Microproduction

Aspects of Distributed Microproduction

Distributed Microproduction as systemic activity, by By Stefano Maffei and Massimo Bianchini:

"With the development of the service economy, processes of servitization have progressively transformed products into product-service systems, and systems of industrial production into a Manufacturing Service Ecosystem35 (Neely, Benedictine, and Visnjic, 2011). This eco-systemic dimension is observable in the field of MD (Vally, 2012), particularly in the development of 3D printing and personal fabrication, and in the FabLab Ecosystem (Troxler, 2010, 2012, 2013), which were born in the service economy and operate to enable distributed and democratized production. The main features that qualify MD as a socio-technical system are: systemic openness, widespread interactivity, community enabling, fractal organization, and social learning.

Systemic openness

In the social sciences, an open system is a process that exchanges material, energy, people, capital and information with its environment (interactional openness, Luhman, 2004). The growth of the open source movement36 driven by its expansion from the world of software to that of design, data hardware, and materials is generating the conditions for the potential development of production chains and systems able to express systemic openness (e.g. Open Source Ecology). Although the link between the worlds of open source and distributed production has implications and problems much more complex than those of software (Troxler, 2013), DM today takes the form of a diffused laboratory (perhaps the most advanced one in existence) for real experimentation with forms of systemic openness. Apparent in the field of DM is the co-presence of developers, organizers, and users of openness who hybridize open innovation tools with the community-driven and collaborative development practices of open source to give centrality to design (Avital, 2012). Designerproducers indubitably represent a key cultural and operational element in the strategic use of openness. Since the first ‘open design manifesto’37 a growing community of designers-manufacturersdevelopers has incorporated the principles of open source into traditional design processes, thus offering closed and open versions of their products (e.g. Oskar Zieta, Design for Download, Droog Design)38. Others instead develop ex novo entire systems and platforms, which enable open design by working on the development of new rules and standards (e.g. Wikihouse and Open Desk, Open Structure, fig.9)39. These platforms complete the current range of those for open hardware and open production (e.g. Instructables.com). They thus make it possible for a growing number of micro and self-producers to draw on a system of open resources, which enables them to plug gaps in technology or design so that they can complete their production. Finally, openness is becoming terrain for cooperation between the world of DM and traditional manufacturing industry. An increasing number of medium-sized and large firms or firms’ associations are developing pilot projects centred on open innovation which promote (e.g. Natevo) or ‘use’ micro and self-production to test new uses and applications of their technologies, and to develop new product and process concepts.

Widespread Interactivity

In systems theory, an emergent property appears when a number of simple entities (i.e. makers) operating in a particular environment (i.e. a fablab) generate more complex behaviours as a collectivity (Buchanan, 2003).

The prime condition for the development of DM is that a certain number of microproducers be able to stabilize themselves by interacting with each other (exchanging knowledge, materials, products, techniques and technologies), thus reciprocally influencing their behaviours and productive performances. It is only through constant interaction among the microproducers that this system acquires new behaviour and is able to innovate.

Fostering the development of DM systems therefore requires acting, not on the individual microproducers, but on the tools, devices, and services that encourage their interaction in design (from tinkering to things, as in the case of makerspaces), in learning of uses between microproducers and machines (from bits to atoms, as in the case of fabbing or rapid manufacturing), processes of collective cognitive interaction (from codes to products, as in the case of open design, or generative design); and from frames to things, as in the case of video tutorials on ‘how to make’.40 The increasing possibilities to combine these types of interaction41 promote the development of new planning-production-distribution processes exemplified by new kinds of interface such as design apps, interactive fabrication42 (gestural and interactive sculpting, spatial sketching), and haptic technologies (haptic, tangible, embedded and embodied interfaces, fig. 10, 11)43.

Community enabling: (micro) networks and alliances

For a system to be truly be innovative, it must be able to build alliances (Leadbeater, 2013). In the DM system, this property translates into a large number of microproducers who develop Community Based Fabrication projects (e.g. Fab@home, RepRap, fig.11) also by devising models of Community Supported Manufacturing44 where the production sites – digital fabrication plants – are co-financed or co-managed by a number of actors interested in the development of particular products, whether individual or collective (hackerspaces). These models of microproduction seek to enable, use, and enhance local skills and work practices by linking them with those present on global platforms45.

