Presentation at the 2012 Artilect Conference, Toulouse, 19 Oct 2012

1. Open
Source
in
Distributed
Manufacturing
Peter
Troxler
conference2012.ar=lect.fr
19
Oct
2012

2. Peter
Troxler
• Research
Professor
–
3rd
Industrial
Revolu=on
Hogeschool
RoFerdam
• Industrial
Engineer
– PhD
1999
– Factory
Automa=on
– Knowledge
Management
/
Research
• Community
– Fringe
theater
company
and
arts
fes=vals
(1990s;
2000s)
– Knowledge
management
researchers
(2000s)
• Fab
Lab
– 2008/09
Fab
Lab
Amsterdam
– 2010
Fab6
– Fab
Lab
Luzern
(Switzerland),
RoFerdam
(NL)
– Interna=onal
Fab
Lab
Associa=on
– FabLab
Zürich

3. Industrial
Revolu=on
• Neil
Gershenfeld,
2005:
Fab.
The
Coming
Revolu=on
on
Your
Desktop
• Jeremy
Riain,
2011:
The
Third
Industrial
Revolu=on.
How
Lateral
Power
is
Transforming
Energy,
the
Economy,
and
the
World.
• Chris
Anderson,
2012:
Makers:
The
New
Industrial
Revolu=on

4. Neil
Gershenfeld
[P]ossession of the means for industrial production has long been the
dividing line between workers and owners. But if those means are easily
acquired, and designs freely shared, then hardware is likely to follow the
evolution of software. Like its software counterpart, opensource
hardware is starting with simple fabrication functions, while nipping at
the heels of complacent companies that don’t believe that personal
fabrication “toys” can do the work of their “real” machines. That
boundary will recede until today’s marketplace evolves into a continuum
from creators to consumers, servicing markets ranging from one to one
billion. (FAB. The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop, 2005, p.21)

5. A
con=nuum
from
creators
to
consumers,
servicing
markets
ranging
from
one
to
one
billion
(Gershenfeld
2005)

6. Neil
Gershenfeld
hFp://www.ted.com/talks/neil_gershenfeld_on_fab_labs.html

7. Neil
Gershenfeld
[T]he killer app for personal fabrication in the developed world is
technology for a market of one, personal expression in technology (…).
And the killer app for the rest of the planet is [to overcome] the
instrumentation and the fabrication divide, people locally developing
solutions to local problems. (TED talk, 2006)

8. There
are
at
least
two
issues
to
be
considered

9. «Hardware
is
Hard»
It would be naïve to believe that open source software practices could be
simply copied and applied to the manufacturing domain without any
alteration or adaptation, ignoring the constraints and opportunities that
the materiality of hardware entails. (Troxler, 2011, p. 89)

10. Eric
Steven
Raymond
The
Cathedral
and
the
Bazaar
(2000)
Linux is subversive.
Linus Torvalds’s style of development—release early and often, delegate
everything you can, be open to the point of promiscuity—came as a surprise.
cathedral … carefully crafted by individual wizards or small bands of mages
working in splendid isolation
a great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and approaches (…) out of
which a coherent and stable system could seemingly emerge only by a
succession of miracles

11. Open
Source
Hardware
Hardware
is
a
Broad
Term
Inherent
Openness
Moularity
Material
Costs

12. Jeremy
Riain
1st
revolu=on
2nd
revolu=on
3rd
revolu=on
Automa=c
Electrical
com-­‐ Internet
prin=ng
press
munica=on
Renewables
Steam-­‐powered
Smart
buildings
Oil-­‐powered
technology
Smart
grid
combus=on
engine
E-­‐mobility
19th
century
20th
century

13. Jeremy
Riain
• Oil
Price
June
2008
–
147
US$
per
barrel
all
other
prices
went
up
purchasing
power
collapsed
• 25
years
of
6-­‐7
cycles
growth/collaps,
every
=me
the
oil
price
hits
125…150
US$/barrel

14. Jeremy
Riain
hFp://ec.europa.eu/avservices/video/player.cfm?sitelang=en&ref=85716

15. Jeremy
Riain
[T]he conventional top-down organization of society that characterized
much of the economic, social, and political life of the fossil-fuel based
industrial revolutions is giving way to distributed and collaborative
relationships in the emerging green industrial era. We are in the midst of
a profound shift in the very way society is structured, away from
hierarchical power and toward lateral power. (Rifkin 2011, p. 36f.)

16. Makers in Fab Labs on the one hand are busy with their own
manufacturing projects and make use of their lateral relations as needed
but do not normally bother about the organization of those relationships
beyond those just-in- time needs. Occasionally they wish for better, more
effective access to resources in the network. So far, however, they have
only come up with very few sustainable and scalable ways to create new
ways of organizing distributed personal manufacturing—organization
and governance is not their core interest.

17. Institutions on the other hand are more concerned about organization,
structures and governance, yet their solutions tend to be of conventional,
hierarchical, top-down nature: centralized cathedral structures.
Moreover, those solutions risk counteracting lateral approaches,
suffocating emergent peer-to-peer initiatives—and they fail to get
accepted by the makers.

