How new technology is about to change how we think about economies of scale and our supply chain practices

Posted by Lou Smyrlis at 07:15 PM

The transportation and logistics practices so ingrained into our business culture – from JIT deliveries to global supply chains -- stem from trying to most efficiently distribute goods produced in massive production runs and reliant on economies of scale. But there is a new manufacturing technology that may change both manufacturing and the supply chain practices that support it.

In a recent cover story, the Economist declared this new technology “may have as profound an impact on the world as the coming of the factory did,” proclaiming a “new industrial revolution may be on the way.” Professor Richard Hague heads a world-leading manufacturing group and is so enamored with the almost limitless freedom the new technology gives to designers that he was quoted in the UK’s The Engineer magazine as calling it “almost as close to Nirvana as you’re ever going to get.”

And this is no far into the future vision. Dr. Hod Lipson, director of the Computational Synthesis Laboratory at Cornell, recently told the BBC: “In 20 years this technology will be mainstream.”

Read it in: http://blogtn.trucknews.com/2011/03/how_new_technology_is_about_to.htm