Forget about your image of assembly lines churning out identical products. The factory of the future is likely to be the opposite of mass production.
Mass customization of consumer products has been spreading slowly for nearly two decades. One recent example comes from Nike, which launched NIKEiD in 2012, an online service allowing consumers to create a unique pair of sneakers by picking their own colors, designs and performance features on certain shoe models. Customers pay a big premium for that kind of customization.
Now, mass customization appears to be entering a new phase in which it can be applied to a broader range of goods and industries, including consumer electronics, cars, health care and even food. The challenge for mass customization always comes down to this simple question: How do manufacturers make tailored products cost effectively?
The answer, says Jeff Nedwick, director of Product Management & Strategy, in the automotive strategy team of business software maker Infor, comes from a combination of new technologies such as 3D printing, new types of job skills and new ways of analyzing information collected from connected devices. These technologies and trends will make it easier to create customization value for the consumer as well as control costs for the producer.
“What customers are demanding are ever more complicated and ever more customized products,” says Nedwick. Even in industries like automotive, where mass production was born, “it’s less one-size-fits-all and more a made-to-order model.”
Nedwick has worked at the intersection of technology and the automotive industry for 30 years at companies like Chrysler and IBM. He sees a near future where instead of fixed-tooling assembly lines that produce high volumes of the same thing, manufacturing will shift more to differentiation like the apparel industry has done. Factory tools will be as sophisticated as those used in mass production, but the outputs will be more handcrafted and bespoke. In addition, as customization spreads, “you’ll see more human interaction.”
The change is evident in the way robotics is used. Industrial robots, as Nedwick points out, have been part of automotive factories for decades. But surprisingly, in a custom world, they aren’t the only option. “Mercedes Benz has actually scaled back on robotics,” he says. Instead, as companies turn to more low-volume models, “they’re going in the other direction — they’re effectively replacing them with craftsmen.”
Another manufacturing expert at Infor, Andrew Kinder, vice president of Industry & Solution Strategy, echoes that idea. Contrary to the notion that automation automatically destroys jobs, Kinder argues that in industries like automotive and high tech, you’ll see robots working hand in hand with production people on the plant floor. “We have to put the human element back into the story,” he says.
New technology will also create new kinds of jobs. The factory of the future will require experts in 3D printing, which helps lower the cost of customization. Originally limited to prototype builds, today’s 3D printing technology can now support a wide variety of materials -including metals — that bring 3D printing to mainstream production. The costs of hard tooling are fixed and squeeze profit margins at low volumes, but the flexibility of 3D printing reduces the high overhead of fixed tooling. “It isn’t just a nice to have, it is required,” says Nedwick.
What’s more, the applications of industrial-strength 3D printing extend beyond the plant floor. In the not too distant future, a warehouse of parts could be replaced with a printer. “Instead of holding tools and spare parts physically,” says Kinder, “you can hold these designs virtually and print them on demand.”
If the tools of custom manufacturing are challenging, managing information seems mind- boggling. When a couple of models of cars, or bikes, or washing machines, are replaced with hundreds or possibly thousands of options, every aspect of plant management — from inventory to supply chain, to HR, to order systems — expands exponentially as well. And the expansion isn’t only in ledgers; it’s in physical objects — in things.
And that’s where the Internet of Things (IoT) comes into play. Manufacturers are increasingly interested in the use of low-cost sensors attached to machines that can make it cheaper and easier to collect performance data to aid preventive maintenance.
“When you’re looking at IoT most people still focus on squeezing out some new efficiencies,” says Kinder. “The more exciting conversations are when you use the connectivity to create new services for your customers; to create a revenue stream that didn’t exist before.”
Here too, cars are in the vanguard — cars not just as vehicles but platforms. Google and Apple are getting into the automotive business, says Nedwick, not to make money by building cars, but to sell new services and applications from the data generated by the car.
“When you’re looking at IoT most people still focus on squeezing out some new efficiencies. The more exciting conversations are when you use the connectivity to create new services for your customers.” — Andrew Kinder, Vice President of Industry & Solution Strategy, Infor.
Ironically enough, the last time Nedwick bought a car he had to settle for one that was on the dealer’s floor. “I couldn’t get the combination of color and packages I wanted,” he says. “I just accepted it.” But in the future he expects not only to get the car he wants, “they’ll actually be able to build a vehicle to my specific requirements and even accommodate last minute changes.”
Finally, when thinking about the factory of the future, don’t expect it to be where your factory is now, says Kinder. The extreme end of the make-to-order spectrum is where your factory is a mobile production unit placed on or near your customer site, making products to order when and where your customer needs it.
“There are already examples of this in the animal feed industry where formulations are blended on site for farmers to the precise health and nutrition needs of their animals,” he says.
