Manufacturing Networks, Communities and Simplifying Manufacturing Processes
Manufacturing is changing these days. The old paradigms of large factories and productions are being replaced by new ones. Collaboration, coordination, and communication on a global scale are one, if not the most, fundamental drivers behind this change.
Two years ago, I attended the CIMdata collaborative innovation and product development workshop in Louisville, KY. Two presentations that captured most of my attention were from GE FirstBuild and Local Motors. You can read more details about these presentations in my Beyond PLM blog here. The ideas I heard which resonated with my thinking about the future of manufacturing were related to manufacturing communications and relationships between companies. Micro-factory production and distributed communities are examples of the new manufacturing paradigm. The purpose of both is to simplify manufacturing processes.
Yesterday, my attention was caught this news: Avnet acquiring Dragon Innovation. I’ve been following Avnet since last year’s acquisition of element14 and Hackster.io. Here’s an interesting passage from the press release about Avnet building communities of engineers, makers and entrepreneurs:
The acquisition of Dragon Innovation further enhances Avnet’s role in developing new technology products by simplifying the manufacturing process, particularly for those projects that advance Internet of Things (IoT). Avnet’s acquisition of both Premier Farnell (which included its element14 community) and Hackster.io last year expanded the company’s reach to more than two million customers and an active community of more than 750,000 entrepreneurs, makers and engineers. In May, Avnet, through a collaboration with Dragon Innovation and Kickstarter, announced Hardware Studio, an initiative that will give creators access to expertise, tools and resources to supply, design, build and deliver their ideas to market.
The idea of building networks resonate with our vision at openBoM, that is, to connect engineers, manufacturing companies, contractors and suppliers and give them a tool to collaborate and manage manufacturing process from initial design to production orders. openBoM real-time collaboration design and production management systems, the first of its kind, will help connect people using BOM spreadsheets and email to share them, improve their ability to better perform production planning (without the pain of spreadsheets).
Our beta program for the new openBoM for production feature is about to start. You can read more, here. The openBoM for production beta will be available later this week and will give you a way to try how to release BOMs, create production orders, and release a BOM to production in a globally connected environment.
Conclusion. The new manufacturing revolution starts from tools that help manufacturing companies simplify processes and leverage internet and global connectivity to optimize the way they do design and production planning. The Internet has impacted and changed many industries. We believe, manufacturing is the next one positioned to change.
If you have questions about openBoM for production, reach out to me. I’d love to discuss how you manage part orders and planning manufacturing today. I’d like to understand and help you improve and simplify your production process with openBoM.
Best, Oleg @ openbom.com
PS. We should know each other better. If you live in a Greater Boston, please let’s have a meeting (coffee is on me). If you’re located in other places, let’s have a virtual coffee session — I will figure out how to send you a real coffee for our virtual coffee session.
