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"Re-inventing manufacturing" almost sounds like the mission statement of a Technocrat or Futurist looking to capture the utopian dream. Indeed, but why can't we? After all, Henry Ford's assembly line is a pretty old concept. Yes, certainly we have made incremental advances and yet, what about the proverbial "OMG" revolutionary innovations, and "leap-frogging" type paradigms shifts in the manufacturing sector? I guess we are still waiting for those aren't we? We don't have Star Trek assimilation machines yet, I suppose someday we will, and I hope the US is the nation to bring such dreams to fruition.
There was an interesting talk given by Regina Dugan of DARPA on December 14, 2011 for the engineering students and social studies students at MIT titled; "Just Make It" which of course is a "take-off" literally on the Nike Brand theme; Just Do It! - in this talk she mentions an aircraft manufacturing company which works without assembly lines and has been able to increase time to build from start to finish by a factor of 2. Each aircraft stays put, the folks working on it move. Okay so, that makes sense, and Rolls Royce and other high-end auto manufacturers use similar techniques, as to many of the hand-crafted high-end specialty cars.
Why was she giving this talk? Simple; we beat the German's in WWII due to our manufacturing abilities. Today, China can easily out produce us, so are we going to make the same mistake as the Germans did in WWII, in a future war with an industrial power that can out produce us? Well, are we? How can you say the answer is yes or no; you can't and that's one more reason manufacturing is so vital to US interests, on top of the importance of jobs, trade flows, and GDP growth. "A nation lives well, when it produces well," she reminds us, and quoted Adam Smith's warning about not relying on military resources to make our defense systems.
Now then, on the official "White House Blog" there was a posting back on June 24, 2011 by Erin Lindsay titled; "President Obama Launches Advanced Manufacturing Partnership." This appeared just after President Obama gave a speech at Carnegie Mellon University. Manufacturing and production are key to any advanced civilization, and we here in the US like to think we are the most advanced civilization of all.
Okay so, rather than running redline down the Six Sigma, TQM, and Finite Capacity Scheduling Model assembly line - why not really mix things up? Why not turn the three story assembly floor into a robotic Rubik's Cube factory floor, which would operate like a robotic parking structure. An AI mathematical system could keep the system at optimum, and it would allow for all sorts of possibilities? Well, why not think on that for the next five-minutes and shoot me an email if you have any ideas along this line of thinking?
Lance Winslow is the author on a new series of ebooks on Military Technologies. Lance is also the Founder of The Online Think Tank at http://www.worldthinktank.net/
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