What If The Top Technologies In Manufacturing Worked Together?

A plethora of technologies shape manufacturing and continue to do so. Think CNC machining, robotics, 3D-printing, robotics, software, Internet of Things (IoT), digital twins, AI/AR, and photonics, just to name some important ones. What each can do is amazing. But, these technologies have different origins, physical shape, and scope–in terms of hardware, biology, materials, or software.

Think of it not just as a material difference but as a challenge of language. Each belongs to separate categories, but not everyone speaks all of them. Even biological or software machines don’t always communicate amongst each other. For machines on a shop floor, this can become a problem.

Several manufacturing technologies came out of university labs, such as MIT, Stanford, University of Cambridge, or Carnegie Mellon, all places that claim to know communication. While others were developed by industry R&D such as in Bell Labs, understandably more applied to a specific purpose. Tech with a surprisingly wide scope for applied energy emerged from military labs like Los Alamos, or non-profit labs such as CERN, even academies like the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Some emerged as collaborative efforts across sectors, such as the German Fraunhofer society. Nowadays most technologies are a mix of the above, relying on a cyber-physical ensemble of materials to work. The technologies developed ages ago are still found on shop floors. However, contrary to the empty talk of the staged evolution from 1.0 to 4.0 generations, they can co-exist. Is it a problem if some of them were designed to work with others and some were designed to work on their own?

Technologists complicate things. We aren’t trying to show off but we speak our own specialist language. Do you speak tech? You might speak a little, enough to get by, perhaps, but there’s many tech languages. The obvious one from office work is programming. C++, Python, or Fortran, each take eons to learn, and if better ones emerge, they may go extinct. In manufacturing, speaking tech might mean to be a wizard at operating industrial machines, or mastering industrial control systems. Perhaps you are a diehard CNC machining operator, or you love operating robots? That’s all good. Because you are then in high demand. But it would be good for society should everyone learn to operate robots, 3D printers, computers, or digital twins. How do we do that without coding?

Imagining a Modular Future

Let’s do a thought experiment. Imagine manufacturing started out as LEGO. I mean interchangeable plastic bricks, or indeed any modular parts that you can build things with. Construct towers, towns, or taxis. LEGO may look simple but building with them requires motor skills, spatial awareness, reasoning, the ability to engage in imaginative play, and various other skills. LEGO has been a part of the courses at the MIT Media Lab for years. There’s a LEGO Robotics course on MIT open Courseware developed all the way back in 2007. Mindstorms, a robotic invention system that revolutionized LEGO construction kits, grew out of LEGO’s 20-year collaboration with the Media Lab. I belong to the proud category of AFOLS, “adult fans of LEGO” (see LEGO exclusive: AFOLs taught us to take adults seriously). When my kids stop playing with LEGO, I’m the one who has to be brought down for dinner. Importantly, once you have built something, the fun is not over. You can continue to play with what you built, adapt it, or even tear it down and start over. Starting over is crucial. There’s nothing LEGO aficionados hate more than glued together pieces.

Now imagine that you built a factory simply with LEGO pieces. What does that mean? For one, it means that you can reconfigure your factory piece by piece. It also means that even though a complex factory requires specifications and plans, everyone can take some part in building it. Don’t like the way the CNC machines work? Build a different one, smaller, bigger. Put it somewhere else if you don’t like where you put it.

For clarity, I’m not suggesting actually building a factory in LEGO. It is the principle behind it, the creative thrust, that I respect. I’m saying this in the same way that I feel government services would be different if they were run by Disney. Imagine a “magic” wristband giving you full access to everything the government has to offer but with smiling faces everywhere. Now, the metaphor isn’t literal and I don’t really want Disney to run the government.

Manufacturing is not like LEGO or Disney. We are not in kindergarten any more (I never went–which some say explains a lot of my playfulness) but the reality is, technologies aren’t interchangeable or interoperable–we would say in tech speak. These days, it’s popular to think in terms of “first principles;”. We have Elon Musk to thank for that (see Why Innovators Like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos Embrace This Ancient Problem-Solving Technique). A first principle is one that cannot be deduced from any other assumption. Philosophers love first principled thinking. Descartes, for example, said his starting point was that his own mind exists (“cogito ergo sum”). Now in modern times, scientists are famous for thinking in first principles. Except, do they actually?

From analogies to first principles

Enough with my analogies. We have become used to thinking by analogy instead of first principles. It’s a shorthand. However, when building machines, analogy is a dead end because it leads to mediocrity. Instead of rebuilding factories from scratch, manufacturers often resort to retrofitting so-called “brownfields” as opposed to building “greenfields” which are more expensive. Industrial tech is one big mesh of new and old machinery and software that barely patches together. Large manufacturers, or their tech suppliers, prefer to integrate startup technologies by M&A instead of inventing something themselves (based on open components) or partnering with startups. The “standing on the shoulders of giants” strategy, or “picking winners” works quite well to achieve things quickly. However, we paint ourselves into a corner if we incur technological debt.

Conrad Leiva, director of Ecosystem and Workforce Development at CESMII, the US smart manufacturing institute writes 7 first principles that add up to smart manufacturing. Leiva cites security, real-time insights, proactive dashboards, openness, resilience, scalability, and sustainability. The problem is, these are concepts everyone can agree with, but unless we standardize terminology, commit manufacturers to actions, and regulate interactions, “togetherness” will not magically happen.

Instead, we should start from scratch; “app”-based approaches start from a new premise. As a first-principle explains: “whoever is trying to solve a problem should have the means to do so.” To accomplish that, instead of LEGO bricks, we have apps. What is an app but a simple algorithm which turns industrial workflows into a process that can achieve a business goal. Apps are implemented in computer code, but to work like LEGO bricks, this code is not a necessary requirement for the user to understand. Apps can come pre-configured, but should be easily configurable. They are a powerful version of a spreadsheet with a drag-and-drop interface. If you can operate a cellphone, you can use an app, and if you can play computer games, you can become an app developer. Good manufacturing apps connect to machines to accomplish real-world jobs on the shop floor or in the supply chain: ordering things, instructing work, monitoring quality, and shipping products. Apps do this by augmenting workers, not by replacing them.

What could we achieve if the top technologies in manufacturing worked together? With so-called software-driven manufacturing built on an interchangeable (“interoperable”) platform, we could build microfactories in minutes, that could make advanced products in your home, in your maker space at school, or in the community or workplace. Wait? This already exists. The analog is the FabLab network, spinning out of Professor Neil Gershenfeld’s work at MIT. Except FabLabs are only for the thousands of volunteer enthusiasts.

I’m talking about changing the entire logic of manufacturing, switching to a modular platform run by drag-and-drop. As web-tech slowly penetrates manufacturing, we are about to find out what that could be. Though, it might take a while because it’s not in everybody’s interest. So what if we mandated that any technology on the shop floor must communicate with others. The same way it would be unacceptable to be silent if taking part in a group of humans who are trying to learn together. At the very least, any government sponsored technology should have an interoperable interface. If you spend public money, make manufacturing that all workers can use. Don’t glue together LEGO.