Redistributed Manufacturing

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Description

Sharon Prenderville et al.:

"Redistributed manufacturing is an emerging concept which captures the anticipated reshoring and localisation of production from large scale mass manufacturing plants to smaller-scale localised, customisable production units, largely driven by new digital production technologies. Critically, community-based digital fabrication workshops, or makespaces, are anticipated to be one hothouse for this new era of localised production and as such are key to future sustainable design and manufacturing practices." (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-32098-4_49)


Discussion

by Liz Corbin & Hannah Stewart:

"The concept of Redistributed Manufacturing does not have a standard and widely accepted definition (Escalante and Rahimfard, 2016). The initial appearance of the term is in the 2013 UK EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council)[11] RDM workshop report where it has the broad working definition of “technology, systems and strategies that change the economics and organisation of manufacturing, particularly with regard to location and scale” (Pearson, Noble and Hawkins, 2013). Subsequent definitions emphasise ‘localised production’ (Soroka, Naim, Wang and Potter, 2016), ‘customisable production units’ (Prendeville, Hartung, Purvis, Brass and Hall, 2016), decentralisation (Harrison, Ruck, Medcalf and Rafiq, 2017) regionalisation (Munguia et al., 2016) and geographic dispersal (Soroka, Naim, Wang and Potter, 2016).

The characterisation of RDM, refers to an increasingly distributed and varied manufacturing ecosystem and ‘on-demand economy,’ where the factory of the future may be ‘at the bedside, in the home, in the field, in the office, and on the battlefield’ (Foresight, 2013). These local manufactories and the associated decentralised business models change both markets and supply chains, with wide ranging implications and challenges (Pearson, Noble and Hawkins, 2013), it is in emphasizing these societal impacts that the ‘re’ became part of the naming convention. The understanding of distributed manufacturing itself has been historically fluid, evolving from MacCormack’s smaller scale plants serving regional markets (MacCormack, Rosenfield and Sloan, 1994), to decentralised production approaches (Kühnle, 2010), manufacturing at the point of use (Devor et al., 2012), and mass customisation and digital manufacturing (Kohtala, 2015) now being synonymous with orchestration of manufacturing though the cloud and digital networks (Zaki, Theodoulidis, Shapira, Neely and Teple, 2016)." (http://peerproduction.net/editsuite/issues/issue-12-makerspaces-and-institutions/peer-reviewed-papers/redistributed-manufacturing-and-makerspaces/)


The Cooptation of RDM

by Liz Corbin & Hannah Stewart:

"In many ways, notions of redistributed manufacturing compliment, formalise, legitimise and augment the growing technomyth of digital modes of peer production that surrounds UK shared machine shops. We argue that the institutionalisation of community production by and through the wedding of shared machine shops and redistributed manufacturing should be considered as a process of co-option that is both beneficial and problematic. On the one hand, institutionalisation could mean that the seeds of change are starting to take root and grow. Consider online sharing platforms such as MyMiniFactory and WikiFab, or public/open copyright licensing models like Creative Commons and the Mozilla Public License reaching the critical mass necessary for them to mature into viable, even mundanely normal, components of the production chain. Imagine informal communal production provisions like shared machine shops, Repair Cafés and tool libraries that become embedded in, understood and supported by regulations and policies. Such promising examples could be understood as cases of evolutionary ‘niches’[15] that instigate the restructuring of ‘regime’[16] constellations (Grin et al., 2010; Smith and Raven, 2012). On the other hand however, early signs of such institutionalisation processes could also be a foreshadow of potentially transformative agents being mediated, enfolded and ultimately asphyxiated by the very institutional structures they sought to change. Such examples could be seen as yet another display of incumbent regimes exerting their tendencies towards not systems change, but system stabilisation and reproduction (Geels and Schot, 2007).

We therefore ask what are the potential impacts of such a co-constitutionary dynamic between shared machine shops, a national RDM agenda, and a growing technomyth of digital peer production? Within his analyses of social movements, Hess applies three hypotheses as a framework for analysing technology- and product- oriented movements (TPMs) – two of which we feel are pertinent to this discussion. Firstly, the ‘private-sector symbiosis’ hypothesis postulates that the emphasis on technology and product innovation leads to the articulation of social movement goals with those of inventors, entrepreneurs, and industrial reformers. A cooperative relationship emerges between advocacy organisations that support the alternative technologies/products and private-sector firms that develop and market alternative technologies (Hess, 2005). This speaks to and compliments the benefits of ‘collection action framing’ as argued by Söderberg when he states ‘it is not obvious which side in a conflict can draw support from a deterministic narrative’ (Söderberg, 2013, p. 1289). As Söderberg explains, ‘collective action framing’ within social movement theory refers to how social movements construct narratives interpreting the world in a way that gives meaning to their struggles. This dynamic recognises the active role of social movements themselves as producers of meaning, not just recipiants of prescribed narratives and myths, but co-constitutors of that meaning-making and narrative framing. Framing can be understood as a process through which spaces of struggle are continually created, contested and transformed (Snow and Benford, 2000), and both RDM and the digital peer production technomyth can be understood as forms of ‘collective action framing’. As Söderberg argues, what technological determinism influences is the freedom of maneuver of the political adversary. If a social movement can claim such a position in their collective action frame, then it might contribute to grassroots mobilisation. The collective action we evidenced through the two forms of survey included above showcases elements of how symbiosis with institutions and formal agendas brings legitimacy and visibility to the ‘grassroots causes’ and motivations of shared machine shops, acting as a stabilising force to enable greater impact and a common ambition.

