From Mass Production to Mass Customisation
A few years back if Chandrashekhar [industrial product designer] wanted to buy a tote bag for gifting to his business associates he would have two options — buy from a local retailer or hook up online to buy from an online retailer, being a creative person, Chandrashekhar knew that he could improve significantly over the existing products in the market, if only he had access to a good Maker, today Chandrashekhar is doing exactly that, using Direct Create to connect with Upcycler — Gautam, a Designer/Maker and owner of brand ‘Jaggery’, they are collaborating to create a new product that’s going to be used by Chandrashekhar for his gifting and depending on the success of the new product, Jaggery might also plan to put it under regular production to be sold as a co-creation product. Within a short span of 30 days and at a fractional cost, two product designers were able to collaborate and build a new product ready for global market- that’s the power of tech enabled collaboration. Gautam is based out of Delhi while Chandrashekhar is 1000 km away in Pune, imagine if this was New York & Banaras or Sydney & Jaipur. For tech enabled collaborations and co-creations - distances only add to the shipping costs, which is fractional when compared with travel and time costs — its a whole new possibility for Innovation.
A quick look back shows that ; while the 20th Century flourished with rapid industrialisation that fuelled globalisation ; internet today is powering the last mile of industrialisation, with a just in time supply chain and lean manufacturing. The last round of industrial process upgrades, spilled into the 21st century but the advent of the 21st century has also seen a rapid evolution of another generation of businesses. Telecom gave way to technology and technology is quickly being replaced with community. Today the largest hotel room inventory holder in the world is not a 20th century hospitality giant but its a 7 year old community focused startup — Airbnb, the largest taxi service in the world is not any one from the 20th century but a 7 year old startup- Uber. Today more shares and conversations are done on social platforms like Facebook or Whatsapp than across the yesteryears messaging platforms. The changing tide of time and evolution of ‘personal’ or ‘individual’ is rapidly transforming the entire consumption landscape.
It looks like the storm that hit a few blocks early; is going to hit the rest as well — several giants have emerged from the transitional storm between snail mail to email. It is already clear that startup behemoths like Amazon or Alibaba are going to be transitional leaders but while they have mastered the transitional space they lack the emerging ‘collaboration’ DNA in their core structures [ unless off course they rapidly transform!]— the transitional leaders failed to recognise the Power of the Individual. It is a fact that in the current emerging space there is no difference between a buyer- seller and they both can seamlessly interchange and connect with people for almost everything .
“the gradual shift from mass production to mass customisation is a huge transition, if viewed from the DNA of the Industrial Movement”
While the consumer space was fighting through its transitional blues, another movement is shaking up the supply side of the Consumption Ecosystem- Mass Customisation, the same technology that’s shaken up the Consumer side of the ecosystem, has shaken up the manufacturers as well.
The gradual shift from mass production to mass customisation is a huge transition, if viewed from the DNA of the Industrial Movement. It actually requires industries to unlearn the entire process of centralisation and discover distributed thinking, distributed manufacturing and distributed delivery systems. What we are hearing from the pundits of Mass Customisation is a call for the robots and machines to make this transition possible, the loud call for the 3D printing revolution or the creation of 500 million robots to fill the supply side shortfall for customisation by 2020, as result of this “Guru speak” on Mass Customisation industry is rushing in with war-chests to build the robot supply pipeline.
While there is merit in the echo and resulting tremors, there is also a clear sign of struggle — the Industrial producers refusing to really understand whats going on under the social revolution, the power for every individual to be reached directly or have a voice and be heard globally touches the very essence of social — global -economic- structuring that’s been created over last 100 years. Democracy today has a completely new meaning — if its still measured as peoples choice! The new social order is playing way beyond national boundaries and beyond religious fractions, the 1 billion Facebook users are truly global, more so than any Industrial era corporation, they can vote on issues, they can communicate in their languages and they can be reached directly — personally. This changes everything!
“the plumbing lines that connect them and create the worlds first truly global product creation pipeline, capable of plugging in any one who can make, design into the network and make available to anyone else who needs them”
So while there is truly a movement to mass customisation and that’s a result of natural progression, from the technology already available today there is a solution to evolve a new consumer order that’s missing form the popular conversation — Mass Customisation powered by the 1 billion Makers that inhabit the planet today. Instead of putting our hope on an army of robots which we don’t have today- what if we were to put our hopes on the army of 1 billion makers that we do have today across the world. These are technologist, roboticists, farmers, weavers, artisans, craftsmen — people who make things by hand and can learn and can customise from the word GO! What’s missing!! the plumbing lines that connect them and create the world’s first truly global product creation pipeline, capable of plugging in any one who can make, design into the network and make available to anyone else who needs them, no longer would mass customisation be just adding predesigned lego bricks to make a new version of the same thing but it can be a whole new thing solving a whole new problem — Innovation powered by the mind of the world. We could be solving problems faster than ever before and create the most optimal working platform that’s going to connect our Online Social networks with Physical World’s creation ecosystem.
Note : author is the founder of DirectCreate
This post is part 1 of a 3 part series on Mass Production to Mass Customisation.
