-effective mass production. The medical device company Stryker, which is already 3D-printing joint implants, is developing machines that can be installed in hospitals to produce customized implants while surgeons and patients wait. Local Motors has demonstrated its ability to 3D-print a car — reducing the number of parts needed from 30,000 to 50. Read the rest here.
D’Aveni’s version of manufacturing could be labeled “when dinosaurs rule the Earth once more.” He thinks that hulking tyrannosaurs like battered General Electric are going to rise up and roar in the years ahead. If he’s right, the Dow Jones Industrial Average might actually become industrial again.
D’Aveni weaves this new vision on an intricate loom. Its weft is composed of additive manufacturing (AM), which includes all the evolving forms of 3D printing in combination with other production technologies, such as lasers and robotics; its warp is digitized, AI-powered management systems and platforms.
AM is a game-changing family of technologies, and D’Aveni illustrates them with a host of gee-whiz examples. Lockheed Martin can 3D-print the entire body and interior of its 12-ton, 50-foot-long F-35 fighter jets in about three months, compared with the two to three years it takes to make them using traditional technologies. (It’s now working to cut production time to three weeks.) Electronics parts supplier Lite-On is using 3D printers to make 15 million smartphone antennas annually, demonstrating the technology’s potential for cost-effective mass production. The medical device company Stryker, which is already 3D-printing joint implants, is developing machines that can be installed in hospitals to produce customized implants while surgeons and patients wait. Local Motors has demonstrated its ability to 3D-print a car — reducing the number of parts needed from 30,000 to 50. Read the rest here.
No comments:
Post a Comment