While much could be gained, we also need to consider what can be lost through the continued entanglement of the technomyth of digital peer production and RDM agendas within UK shared machine shops. As Söderberg’s points out, the literature on collective action framing has been criticised for its relative neglect of how pre-existing cultures influence framing processes (Söderberg, 2013; Hart, 1996). As Plekhanov notes, if we consider how a person who disagrees with the given phenomenon and technomyth may be affected – it is likely that their energy will be lessened by knowing that their resistance is futile, that they and their practice is something which is less legible and less valorised in the context of an emerging homogenous agenda (Plekhanov, [1898] 1940). We see this evidenced in the decreasing visibility of non-digitised making practices evidenced in both survey analyses. As we argued above, we agree with Wyatt and Maxigas, that the importance of retaining a connection to non-adopters should be seen as crucial to a community preserving its analytical capabilities – or critical faculties. Without that, spaces and actors within them may quickly lose the sense of agency that Boltanski and Chiapello (2005) deem crucial when closing their work with a call for ‘sociology against fatalism’ (Boltanksi and Chiapello, 2005, p. 536)[17].

Using the ‘incorporation and transformation’ hypothesis within social movement theory, Hess postulates that there is a tendency over time for established industries to absorb the innovations of the TPMs, but in the process they also alter the design of the technologies and products to make them more consistent with existing technologies and with corporate profitability concerns (Hess, 2005). Hess concludes that community demands and development of technologies happen in a private-sector symbiosis (Hess, 2005). Even where these movements succeed in pushing a technology to the consumer market, they are recuperated in the process, resulting in ‘object conflicts’ about their proper design and use (Söderberg and Delfanti, 2015). The academic and community positions on RDM and the varying adoptions, co-options and rejections of it as a term through the FMS RDM project reflects this pattern of object conflicts – going from an outside critique of the consequences of modern manufacturing and global supply chains, to a recuperation as a hopeful narrative of future manufacturing and the implementation of such through an entanglement with shared machine shop communities through tests, trials and studies, and ultimately resulting in increased digital legibility and commodification of both the communities of practice involved and RDM as a praxis. Maxigas argues the process of critique, recuperation and implementation entangles technologies and the communities who use them within an endless cycle of commodification resulting in the loss of trust between users and technologies (Maxigas, 2017). This cycle of co-production and co-option presents a dilemma in considering how users could possibly more critically navigate, even infiltrate, such an endless cycle. As Maxigas argues, in his study of technology-oriented and product-oriented movements, understanding the critiques of users within shared machine shops and their recuperation by commodified means is instrumental for mapping the dynamics between political struggles and the technological, cultural and ethical innovation driving the evolution of capital. Without criticality, mediation and conflict between peer production communities and firms remain highly vulnerable to recuperative logics.

We therefore argue there is a need to retain non-users within peer production communities and a danger of excluding them through the increasingly formalisation and co-institutionalisation of the digital peer production technomyth and RDM agendas. A loss in diversity within shared machine shops could lead to the loss of connection between adopters and non-adopters. Which could, in turn, result in a loss of critical faculties, agency and awareness. Without a diversity of practice and of community, UK shared machine shops (and the peer production communities who use them) are at risk of losing the ability to remain critically engaged and involved within the co-institutionalisation process. The risk of UK shared machine shops aligning with the digital production technomyth and RDM agendas is that the default model becomes an echo chamber of homogenous adoption. Whilst we are not arguing that diverse communities are immune to technological determinism, a diverse community can generate a better position for individuals and groups to be more critical and recognise the broader relationships in the landscape. There is a need for critical friction, to highlight the edges and tensions between this increasingly dominant assemblage of practices and those practices which are less visible, less digitally legible or less valorised. Critical friction is productive, it provides the opportunity for social movements to self-check, self reflect, be critical and question the wider impacts of their practices. We conclude by reiterating the need to deploy a critical lens to the co-institutionalisation of UK shared machine shops and the peer production practices that flow within them to national RDM agendas. Further research is needed in order to assess what is gained and what is lost, and how we can better navigate the process of co-institutionalisation." (http://peerproduction.net/editsuite/issues/issue-12-makerspaces-and-institutions/peer-reviewed-papers/redistributed-manufacturing-and-makerspaces/)

More information

  • Soroka, A., Naim, M., Wang, Y. and Potter, A. (2016). Logistics options for re-distributed manufacturing in resilient sustainable cities – A pilot study. Cardiff: Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University. [online] Available at: http://orca-mwe.cf.ac.uk/102508/1/Full-Paper-Template%20v4.pdf [Accessed 12 February 2018].
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