Like to skip ahead in articles? Jump to the sections that interest you most:
- Industrial Revolution 1.0: Machines
- Industrial Revolution 2.0: Modern factories
- Industrial Revolution 3.0: The digital revolution
- Manufacturing 3.0 Mindset: what’s different?
- Mass customization case study: the Wedge
Words like “manufacturing” or “production line” naturally bring to mind images of large buildings, filled with machines and hundreds of employees toiling endlessly, each creating some component of a product. However, this association is not how many new products are actually produced — nor is it the height of efficiency we’ve been led to believe.
Modern manufacturing, manufacturing 3.0, is a fairly recent development, having awaited the growth of a mass consumer market as well as the development of mass-production techniques. Earlier production was done largely by hand prior to the Industrial Revolution, with skilled artisans providing labor using hand tools and great amounts of time (manufacturing 1.0).