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Science-Technology
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Title: The third industrial revolution
Source: The Economist
URL Source: http://www.economist.com/node/21553017
Published: Apr 22, 2012
Author: The Economist
Post Date: 2012-04-22 17:36:56 by jwpegler
Keywords: None
Views: 37713
Comments: 81

The digitisation of manufacturing will transform the way goods are made—and change the politics of jobs too

THE first industrial revolution began in Britain in the late 18th century, with the mechanisation of the textile industry. Tasks previously done laboriously by hand in hundreds of weavers’ cottages were brought together in a single cotton mill, and the factory was born. The second industrial revolution came in the early 20th century, when Henry Ford mastered the moving assembly line and ushered in the age of mass production. The first two industrial revolutions made people richer and more urban. Now a third revolution is under way. Manufacturing is going digital. As this week’s special report argues, this could change not just business, but much else besides.

A number of remarkable technologies are converging: clever software, novel materials, more dexterous robots, new processes (notably three-dimensional printing) and a whole range of web-based services. The factory of the past was based on cranking out zillions of identical products: Ford famously said that car-buyers could have any colour they liked, as long as it was black. But the cost of producing much smaller batches of a wider variety, with each product tailored precisely to each customer’s whims, is falling. The factory of the future will focus on mass customisation—and may look more like those weavers’ cottages than Ford’s assembly line.

The old way of making things involved taking lots of parts and screwing or welding them together. Now a product can be designed on a computer and “printed” on a 3D printer, which creates a solid object by building up successive layers of material. The digital design can be tweaked with a few mouseclicks. The 3D printer can run unattended, and can make many things which are too complex for a traditional factory to handle. In time, these amazing machines may be able to make almost anything, anywhere—from your garage to an African village.

The applications of 3D printing are especially mind-boggling. Already, hearing aids and high-tech parts of military jets are being printed in customised shapes. The geography of supply chains will change. An engineer working in the middle of a desert who finds he lacks a certain tool no longer has to have it delivered from the nearest city. He can simply download the design and print it. The days when projects ground to a halt for want of a piece of kit, or when customers complained that they could no longer find spare parts for things they had bought, will one day seem quaint.

Other changes are nearly as momentous. New materials are lighter, stronger and more durable than the old ones. Carbon fibre is replacing steel and aluminium in products ranging from aeroplanes to mountain bikes. New techniques let engineers shape objects at a tiny scale. Nanotechnology is giving products enhanced features, such as bandages that help heal cuts, engines that run more efficiently and crockery that cleans more easily. Genetically engineered viruses are being developed to make items such as batteries. And with the internet allowing ever more designers to collaborate on new products, the barriers to entry are falling. Ford needed heaps of capital to build his colossal River Rouge factory; his modern equivalent can start with little besides a laptop and a hunger to invent.

Like all revolutions, this one will be disruptive. Digital technology has already rocked the media and retailing industries, just as cotton mills crushed hand looms and the Model T put farriers out of work. Many people will look at the factories of the future and shudder. They will not be full of grimy machines manned by men in oily overalls. Many will be squeaky clean—and almost deserted. Some carmakers already produce twice as many vehicles per employee as they did only a decade or so ago. Most jobs will not be on the factory floor but in the offices nearby, which will be full of designers, engineers, IT specialists, logistics experts, marketing staff and other professionals. The manufacturing jobs of the future will require more skills. Many dull, repetitive tasks will become obsolete: you no longer need riveters when a product has no rivets.

The revolution will affect not only how things are made, but where. Factories used to move to low-wage countries to curb labour costs. But labour costs are growing less and less important: a $499 first-generation iPad included only about $33 of manufacturing labour, of which the final assembly in China accounted for just $8. Offshore production is increasingly moving back to rich countries not because Chinese wages are rising, but because companies now want to be closer to their customers so that they can respond more quickly to changes in demand. And some products are so sophisticated that it helps to have the people who design them and the people who make them in the same place. The Boston Consulting Group reckons that in areas such as transport, computers, fabricated metals and machinery, 10-30% of the goods that America now imports from China could be made at home by 2020, boosting American output by $20 billion-55 billion a year.

