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Storing of raw materials is not a huge problem, especially if they are distributed across the globe. Also, manufacturing and distribution can happen at smaller
by kumarvvr 5y ago
Storing of raw materials is not a huge problem, especially if they are distributed across the globe.
Also, manufacturing and distribution can happen at smaller geographical areas rather than country or continent wide areas. I think the overall impact of distributed manufacture and supply is lesser than concentrated systems.
Also, having a distributed system allows for greater innovation and investment into eco-friendly and sustainable processess. It is far easier to forget about the pollution happening halfway across the world, in a dictatorship that suppresses news than that happening in your backyard.
- irjustin 5y agoI'm not trying to argue against the eco-friendly nature and overall sustainability. I used to live in Hong Kong from 2013-2015 and was directly connected to 2 startups that wanted to do this w/ 3d printing at the heart. One was a "container deployment" an ultra mini-manufacturing that fits inside a container that you would deploy in a specific city by "just hooking up power". Another was more a regional play, build a local factory via multi-container sets. Like how Starbucks deploys a store with X number of containers. They did not work for the reasons stated above combined w/ 3d printing isn't that great. Except in high margin items, you'll never make up for the increased infrastructure cost. The local land and labor costs are non-trivial. One thought experiment is setup manufacturing in East coast & West coast. If one coast decreases in demand, what happens? Likely have excess supply, which then requires storage or shipping it to the other coast. Cost is the ultimate driver and eco-friendly solutions invariably drive costs up because they lack economies of scale. So while agree with your goal, it doesn't work in the real world.