Detroit, from Mass Production to 3D Customization

Detroit was once the mecca of mass production manufacturing.  It was a boon for us because it was labor intensive and gave many Detroiters gainful and lucrative employment.  It was a boon, that is until cheaper labor in other parts of the world lured away the jobs and processes.  Now those citadels of mass production around the city are in ruins and attract photographers by the scores.

But now there's a new technology quietly creeping up on us that makes mass production manufacturing as archaic as the buggy whip.  It is 3D printing, AKA additive manufacturing.  This method, an offspring of the digital age, can literally build anything one layer at a time to exact tolerances.  Yes anything, from a musical instrument to auto parts.  And it's as inexpensive to create one piece as it is to create many.  No need anymore for the economies of scale that were essential to mass manufacturing.  An article in The Economist explains how it works.

First you call up a blueprint on your computer screen and tinker with its shape and colour where necessary. Then you press print. A machine nearby whirrs into life and builds up the object gradually, either by depositing material from a nozzle, or by selectively solidifying a thin layer of plastic or metal dust using tiny drops of glue or a tightly focused beam. Products are thus built up by progressively adding material, one layer at a time: hence the technology’s other name, additive manufacturing. Eventually the object in question—a spare part for your car, a lampshade, a violin—pops out. The beauty of the technology is that it does not need to happen in a factory. Small items can be made by a machine like a desktop printer, in the corner of an office, a shop or even a house; big items—bicycle frames, panels for cars, aircraft parts—need a larger machine, and a bit more space.

What strikes me is that 3D printing as it evolves will permit us here in Detroit to provide for some of our own needs without total reliance upon the global corporations who have taken their labor business elsewhere.

3D printing has now improved to the point that it is starting to be used to produce the finished items themselves (see article). It is already competitive with plastic injection-moulding for runs of around 1,000 items, and this figure will rise as the technology matures. And because each item is created individually, rather than from a single mould, each can be made slightly differently at almost no extra cost. Mass production could, in short, give way to mass customisation for all kinds of products, from shoes to spectacles to kitchenware.

 If you can design something on a computer, you can 3D it.  How's that for an impetus for innovation.  You need a single item?  Build it.  More people ask for it?  "Print" some more.  Engineers and designers are already collaborating on open-source products, much like computer programmers have been doing for years.

A technological change so profound will reset the economics of manufacturing. Some believe it will decentralise the business completely, reversing the urbanisation that accompanies industrialisation. There will be no need for factories, goes the logic, when every village has a fabricator that can produce items when needed.

Detroit was once the fabricator of products such as stoves and automobiles for the entire world.  With the rapidly developing technology of 3D printing, we should have no problem providing ourselves with what we need.