The shock of the new

Consumers will have little difficulty adapting to the new age of better products, swiftly delivered. Governments, however, may find it harder. Their instinct is to protect industries and companies that already exist, not the upstarts that would destroy them. They shower old factories with subsidies and bully bosses who want to move production abroad. They spend billions backing the new technologies which they, in their wisdom, think will prevail. And they cling to a romantic belief that manufacturing is superior to services, let alone finance.

None of this makes sense. The lines between manufacturing and services are blurring. Rolls-Royce no longer sells jet engines; it sells the hours that each engine is actually thrusting an aeroplane through the sky. Governments have always been lousy at picking winners, and they are likely to become more so, as legions of entrepreneurs and tinkerers swap designs online, turn them into products at home and market them globally from a garage. As the revolution rages, governments should stick to the basics: better schools for a skilled workforce, clear rules and a level playing field for enterprises of all kinds.

Leave the rest to the revolutionaries.

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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 32.

#9. To: jwpegler (#0)

You are one of the best posters around. And you chose to post this article that is largely filled with lies.

I shall be back later to discuss my perspective in some detail.

buckeroo  posted on  2012-04-22   18:28:51 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#11. To: buckeroo (#9)

you chose to post this article that is largely filled with lies.

The article I posted is factual.

Over the last 30 years, we've digitized: mail; the address book; the library; books; the phone; the phone book; music; movies; money, and more... and we've also enhanced all of these in ways that no one predicted, i.e., with global search...

We are on the verge of digitizing manufacturing.

In the future, computer technology + nano-technology will combine to usher in the digital manufacturing age.

I'm 53. I've had people in my family die at 75 to 95. I'm hoping that these technologies will help me get to 95 and beyond so that I can see what develops.

jwpegler  posted on  2012-04-22   18:47:06 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#22. To: jwpegler (#11)

The article I posted is factual.

No, it isn't unless discussing Social Darwinism and Marx/Engels Communism with a wee bit of Freudian psycho-babble.

The first Industrial Revolution was created in America that was later used in England to enslave people into the communion of factory workers receiving a pittance for their labor.

The second Industrial Revolution was created in America because of WW2.

The third Industrial Revolution has already elapsed into cheap social networks for methods of non-productivity and methods of social decay. It has already created government control about individual creativity non-consistent with laws and regulations that are already the anti-thesis of the foundations fro and about the American nation.

buckeroo  posted on  2012-04-22   20:09:05 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#23. To: buckeroo (#22)

No, it isn't unless discussing Social Darwinism and Marx/Engels Communism with a wee bit of Freudian psycho-babble

I'm just trying to discuss a really interesting technology and why it is going to replace an entrenched business process.

Marx, Darwin... they were early 20th century. They had no idea what digitization even was, let alone what it could achieve by itself let alone the possibilities combined with nano-technology.

jwpegler  posted on  2012-04-22   20:28:24 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#24. To: jwpegler (#23)

I'm just trying to discuss a really interesting technology and why it is going to replace an entrenched business process.

No, it won't because simultaneously with new technologies in America and around the world there is a GROWING urge by governments to control the same. Every other day, you hear a whisper of how governments can control you and family and just about everything that is based on the digital revolution.

Marx, Darwin... they were early 20th century. They had no idea what digitization even was, let alone what it could achieve by itself let alone the possibilities combined with nano-technology.

True, but their ideas are ingrained in modern science, government and the stalwart authoritarian idiots that run and embrace the major political parties to create an atmosphere of no-change while the popular status-quo reigns the governance of new technologies.

It is a never-ending-story; it always has been and technologies MUST be quelled before the minions realize there are other ideas about the way they live and their bastard overlords that control the show.

buckeroo  posted on  2012-04-22   21:33:52 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#28. To: buckeroo (#24)

Every other day, you hear a whisper of how governments can control you and family and just about everything that is based on the digital revolution.

Digital technologies have done more to free people than to enslave them.

30 years ago we were slaves to the bank teller, government granted phone monopoly, 2 local newspapers, 3 government licensed broadcast networks, and more...

