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Concept
Open manufacturing
Summary
Open manufacturing, also known as open production, maker manufacturing, and with the slogan "Design Global, Manufacture Local" is a new model of socioeconomic production in which physical objects are produced in an open, collaborative and distributed manner and based on open design and open source principles.
Open manufacturing combines the following elements of a production process: new open production tools and methods (such as 3D printers), new value-based movements (such as the maker movement), new institutions and networks for manufacturing and production (such as FabLabs), and open source methods, software and protocols.
Open manufacturing may also include digital modeling and fabrication and computer numeric control (CNC) of the machines used for production through open source software and open source hardware.
The philosophy of open manufacturing is close to the open-source movement, but aims at the development of physical products rather than software. The term is linked to the notion of democratizing technology as embodied in the maker culture, the DIY ethic, the open source appropriate technology movement, the Fablab-network and other rooms for grassroot innovation such as hackerspaces.
The openness of "open manufacturing" may relate to the nature of the product (open design), to the nature of the production machines and methods (e.g. open source 3D-printers, open source CNC), to the process of production and innovation (commons-based peer production / collaborative / distributed manufacturing), or to new forms of value creation (network-based bottom-up or hybrid versus business-centric top down). Jeremy Rifkin argues, that open production through 3D-printing "will eventually and inevitably reduce marginal costs to near zero, eliminate profit, and make property exchange in markets unnecessary for many (though not all) products".
Official source
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