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If you think down this path, that craftmanship needs a very fast route to market, and it's going to be a very big industry - with the capitalistic logic, you en

by petra 10y ago

If you think down this path, that craftmanship needs a very fast route to market, and it's going to be a very big industry - with the capitalistic logic, you end up with solutions like drone transport, automated machines that create custom things fast, and robots/ai to test products. And you probably also end up with manufacturing clusters doing most of the work - and not in small towns spread around, but maybe still in the US, maybe. But designers could stay local and not necessarily near factories. But not sure that does fit your ideal.

ChuckMcM 10y ago
I don't know about the speed. I do know that craftsmanship needs a big market (because the number of people who are willing to pay the extra cost are a subset of the whole market). I'm more interested in understanding three things; 1) A market maker that can create the visibility / confidence that allows a high touch bespoke market to exist (sort of eBay or Amazon or Alibaba for craft people. I thought this might be Tindie at one point but that doesn't seem to be their focus at this stage.) 2) An infrastructure/raw materials market for the craft people. I've seen this with people who do this sort of custom work that finding suppliers is a huge issue and qualifying them and working with them. 3) Tooling and engineering services, where each craftsperson requires a specific set of tools which are by definition low volume but also high tolerance precision kit. My Dad's engraving setup for example was put together with "the" engraving vice, and "the" compressor, and "the" engraving tool and bits. The company that makes all of the tooling is facilitated by an engravers guild which has a large number of members which provides an economical place for the tool manufacturer to serve, but is it possible to create a business that can make bespoke tools at a price that allows the person purchasing them to recover the costs in a reasonable amount of time? Fundamentally, I am asking whether it is possible to build a "factory" that is not so specialized that it could supply the needs of a variety of users in different activities. Could we build such a facility in a 'small town' and be able to staff it? Or put another way, what is the smallest unit of economic self sufficiency given a global shipping market. I'm having a hard time expressing this clearly but consider the following analogy/question. Let's say you have a town, SmallVille, that has a functional economy because there is a car parts factory that employs 1/3 of the working aged people. Their salaries go, in part, to shopping for groceries, haircuts, meals out, movies, etc, which employs a second third of the working aged people, and those businesses and the local governance employs the remaining third. Its a nice small town, everyone has a job, and life is good. Now historically, we've seen that car parts factory close because car parts could be made cheaper elsewhere and the entire economy of the town collapses as you get 1/3 of the population out of work and so competeing with the remaining 2/3rds for their jobs, and without that money coming in the number of services businesses that are needed goes down so there are actually fewer of the remaining jobs available, which further crushes the life out of the town. Basically without that parts plant feeding money into the town in exchange for car parts the town fails. So can we replace that car parts factory with a factory that can reasonably serve a much wider variety of needs? Can we create a nexus of production which is dynamically assignable to what ever is needed? My thesis is that if you can crack that nut, and create such a facility, then you can create a 'fractal' economy, one which is geographically distributed and yet nimble in the face of changing economic output needs. Can a car company publish a 'spec' to any of these universal factories and say "I need 600,000 door knobs like this." and get various amounts from 1k to perhaps 100K from a number of factories with good quality control that would depend only on scheduling factory time. And yes, I know this hasn't been accomplished before (hence the 'it may be impossible') and yes I've dealt with trying to get two manufacturers building the same part such that you couldn't tell which factory made the part when you were assembling systems (in that case it was front panels for NetApp filers but I'm sure there are similar stories from anyone who has built product) it is really really hard and maybe not possible. The reward though would be tremendous, a 'factory on demand' of arbitrary size would be to goods production what AWS was to information technology company production.
- petra 10y ago
  >> a 'factory on demand' of arbitrary size I can imagine a versatile manufacturing technology that has 0 setup costs(maybe 3d printing), and in the digital world it should be possible to create the same things from different people. But even with those technologies, centralization/clustering has some advantage: buying in bulk, cheaper labor, closeness to distribution, access to talent - and especially access to better technology. But what are the advantages of the SmallVille entrepreneur ? why should he invest in that business ? and how could he survive long term ?
  - ChuckMcM 10y ago
    I think for it to work we have to assume that Smallville's factory can dump output onto an efficient delivery system and pick up raw materials (perhaps subassemblies) from that same system. Whether it is rail, or dirigibles, or automated trucks. As for "Why Smallville's factory?", if I understand your question you are asking why anyone would contract with the Smallville plant for their parts over say Central City's factory? My assumption is that if all capacity is nearly equivalent (like machines are nearly equivalent in AWS) that factory choices would be based on available capacity and perhaps some risk avoidance (not have all your factories in the midwest in tornado season for example).

