We in the manufacturing tech space have been thinking a lot about reconfigurability, beyond just 3D printing locally, but to how do you tool up (make molds, program machines, etc.) automatically akin to a deploy script, Docker container, etc.
These analogies are no where in the current paradigm, but if we have them, we could quickly allocate work across the manufacturing space to get stuff made far quicker. The material part of tool up (cutting molds, etc.) only takes days if you parallelize it, whereas the human aspect of dialing in the machines, etc. is where all the time goes.
Here's my proposal for what a more software-like engineering / manufacturing system would look like:
These analogies are no where in the current paradigm, but if we have them, we could quickly allocate work across the manufacturing space to get stuff made far quicker. The material part of tool up (cutting molds, etc.) only takes days if you parallelize it, whereas the human aspect of dialing in the machines, etc. is where all the time goes.
Here's my proposal for what a more software-like engineering / manufacturing system would look like:
https://www.slideshare.net/nickpinkston/the-future-of-tools-...