If the following article’s predictions do come true, then the world economy as we know it will be destroyed as the unintended consequence. No trucks, freight trains, container ships, no major manufacturing facilities, no major hub warehouses. No truck and freight train drivers, no container ship crews, no depot warehousemen. No truck, freight train, container ship manufacturers; less construction workers and companies. And there will be further knock-on effects. I wonder …
Sunday Times: “A SPECTRE is haunting the great container ship ports of China, with their highways jammed by lorries and the vast factory estates stretching from the coast of the South China Sea to the mountainous inland provinces.
It is the spectre of a revolution led by a quiet, software-driven 3D printer, a machine that can laser up layers of liquid or granular resin — or even cell tissue — into a finished product.
Some 3D printers are huge devices that make complete components such as aircraft parts. Others are small units that could stand next to a desk and create a small plastic prototype.
Maplin, the British electronics retailer, said last week it would start selling one for just £700. The Velleman K8200 will allow those who are so inclined to make simple objects — mobile phone covers, perhaps, or toys.
“The only restriction is your imagination. You can make whatever you want,” said Pieter Nartus, export manager at Velleman.
To visionaries in the West, the digital 3D printer promises to disrupt conventional manufacturing and supply chains so radically that advocates compare its impact to the advent of the production line, or the internet.
In China, whose big factories are thinking of using giant 3D printers for manufacturing, the technology does not seem to pose an immediate threat.
“It is on their horizon but it is not a factor right now,” says a British buying agent who sources plastics in China.
However, as Chinese leaders ought to know from their compulsory classes in Karl Marx, control of the means of production is everything. And if 3D printing takes off, production will come back to a place near you.
The implications, economists say, are limitless. No huge factories. No fleets of trucks. No ships. No supply chain. No tariffs. Few middlemen. Orders tailored exactly to demand, so no need for stock and warehouses. Just a printer, raw materials, software and a design.
The advantages do not end there. Because the item is “sintered” — created from a powdered material — to precise settings using a laser, there is no waste such as metal shavings. To customise a product, the user simply changes the software. An operator presses a button and the printer spits out the item.
“The first implication is that more goods will be manufactured at or closer to their point of purchase or consumption,” said Richard D’Aveni, a professor at Dartmouth College in America.
Writing in the Harvard Business Review, D’Aveni predicted the elimination of the long supply chain linked to a huge factory staffed by cheap workers and sited on the other side of the world.
It may be the most significant, if underplayed, article in that distinguished publication in decades.
via Hello 3D printing, goodbye China | The Sunday Times.
Related articles
- China may become world’s largest 3D printing market (wantchinatimes.com)
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 