When technophiles extol the benefits of Industry 4.0, there seems to be 2 visions of the future and they seem almost diametrically opposite in ambition and philosophy. It may be that there is a place for both – if market forces continue to be allowed to prevail without radically different and more sustainable metrics for success.
Philosophy 1: The Dark Factory
This term sounds more sinister than its reality attests. Dark factories are so called because they have no lighting. They need no lighting because there’s no need for light – no one works in them…ever. I saw a presentation by RR who had developed an assembly line robot that regularly assesses itself to determine whether it is functioning within acceptable margins. If it isn’t it takes itself off-line and is replaced by a spare. It repairs itself, calling up replacement parts as required. It then puts itself back into the assembly line. All with no human intervention whatsoever.
I can’t help but get excited by this – got to admit to being a sucker for a robot. But my worry is that this philosophy is unsustainable and ultimately self-defeating. Henry Ford understood that if he paid his workers twice the norm, they would become the customers for the products they produced. Early manufacturing needed a very large workforce and thus the middle class was born. Since the dawn of the first Industrial revolution the owners of the means of production have been forced to share the wealth generated by production with a workforce because there could be no production without human labour. But not now – the industrialists no longer need a workforce.
The standard neo-liberal response that ‘there will always be jobs, but they will just be higher value and more cerebral’ just doesn’t cut it for me. There might be some jobs but not nearly enough and the elephant in the room is that not everyone is suited to that kind of work. So, who ultimately would buy the products produced in dark factories if the wealth generated by production is not shared with a workforce? Robots are not (yet) aspirational consumers.
Moreover, a top-down approach to Industry 4.0 demands that the supply chain keeps up with the technological pace of change to ensure a fully integrated supply chain. This inevitably leads to further ownership accretion of the means of production as the small guys fall away or get subsumed into an Industry 4.0 hegemony.
Philosophy 2: The Cottage Factory
The other interesting trend in manufacturing is the democratisation and commoditisation of the means of product development and production. The much hyped 3d printing revolution where individual consumers can make anything they need has not happened and for good reason. It ignores the need for knowledge and expertise beyond common sense to ensure that a product is safe, reliable, and fit for purpose. However, there has been a revolution in the development of easy-to-use building blocks that make the process of product development far more accessible. These range from free to use CAD software to low-cost prototyping technologies and indestructible test and development platforms (such as Raspberry Pi and Arduino).
But another technology revolution has also been taking place at the supply end. It started with industries such as publishing, where now anyone has the means to self-publish a book or release music for mass consumption of a quality indistinguishable from the big publishing houses or music labels. The rise of prosumer production technology is allowing individuals to self-manufacture. Low cost but high spec equipment now available includes 3d printers, CNC mills and lathes, circuit printers, laser cutters, injection moulding machines, pick and place machines and Cobots (robotic arms that politely wait for humans to move out of the way rather than squishing them to pulp). It has now become possible and affordable to create a production cell cost justifiable for start-up production volumes and scalable to meet mass demand without fear of over-investment.
This gives rise to the other possibility offered by this philosophy – the democratisation of the means of production. Suddenly it can be cheaper to make local, to supply local and to de-centralise the means of production. Localisation instead of globalisation. And I can’t help but believe that this is a more sustainable approach both socio-economically and environmentally. Ironically then Industry 4.0 could be a return to a social and economic model more like the cottage industries that prevailed before the first industrial revolution with looms and blacksmiths forges replaced by highly technological and flexible production cells capable of producing the full breadth of consumer product.
It's a frustration to me that UK government policy seems to be built around the first philosophy. With a manufacturing sector dominated by micro and SME businesses, it’s my opinion that the UK sector has the agile mindset that makes it far better placed to capitalise on the 2nd philosophy – and I reckon it would be better for society and for the planet too.