Manufacturing megatrends that will change your world

Following is an article from GIL Community (the Global Community of Growth, Innovation and Leadership), subscribe to the community at: www.gilcommunity.com to read more articles like this - written by Paul Tate.

A quick snapshot of the companies listed in the Fortune 500 ten years ago is a sobering exercise. Over half of those organizations have now either disappeared off the list, or no longer exist, at least in their original form, notes Frost and Sullivan vice president and Megatrends analyst Richard Sear.

So how do you avoid becoming one of the world’s lost companies over the next ten years?

The most critical role any business leader must perform is to identify and plan a successful path forward for the future of the enterprise. That means identifying and understanding the trends that are going to transform your business in the years ahead.

The problem is that anticipating the future in today’s world, where the speed of change is so rapid and sudden, innovative disruptions are so common, may seem like an impossible task.

There are essentially two approaches to grappling with this difficult task. The first is simply to sit back and allow new technology and business models to converge into your business and then react as best as you can. The second is a proactive stance to understand and embrace change, and therefore be in a position to capture growth opportunities faster and more fully. What’s your risk profile?

Frost and Sullivan’s Sear has identified a series of global megatrends that he believes are set to fundamentally transform the world we live in over the next decade or so -- and which will have a major impact on the future of manufacturing and its growth prospects.

They are:

• The City as a Customer: The emergence of new megacities around the world, especially in Asia and Latin America, linked by highly urbanized corridors of development. These will become the world’s key centers of economic growth, creating new and different markets for manufactured products and creating significant logistics challenges for delivery to customers.
• Social Change: The combination of an aging workforce in many western economies, with the growth of demanding, impatient and tech-savvy Generation Y consumers who expect higher degrees of personalisation in both products and services.
• Technology: The increasing development of virtual worlds, augmented realities, big data, and pervasive robotics will change the way both manufacturing companies and consumer markets operate and develop new ideas.
• Smart: Extensive embedded intelligence in physical assets and products – often call The Internet of Everything – will see a significant shift towards smarter, more connected products with vast supporting networks and real-time applications.
• New Business Models: These fundamental global shifts will require companies to re-assess how they do business, and how they deliver value in the future – resulting in more collaborative operating models with a greater emphasis on delivering ‘Value for Many’ and frugal engineering approaches.
• Infrastructure: How will you be affected by a greater focus on how the world harnesses its energy resources, and creates new, more sustainable and lower cost ways to store and ultilize future energy?
• Beyond BRIC: The rapid rise in new markets and fast-growing emerging economies around the world in the decade ahead will create new markets, new global competitors, and new manufacturing opportunities that will force companies to re-asses their global production strategies and footprints. 

Where will the hot spots be and how will they change your future plans?

Manufacturing seems destined to play a key role in both reshaping existing industries and enabling others to emerge as these megatrends push the world beyond the end of this decade.

The companies that make the effort to understand and plan effectively for this future, change the way they make decisions, redefine the value they create, and restructure how they deliver that value, are likely to be the ones that will survive and thrive.

So how are you now seeking to better understand the disruptive long-term trends that could determine the future of your business?

Are you adopting internal strategies that will make your enterprise more adaptable to the fundamental economic, social, technological and industrial changes ahead?

Be part of the Third Industrial Revolution

Much has been said about the Third Industrial Revolution, part of which predicts the emergence of Additive Manufacturing and 3D printing as an enabling technology for anyone wanting to be involved in manufacturing. The introduction of such revolutionary technology makes the industry more accessible and customisable than ever.

See our previous post on the Maker Movement for more information.

The diffusion of the Maker Movement and how anyone can get involved

While getting back into the social media swing of things, I've noticed a bit of talk around about the Maker Movement. The Maker Movement is a typical culmination of technology diffusion. Actually that is wrong! It is really evolving rather than culminating because we cannot be 100% certain of the path the technology will take from here.

Nevertheless, the Maker Movement has sprung from additive manufacturing technology, which in turn sprang from the rapid prototyping technology that was used by larger companies to test parts and new product concepts. Additive manufacturing is a technology similar to stereolithography (SLA) as introduced to Australia by our company QMI Solutions in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The interesting thing here is the rate of innovation diffusion and the technology adoption cycle. Dr Tim Kastelle has a great blog post on What Makes Innovation Diffusion Difficult. But the Maker Movement, while new in name, has been under development for at least 20 years and it is really only because the technology has been proven, has increased uptake, has consumer-friendly platforms that it is now becoming a movement that is accessible and affordable.

Late last year, Editor of Wired magazine Chris Anderson left this position to write a book on the Maker Movement subject Makers: The Third Industrial Revolution but also to run his own company 3D Robotics. The third industrial revolution was the subject of a previous post. In this interview with Tech Crunch, he says "hardware is the new software" and evidences the power of the Maker Movement when the CAD file of an IPhone case was open sourced - taking customisation to a new stratosphere it allowed customers to put "their own DNA" into the design process of the finished product.

His story about how he got involved in the Maker Movement via LEGO is great too.

And while it's great to see a new movement in manufacturing the best thing about the Maker Movement is that anyone can be involved.

Squeaky clean manufacturing and the third industrial revolution

An interesting article from The Economist about the dawn of (new) manufacturing, see my previous post - specifically referring to the trade fair Euromold and the emergence of 3D printers and additive manufacturing in particular. The article points towards a Third Industrial Revolution, as outlined in a previous Economist article.

For me, there are two subtle, but important, points underpinning the theme of the article:

• with new technology being developed in additive manufacturing, virtually anyone with the technology can be a manufacturer (see previous post)
• it will be more important than ever for this (new) manufacturing industry to be located in proximity to market of consumption  (see previous post)

Tell me I'm wrong...

Click here to read the full article.

Anyone can be a manufacturer

Another interesting post from Derek Singleton on the Software Advice website discussing the next manufacturing revolution - and how it's driven by individuals not corporations. For me, the most interesting part was his list of enabling technologies to help this revolution:

• Crowdsourcing – Crowdsourcing is an approach to idea generation and product development, not a technology. However, there’s a variety of tech resources available that enable crowdsourcing for any kind of project; check out Open Innovation for a great list.
• CAD Software – 2D and 3D designs created with CAD software can be saved in a sharable file format before production. You can access professional-grade CAD software on a subscription basis for $19.95/month from Local Motors.
• 3D Printing – 3D printers are rapidly decreasing in price, making it affordable to create a prototype model of a CAD design. Some 3D printers are already powerful enough to make small numbers of finished items. As this technology advances, the hope is that individuals will be able to produce larger batches of finished products.
• Manufacturing-as-a-Service – Manufacturing is following software’s lead and becoming an on-demand service. Online manufacturing directories like Alibaba and ThomasNet can connect you with a manufacturer that will build for you so you don’t have to invest in any equipment.
• Cloud Computing – The Cloud isn’t a manufacturing-specific technology but it deserves a mention because of how cost-effective it makes running a product business. Cloud solutions like NetSuite and Plex provide affordable solutions for managing orders, inventory, accounting and other business functions.
• E-commerce – Of course, the Internet is a critical enabler for any business these days. Sites like eBay, Amazon, or your own e-commerce website, make it easy for customers to find and buy from you. If you’re interested in running your own e-commerce site, you should check out Volusion and BigCommerce.

 Click here to read the full article.