The concept of community of practice (Himanen, 2003; Wenger, 1998) is therefore well visible also in the activities of urban microproducers, and also of independent microproduction distributors which create local associations and alliances scalable and extendible to the national and global level: SFmade with Urban Manufacturing Alliance46, Open Craft Italia47. Even subjects such as Designer = Enterprises organize groups or networks (e.g. C-Fabriek,48 The Machine, and Produzione Impropria, fig.1249) in order to promote themselves a new vision and culture of micro-production. These initiatives undertaken by diverse types of microproducers exhibit recurrent and common dynamics and patterns, which consolidate a microproduction community through creating or frequenting a place or productive initiative, or through a dispersed set of experiences. The convergence of these actors on the basis of shared interests shapes the experience or the community with toolkits50, standards, wiki,51 certifications, and licences, which formalize their principles and rules and make participation-reproduction-replication-reiteration possible through mechanisms of enrolment and affiliation. These community models comprising instruments for self-assessment and peer-review are indicative of the fact that there are legislative gaps in regard to open design, micro and self-production that may favour the creation of alliances for controversial productive purposes (e.g. Distributed Defense52).

Fractal organization

Fractal Organizations have flat hierarchies, and they distribute tasks and responsibilities (Hoverstadt, 2009). Likewise transformed in the DM system are certain hierarchical models consolidated in manufacturing industry: for instance, the relationship between the producers of final goods and sub-suppliers (cars, prime materials, and components). In this emergent system, the microproducers and the producers/suppliers of technologies are substantially equal; the difference is that the producers of technologies, like MakerBot and Arduino, are the new micromultinationals of microproduction (the equivalent of Microsoft for the traditional industrial system).

Evident in some components of the DM system are features and behaviours that pertain to fractal organizations (Warnecke, 1997). The first of them is self-similarity: microproducers tend to develop automorphic processes: that is, as they grow or transform, they tend to preserve all their organizational, structural and constitutive characteristics. The organizational model of the fablab is growing exponentially53 precisely by adopting a cellular-network process. Every fablab, in fact, maintains its original model unchanged by not growing in size but by replicating and connecting itself. The scale-up of the DM model therefore comes about, not because of growth in size or economic performance, but because of the increased granularity of activities. This ensures the selforganized flexibility of small production volumes by individual micro-producers, but also makes possible large volumes produced by the system as a whole (in that it is potentially able to activate, steer and coordinate communities of microproducers by distributing production volumes). This systemic adaptability of DM requires a mix of leadership styles (Leadbeater, 2013), which are personal (Bianchini and Maffei; 2013) but are made collective by temporary processes of delegation. Moreover, the DM system is redundant: there is no functional separation-specialization among its parts: indeed, all the microproducers are potentially able to develop any organized part of the DM.

Social learning

In DM, the convergence and simultaneity among practices of learning by doing, by using (Rosenberg, 1982; Arthur, 2010), and by interacting (Lundvall, 1994) made possible by the network, by collective activity, and by multiplication of the personal experiences of the microproducers generate norms and behaviours that take the form of a social system. The logic that drives them is peer-to-peer, and it is manifest in processes of social learning centred, in these early stages of development, on copying and emulation. The key aspect concerns the reconstitution of an idea of creativity which, in a DM system, is cultivated through numerous types of intelligence (and of diffused knowledge) and personalized educational paths (Robinson, 2010), and in which ‘tinkering’ is essential for innovation (Brown, 2011).54 Identifiable in the DM system are two core components of learning: the relation between tacit and explicit processes, and the relation between individual/ personal and social/collective processes. On the one hand, microproducers tend to concentrate into an individual cognitive capacity a set of professional skills previously distributed among several actors. These are learning processes that enhance the capacity to self-visualize all the aspects of design, production, and distribution it is the prerogative (Bianchini and Maffei, 2013). On the other, testifying to the importance of explicit knowledge diffusion and acquisition processes in DM is the increasing number of platforms, like Instructables, I-fix-it, and Craft-Tuts, which codify or generate knowledge and information on what and how to produce individually (DIY) or collectively (DIT), and which fuel processes of learning by copying or emulation. All this means that the traditional models of ritualized and initiatory learning typical of crafts (Sennett, Micelli, 2011; Adamson 2013) are gradually integrated with different training models: ones that are more social, open and centred on tinkering (e.g. the iTinker School), and informal (e.g. the Etsy Hacker School). This co-presence of different learning models is apparent in many makerspaces in which programmes are dedicated to ‘how-to-make’ training (e.g. Fab Academy, Betahaus) or in places (e.g. Artisan’s Asylum, Techshop) where training methods have close similarities to those of vocational education." (http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/content/original/Book%20covers/Local%20PDFs/93%20SF%20Bianchini,%20and%20Maffei%20Distributed%20economies%20paper%202013.pdf)

