Manufacturing: The third industrial revolution
THE first industrial revolution began in Britain in the late 18th
century, with the mechanisation of the textile industry. Tasks
previously done laboriously by hand in hundreds of weavers’ cottages
were brought together in a single cotton mill, and the factory was born.
The second industrial revolution came in the early 20th century, when
Henry Ford mastered the moving assembly line and ushered in the age of
mass production. The first two industrial revolutions made people richer
and more urban. Now a third revolution is under way. Manufacturing is
going digital. As this week’s special report argues, this could change not just business, but much else besides.
A number of remarkable technologies are converging: clever software,
novel materials, more dexterous robots, new processes (notably
three-dimensional printing) and a whole range of web-based services. The
factory of the past was based on cranking out zillions of identical
products: Ford famously said that car-buyers could have any colour they
liked, as long as it was black. But the cost of producing much smaller
batches of a wider variety, with each product tailored precisely to each
customer’s whims, is falling. The factory of the future will focus on
mass customisation—and may look more like those weavers’ cottages than
Ford’s assembly line.
