Industrialized Uniqueness

As one of the pioneers of this vision, Professor Thomas Bauernhansl, who heads up the University of Stuttgart’s Institute of Industrial Manufacturing and Management (IFF) as well as the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Engineering and Automation (IPA), takes a long-term view. “Prior to the Industrial Revolution”, he reminds us, “most products were made by hand. A cobbler would make a pair of shoes to fit a specific customer, and every pair was made to measure.” A pair of shoes could cost a month’s wages and quality could vary if a particular cobbler was not particularly good at his trade. This diversity was reduced to mass production through industrialisation, until personalisation took hold in the middle of the last century and with it – based on the building block principle – the differential assembly of standardised components, which resulted in the product variety seen in today’s shoe shops.

For Bauernhansl and his colleagues, the next logical step is for everyone to have bespoke shoes made to measure, but for the same price and at the same consistent production quality as mass produced products. “We’ll still use the building block principle, but to a lesser extent”, Bauernhansl explains: “But will also develop and manufacture items in batches of one – and all with the aid of new technologies, such as 3D printing.” At the same time, the researchers are thinking beyond relatively banal products, such as shoes. In their “Mass Personalisation” study, the five Stuttgart-based Fraunhofer Institutes are focusing on mobility, housing and health – all of which are topics that combine great social relevance with multiple facets and major technical challenges.

“The trick is to dissolve traditional boundaries between producers and consumers”, says Bauernhansl, who explains that: “A given customer doesn’t necessarily wish to buy a drill. What he wants is a hole in the wall. And that’s what we need to give him.” With the participation of many value creation partners, “ecosystems” built around customer needs could enable the provision of shared platforms that would offer them personalised services. The researchers refer to this concept as “B2U”, which stands for “business to user”, whereby all efforts are centred on the user.

Bespoke production at no significant additional cost: that initially presents a conceptual obstacle. After all, a tailor-made suit costs much more than one off the peg. Bauernhansl dispels such concerns: “Until now”, he explains, “manufacturers have had to anticipate what their customers may wish to buy at some point in the future. But now customers can utilise specialised services to participate personally in the development process, which reduces costs arising directly in connection with complexity.” Schunk, a company based in Lauffen am Neckar, which specialises in the production of gripper sytems and clamping technology, has already developed a working example of this. The company launched the eGrip platform to which users can upload 3D models of the objects to be gripped and, with the assistance of the Development Department, can design the appropriate gripper device. Bauernhansl is certain that the development could be completely automated in a next step or else purchased as an additional service, always with the long-term goal of enabling personalised production at the cost of mass production in order to ensure the project’s long-term economic viability.

The purpose of the “Mass Personalisation” study was to identify the need for action and nascent solutions. Research is now focusing on a high performance centre for mass personalisation, which the University of Stuttgart and Fraunhofer are supporting with funding totalling 12.5 million euro. In addition, existing institutions, such as the ARENA 2036 research campus in Stuttgart, should play an important role, for example by developing “smart” cars for personalised mobility.

The researchers see good opportunities in the housing sector for the asymmetric combination of mass and bespoke production. Of courses, many houses are already built to bespoke specifications. But, reconfiguring a house to suit new lifestyle requirements later in life, is usually a very expensive undertaking. Therefore, says Bauernhansl: “We’re searching for novel concepts for rooms that can be adapted more easily.” So-called “smart” construction technologies have a role to play in this context, for example, to enable older people to maintain an independent lifestyle for longer. The third point of focus from a mass personalisation perspective is health, whereby the long-term vision is the “digital doctor”. “Personalisation is essential in this field to increase quality whilst simultaneously lowering costs”, says Bauernhansl, who goes on to explain that data collated via sensors could be analysed to develop individualised therapies or ideally customised medicines. A crucial prerequisite for this, he says, is the continuous availability and protection of patient data. This, according to Bauernhansl, requires the intervention of the legislators.

In the opinion of the head of the IFF, a concept such as B2U is an opportunity for high-wage countries, such as Germany, to remain competitive, especially since personalised production promotes regional manufacturing to prevent the inherent time savings from being negated by lengthy delivery routes. Bauernhansl is convinced that “the concept is perfectly suited to our high-tech’ capabilities.” German machine engineering could also benefit from the fact that much of the existing manufacturing plant would have to be updated or redesigned. “Today, many companies already understand that force and logic of the concept”, says Bauernhansl, as it enables them to lower development costs and increase customer retention and loyalty.

Jens Eber