Characteristics

General properties of Distributed Microproduction, by Stefano Maffei and Massimo Bianchini:

• Flexibility

It is able to create diverse configurations of actors and connections in the realization of processes to ‘modulate’ production: producing the same product in a different way, producing different types of product, different versions of similar products, or of the same product (variants or multiples).

• Scalability/Adaptability:

It is able to have production processes vary (unique items, small series or ‘multiplied’ products, batches as the sum of small serial products). At the same time it is able to expand or shrink in size (number of nodes) and geographical extent (of the network). Moreover, the processes or practices (technological, organizational, social) that originate a specific productive context can be replicated and adapted for transfer to other contexts.

• Transparency:

Productive processes and performances are trackable, visible, comprehensible, and shareable. Moreover, the system enables the constant development of applications for the info-visualization and monitoring/control of resources (‘maker maps’) in relation to the increasing incorporation of control devices1 and technologies in products and means of production.

• Interoperability:

It enables a diversified set of production competences and skills to coexist and cooperate. It promotes forms of active cooperation between people and traditional and automated production systems (human integration and friendliness, Kühnle 2010).

• Connectivity:

It develops interactions at all levels (material and immaterial, product and service, man-machine) also because the system tends to develop interacting and compatible base-components and technologies which make the processes and products evolve and innovate (Arthur, 2010).

• Error-friendliness or resilience:

It can tolerate errors, omissions, or failures committed by the individual micro-producers without jeopardizing the overall functioning of the system" (http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/content/original/Book%20covers/Local%20PDFs/93%20SF%20Bianchini,%20and%20Maffei%20Distributed%20economies%20paper%202013.pdf)

Production sites of Distributed Microproduction

By Stefano Maffei and Massimo Bianchini:

• Microfactories:

Production units of small and extremely small size that adopt tools and technologies for additive and subtractive miniaturized, open and peer-to-peer manufacturing: nanofactories (factories-in-a-box), desktop factories (factories on a table) and micro-factories (factories in a room), but also mobile microfactories (kiosks and floating factories), temporary ones (pop-up factories), connective ones (plug-and-play factories) and educational microfactories (teaching factories).

• Labs and Hubs

(fablabs, makerspaces, hackerspaces, machineshops),

Public or private laboratories that offer services for on-demand and on-site production in urban neighbourhoods or districts. Similar places are developing in universities and schools, in do-it-yourself centres, or in public places like libraries or cafes equipped with technologies and machines (e.g. Garaget and Sewing Café).

• Platforms

Platforms of services for personal fabrication, collaborative platforms for open design, open hardware or design-to-download, and platforms for microproduction (design-to-order and design-on-demand) directly integrated with distribution which, on the one hand, represent new ‘markets of ideas’, and on the other, make it possible to manage on-site or 0km microproduction networks of designers, makers and craftspersons (e.g. Slowd, Fab.com)," (http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/content/original/Book%20covers/Local%20PDFs/93%20SF%20Bianchini,%20and%20Maffei%20Distributed%20economies%20paper%202013.pdf)

More Information

• Report: Microproduction Everywhere