by petra 10y ago

ChuckMcM 10y ago

I don't know about the speed. I do know that craftsmanship needs a big market (because the number of people who are willing to pay the extra cost are a subset of the whole market). I'm more interested in understanding three things; 1) A market maker that can create the visibility / confidence that allows a high touch bespoke market to exist (sort of eBay or Amazon or Alibaba for craft people. I thought this might be Tindie at one point but that doesn't seem to be their focus at this stage.) 2) An infrastructure/raw materials market for the craft people. I've seen this with people who do this sort of custom work that finding suppliers is a huge issue and qualifying them and working with them. 3) Tooling and engineering services, where each craftsperson requires a specific set of tools which are by definition low volume but also high tolerance precision kit. My Dad's engraving setup for example was put together with "the" engraving vice, and "the" compressor, and "the" engraving tool and bits. The company that makes all of the tooling is facilitated by an engravers guild which has a large number of members which provides an economical place for the tool manufacturer to serve, but is it possible to create a business that can make bespoke tools at a price that allows the person purchasing them to recover the costs in a reasonable amount of time? Fundamentally, I am asking whether it is possible to build a "factory" that is not so specialized that it could supply the needs of a variety of users in different activities. Could we build such a facility in a 'small town' and be able to staff it? Or put another way, what is the smallest unit of economic self sufficiency given a global shipping market. I'm having a hard time expressing this clearly but consider the following analogy/question. Let's say you have a town, SmallVille, that has a functional economy because there is a car parts factory that employs 1/3 of the working aged people. Their salaries go, in part, to shopping for groceries, haircuts, meals out, movies, etc, which employs a second third of the working aged people, and those businesses and the local governance employs the remaining third. Its a nice small town, everyone has a job, and life is good. Now historically, we've seen that car parts factory close because car parts could be made cheaper elsewhere and the entire economy of the town collapses as you get 1/3 of the population out of work and so competeing with the remaining 2/3rds for their jobs, and without that money coming in the number of services businesses that are needed goes down so there are actually fewer of the remaining jobs available, which further crushes the life out of the town. Basically without that parts plant feeding money into the town in exchange for car parts the town fails. So can we replace that car parts factory with a factory that can reasonably serve a much wider variety of needs? Can we create a nexus of production which is dynamically assignable to what ever is needed? My thesis is that if you can crack that nut, and create such a facility, then you can create a 'fractal' economy, one which is geographically distributed and yet nimble in the face of changing economic output needs. Can a car company publish a 'spec' to any of these universal factories and say "I need 600,000 door knobs like this." and get various amounts from 1k to perhaps 100K from a number of factories with good quality control that would depend only on scheduling factory time. And yes, I know this hasn't been accomplished before (hence the 'it may be impossible') and yes I've dealt with trying to get two manufacturers building the same part such that you couldn't tell which factory made the part when you were assembling systems (in that case it was front panels for NetApp filers but I'm sure there are similar stories from anyone who has built product) it is really really hard and maybe not possible. The reward though would be tremendous, a 'factory on demand' of arbitrary size would be to goods production what AWS was to information technology company production.

petra 10y ago
>> a 'factory on demand' of arbitrary size I can imagine a versatile manufacturing technology that has 0 setup costs(maybe 3d printing), and in the digital world it should be possible to create the same things from different people. But even with those technologies, centralization/clustering has some advantage: buying in bulk, cheaper labor, closeness to distribution, access to talent - and especially access to better technology. But what are the advantages of the SmallVille entrepreneur ? why should he invest in that business ? and how could he survive long term ?
- ChuckMcM 10y ago
  I think for it to work we have to assume that Smallville's factory can dump output onto an efficient delivery system and pick up raw materials (perhaps subassemblies) from that same system. Whether it is rail, or dirigibles, or automated trucks. As for "Why Smallville's factory?", if I understand your question you are asking why anyone would contract with the Smallville plant for their parts over say Central City's factory? My assumption is that if all capacity is nearly equivalent (like machines are nearly equivalent in AWS) that factory choices would be based on available capacity and perhaps some risk avoidance (not have all your factories in the midwest in tornado season for example).