Every part of our lives that has been disrupted by digital technologies is orders of magnitude better than it was previously.

Sure, government is trying to control this, just like they try to control everything else.

The distributed and global nature of digital networks makes it inherently uncontrollable. Sure, they'll try, but smart people will always be able to create technologies to stay several steps ahead of the idiot politicians and bureaucrats.

jwpegler  posted on  2012-04-23   19:59:50 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#32. To: jwpegler (#28)

Sure, they'll try, but smart people will always be able to create technologies to stay several steps ahead of the idiot politicians and bureaucrats.

Good post, I have been following this technology for 20+ years, since the first laminated process was developed. And you are right, breakthroughs in technology have been an economic benefit to mankind. Manufacturing jobs will go the way of farming jobs -- from 50% of the population in 1920 to less than 3% today, due to the technology that revolutionized farming -- the tractor, chemical farming, milking machines, CO2 refrigeration, and transportation, etc. Freed from the land (often enough by force during the Great Oppression), men poured into factories to produce all the products we take for granted, making us all more comfortable, and working fewer hours to boot.

The factory has already changed dramatically in the last 30 years, and now jobbers, like machinists, will find themselves obsolete as the revolution in materials and "replicators" take over. Just as there are many small shops providing computer related services today, many smaller local manufacturers will be viable with this technology. Patent law will be the biggest barrier to entry for manufacturing with 3D digital technology, and that's the racket that the looters have been working on for the last several decades.

BTW, your quote is a grave mistake; you are underestimating the enemy. The Marxists centralizers have been doing very well over the last century. They have plenty of very talented (and wealthy) people who believe in their system working for them. There are no communications they can't listen in on, they don't even have to physically tap your landline phone anymore to listen in on it. I wouldn't trust bitcoin, in fact I believe it is a stalking horse to eliminate cash transactions. Unless there is a sea change in the acceptance of the overpopulation meme, the vast majority of humanity will be herded (and slaughtered) like cattle using technology to sterilize, kill, and control them.

Those who think that the Soviet Union, or even the NAZI's, failed have not taken a good look at the world today.

Anthem  posted on  2012-04-23   23:49:19 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


Replies to Comment # 32.

#33. To: Anthem (#32)

BTW, your quote is a grave mistake; you are underestimating the enemy. The Marxists centralizers have been doing very well over the last century. They have plenty of very talented (and wealthy) people who believe in their system working for them. There are no communications they can't listen in on, they don't even have to physically tap your landline phone anymore to listen in on it. I wouldn't trust bitcoin, in fact I believe it is a stalking horse to eliminate cash transactions. Unless there is a sea change in the acceptance of the overpopulation meme, the vast majority of humanity will be herded (and slaughtered) like cattle using technology to sterilize, kill, and control them.

Those who think that the Soviet Union, or even the NAZI's, failed have not taken a good look at the world today.

So you SAY.

But your credulous acceptance of the meme that will be one of the main means to herd people around belies your sincerity and truthfulness.

The so called "ECO" movement is a TOOL of GLOBAL TYRANNY, and YOU eat it up.

Why would that be "citizen"?

Mad Dog  posted on  2012-04-24 02:58:18 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#45. To: Anthem (#32) (Edited)

you are underestimating the enemy

Actually, you are over estimating the enemy. The enemy is not dead, but they are struggling.

In a closed nation, tyrants can very quickly gain control and do whatever they want.

We don't live in closed society any longer.

Let the U.S. government disconnect us from the global internet. Do you think that people will just roll over and play dead???

NO, people's livelihoods depend on the internet. No offense, because I don't know how old you are, so perhaps you don't understand this. If Obama (or anyone else) tried to take control of the internet there would be a revolution.

We've just seen it with PIPA. Politicians on both sides (including golden-haired boy Rubio) supported it. They all had to quickly change their positions because of the outrage that they received.

The Internet is air to the digital economy.

Yes, the bastard politicians will continue to try to control everything. But's it's not 1917 anymore. They cannot shut off the free-flow of information. The free-flow of information is their downfall.

It's much easier to prevent freedom than it is to take it away.

jwpegler  posted on  2012-04-24 17:38:24 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


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