Pros & Cons of the Mass-Customized Future
I’ve attended a number of symposiums and conferences and heard a single, common theme repeated, disassembled, and debated at length with no resounding conclusion drawn. The dialectic is valid, relevant, and goes like this: Will mass-customized parts, created using additive manufacturing (AM) technologies, gain headway and significant traction in a manufacturing world dominated by traditional and optimized production technologies? The question is one of vision vs. retrospection, since the promise of additive fabrication lies in what it can do, as opposed to what it has done. Let’s look at both sides of the debate, starting with six reasons why mass customization based on AM has no chance on gaining a toehold in a mass production-based world.
1) The consumer is not a designer. Mass customization with AM presumes that the consumer desires to participate in the very design process that results in their products. This line of thinking assumes that because those of us who are designers obsess with the design of our products, so will the rest of the purchasing population. In reality, however, such is not the case. People often prefer to let designers be designers and instead enjoy making the purchase decision. The public is bewildered by a multitude of choices when making product selections, which is why car manufacturers, for example, have created a handful of “packages” for vehicles rather than long checklists of individual features. An open-ended equation such as geometry in general confuses the consumer, and the result rarely meets the quality level achievable with a typical, talented designer at the helm.
2) The materials, tolerances and finishes are not yet up to par. Consumers expect mirror-polished surfaces on the bezels of iPhones, the deep black on the back surfaces, and fine text etched into the face. We want bike parts that are anodized, bead-blasted aluminum with laser-etched graphics, and we want our chairs made from wood and leather. None of these are available in a fab process based on AM. Instead, we settle for layered, gritty, dusty or abrasive parts prone to breakage (more about that in point #4). Once the novelty of stunning geometric complexity and perfect morphological fit wears off, we’re left with a part the likes of which would never pass for finished among its mass produced competitors.
3) People don’t want lead-times with their products. They want them now, or at least as fast as it takes Amazon to deliver them, and no longer. The process bottlenecks endemic to a mass-customized manufacturing line will inevitably test the patience of a modern, want-it-now consumer.
4) People expect parts that have been tested. Most consumers will never realize the extent of testing that goes on before a product reaches the market. They’ll never see the dozens of units that are subjected to vibration/thermal testing, drop testing, radio interference testing, finite element analysis, etc. before the first unit meets the shelves. When devices are created on a made-to-order basis, there can be no “Golden Master” part, and therefore no chance of rigorous testing or quality assurance of any kind. Even orienting identical parts normal to the norm during the build will dramatically impact the mechanical properties and tolerances due to anisotropic idiosyncrasies inherent to an additive process.
5) It can’t scale. By nature, each part–or a sizable part of each part–must be individually designed, modified, or otherwise tweaked in such a way that it can be considered a bespoke component. It must then be assigned an orientation and location within the build platform, amidst the other parts to be created. Compare this to injection molding, which simply churns out clones as long as the machine is running. AM, even with many machines in parallel and an assumption of ever-increasing fabrication speeds, will not reach the scale to make it practical to address mass needs.
6) One size really does fit all. An iPhone was designed with specific priorities in mind, based on the size, thickness, width, height, etc., that were determined through extensive user testing. The consumers tend to accept this, given that those of us who fall on either side of the bell curve will, as always, have to accommodate a regression toward the geometric mean. This can be considered the sacrifice made in exchange for comparatively inexpensive, reliable, well-tested, consistently designed products offered to the lot of us by mass production.
That said, let’s look at the other side.
1) Some want to choose. While many consumers may remain content merely choosing the color and preset package of their cars, some have embraced the notion of engaging in some degree of design of their products. Template products–the BMW MINI is an extreme example (10.2-million permutations possible, which dwarfs the number actually sold) testify to the market’s willingness to embrace a part where a degree of user participation creates the final part. To quote Burger King’s selling point, “Have It Your Way.” And the more personal the product (think eyewear, hearing aids or anything dental), the more nuanced the decisions considered by the consumer. The generation of participant-consumers that cut their teeth on a diet of Wikipedia, design-it-yourself radio stations (e.g., Pandora), Ponoko, Etsy, etc., may well represent an entirely new breed of purchasers, no longer content with the generic products of previous generations.
2) Unique material qualities are valuable. Who is to say that the shiny surfaces that we’re accustomed to are sacrosanct? And aren’t the modern, industrial-generated surfaces that we’re familiar with merely themselves the result of another manufacturing process? AM processes do leave telltale marks inherent to the layered process. But just as wood and leather have grain, fabric has a weave, and the body has skin, these layer lines may simply grow to be acceptable as details and vestiges of a magical process involving lasers and material. Indeed, it suggests a new visual and textural aesthetic. It’s up to the designer to embrace the qualities and turn them to the benefit of the user and the product. Perhaps the layer lines will serve to remind us of the uniqueness of our product, differentiating it from its generic, mass-produced relatives.
3) Lead times are shortening. AM is still a very nascent technology, stumbling over its own identity and a long list of growing pains. Bandwidth is gradually becoming available as new machines go
online, and there are constant rumors of disruptive new devices that stand to accelerate the production process. So for that product that you need today, the corner market will always be there. For that personal product based on your body or your imagination, you may have to wait a few more.
4) Testing standards are improving. Integrated FEA/FEM algorithms in CAD are allowing a degree of testing to be built directly into the design process, not applied later as afterthought. (But testing remains a challenge.)
5) Scale isn’t everything. We think in terms of economies of scale because mass production has conditioned us to do so. But perhaps there is something to be said for a few truly personal prod-
ucts in our lives, and not merely more generic ones. Perhaps a shift in thinking from “lots of stuff” to “the right amount of really good stuff” is worth consideration.
6) One size doesn’t fit all. Not always, at least. Commonality overlooks the individuality of physical morphology and the extreme range of bodies that populate our world. It overlooks the uniqueness of tastes. It especially dismisses the handicapped, the special needs, the mangled limbs and anatomy created by war and mechanized accidents. It neglects the unpredictable damage caused by cancer, fire, diabetes or stroke. It assumes that we’re all of similar body size and shape, and that especially tall, short, large or slender builds can continue to take one for the mass-production-indoctrinated team. AM-customized products stand to offer solutions to those left orphaned by the average, since in this new world tooling amortization and the de-individualizing results driven by this cost-benefit thinking, can be set aside as attention shifts to all people, not simply those that make the mass-production, market-driven math work best.
