Brick walls do not a prison make

Citation

Loughlin, C. (2007), "Brick walls do not a prison make", Assembly Automation, Vol. 27 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/aa.2007.03327aaa.001

Brick walls do not a prison make

Have you ever inspected a product that you were considering purchasing and been amazed at just how badly it has been made? This has happened to me countless times and I am sure I am not alone.

Sometimes it is the basic design that is wanting, other times it is the quality of assembly that lets it down. Often I will look at a product and think “whoever designed this never ever tried using it” and the truth behind this assumption is that it is quite likely that whoever did design it never did get a chance to try it out. It is not entirely their fault, although they must take a good proportion of the blame. The fundamental problem is that it is usually far too expensive for a company to make a few test samples of a complete product because the start-up or tooling costs represent such a significant investment.

Good design is an iterative process – even a comparatively simple invention such as the wheel has gone through a multitude of metamorphoses. The problem hardly existed before automation and mass manufacture, as each product was largely handcrafted and so it made little difference if what was being made was a prototype or destined for a customer.

The very qualities that enable us to manufacture in great quantities and at very low cost put the designer at a great disadvantage. Fortunately our designer now has impressive simulation and 3D visualization tools at their disposal in addition to Rapid Prototyping - but these can only go so far.

The range of materials for rapid prototyping are still fairly limited and the materials that are available will have different wear characteristics and surface finishes to the final product. 3D modelling also is a big help and can prevent gross errors such as overlapping parts, and visualization gives photorealistic images that are virtually impossible to tell from the real thing.

The trouble is that what people want to buy and use are not simulations but the real thing -a tangible product that can be held in the hand.

These days products have very short lives. Technological changes and the whims of fashion make products obsolete almost before they are made. Also pricing pressures from global competition mean that manufacturers are forced to cut manufacturing costs to the bone. All these issues conspire to mean that the manufacturer has little vested interest in making products that will have a long life.

Whether or not this is a “good” thing very much depends on your point of view but it all inevitably reduces the amount of time and money that manufacturers can afford to spend in getting the design of their products right before they go into production.

Our themes for this issue are “flexible manufacturing and small batch production” and this is an area that I consider most manufacturers avoid at their peril. Downward pressures on pricing can make it appear as though the only way to make money is to produce in high volumes using highly automated (but often dedicated) production lines; and/or to farm out manufacture to low wage economies.

Instead of asking “how can we make product X at a competitive price” perhaps we should instead be asking “how can we change our manufacturing methods so that we can produce small quantities efficiently”.

Changing the way we think about manufacturing involves more than just a different blend of applications of existing technologies. Instead we need to think outside of the box and rather than push the boundaries – we need to leap over them.

For centuries ever since Caxton invented the printing press, printing involved applying pressure to paper with and an intermediate layer of ink. This technology advanced and brought us typewriters, golf ball and then dot matrix printers. These progressed to become very fast in comparison with their predecessors and the boundaries were constantly being pushed back. Today instead of hitting sheets of paper we use electrostatic spraying of liquid inks to mark them at high speed and at very fine resolutions. Mechanics have been replaced by electronic technology and the old boundaries that restrained impact printing are not given a second thought.

Clive Loughlin