18. Neil
Gershenfeld
The message coming from the fab lab is that the other five billion people
on the planet aren’t just technical sinks, they are sources. The real
opportunity is to harness the inventive power of the world to locally
design and produce solutions to local problems. I thought that’s a
projection twenty years hence into the future, but it’s where we are
today. It breaks every organizational boundary we can think of. The
hardest thing at this point is the social engineering and the
organizational engineering, but it’s here today

19. Commons
is
needed
• Ostrom,
Vincent,
and
Ostrom,
Elinor
(1977).
Public
Goods
and
Public
Choices
• Ostrom,
Elinor.
1990.
Governing
the
Commons,
Cambridge:
Cambridge
University
Press.
• David
C.
Stark
(2001).
Ambiguous
Assets
for
Uncertain
Environments:
Heterarchy
in
Postsocialist
Firms.
• Hess
&
Ostrom
(eds).
2007
Understanding
Knowledge
as
a
Commons.
From
Theory
to
Prac=ce.
• Sieaes,
Chris=an.
2008.
“From
Exchange
to
Contribu=ons.
Generalizing
Peer
Produc=on
Into
the
Physical
World.”
Berlin:
Sieae.
• Dobusch
&
Quack
(2010).
Managing
Boundaries
between
Organiza=ons
and
Communi=es:
Comparing
Crea=ve
Commons
and
Wikimedia.
• Egyedi
and
Mehos
(2012)
Inverse
Infrastructures.
Disrup=ng
Networks
from
Below.
Cheltenham:
Edgar
Elgar
• Thomson
&
Taipo
(2012).
Design
for
Growth
and
Prosperity.
Report
and
Recommenda=ons
of
the
European
Design
Leadership
Board.
Brussels:
DG
Enterprise
and
Industry
of
the
European
Commission.

20. understanding how best to restore the Great a baker (the artisan) applies decisions and
Lakes (Sproule-Jones 1999); monitoring fishery methods in the mixing, kneading, rising, and
management (Rudd 2004); analysing environ- baking (artisanship) in order to produce a loaf of
mental governance (Myint 2005); modelling bread (the artifact). The complexity of the
operational decision making in public organisa-
IAD
coordination, actions, and decisions increases
Bio-Physical ACTION
Characteristics ARENA
Action
Situations Patterns of
Attributes of the Interactions
Community
Actors Evaluative
Rules-in-Use
Criteria
Outcomes
Figure 1. Institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework

21. understanding how best to restore the Great a baker (the artisan) applies decisions and
Lakes (Sproule-Jones 1999); monitoring fishery methods in the mixing, kneading, rising, and
management (Rudd 2004); analysing environ- baking (artisanship) in order to produce a loaf of
mental governance (Myint 2005); modelling bread (the artifact). The complexity of the
operational decision making in public organisa-
IAD
coordination, actions, and decisions increases
Bio-Physical ACTION
Characteristics ARENA
Action
Situations Patterns of
Attributes of the Interactions
Community
Actors Evaluative
Rules-in-Use
Criteria
Outcomes
Figure 1. Institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework

22. Co-­‐located,
Synchronous

23. Distributed,
Synchronous
• FabAcademy
• various
co-­‐opera=on
projects
– e.g.
Distributed
Business
Design
Collabora=on,
FabLab
Lucerne

24. Distributed,
Asynchronous
• Fab
Lab
Networks
– USFLN
– FabLab.NL
(BE,
NL,
LUX)
– Swiss
Fab
Founda=on
– [fablab-­‐fr]
• Professional
Organisa=ons
– ShopBot
(hFp://www.talkshopbot.com)
– Ul=maker
(hFp://forum.ul=maker.com)
– Interna=onal
Fab
Lab
Associa=on
– LinkedIn
(hFp://www.linkedin.com/groups/FabLab-­‐
Interest-­‐Group-­‐89815?trk=myg_ugrp_ovr)
• Local
Organisa=ons

25. Resources
• hFp://wiki.fablab.is
• hFp://vimeo.com/fabacademy2012
• hFp://neweez.com/broadcast/
20612_Le_numero_zero

26. understanding how best to restore the Great a baker (the artisan) applies decisions and
Lakes (Sproule-Jones 1999); monitoring fishery methods in the mixing, kneading, rising, and
management (Rudd 2004); analysing environ- baking (artisanship) in order to produce a loaf of
mental governance (Myint 2005); modelling bread (the artifact). The complexity of the
operational decision making in public organisa-
IAD
coordination, actions, and decisions increases
Bio-Physical ACTION
Characteristics ARENA
Action
Situations Patterns of
Attributes of the Interactions
Community
Actors Evaluative
Rules-in-Use
Criteria
Outcomes
Figure 1. Institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework

27. understanding how best to restore the Great a baker (the artisan) applies decisions and
Lakes (Sproule-Jones 1999); monitoring fishery methods in the mixing, kneading, rising, and
management (Rudd 2004); analysing environ- baking (artisanship) in order to produce a loaf of
mental governance (Myint 2005); modelling bread (the artifact). The complexity of the
operational decision making in public organisa-
IAD
coordination, actions, and decisions increases
Bio-Physical ACTION
Characteristics ARENA
Action
Situations Patterns of
Attributes of the Interactions
Community
Actors Evaluative
Rules-in-Use
Criteria
Outcomes
Figure 1. Institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework

28. understanding how best to restore the Great a baker (the artisan) applies decisions and
Lakes (Sproule-Jones 1999); monitoring fishery methods in the mixing, kneading, rising, and
management (Rudd 2004); analysing environ- baking (artisanship) in order to produce a loaf of
mental governance (Myint 2005); modelling bread (the artifact). The complexity of the
operational decision making in public organisa-
IAD
coordination, actions, and decisions increases
Bio-Physical ACTION
Characteristics ARENA
Action
Situations Patterns of
Attributes of the Interactions
Community
Actors Evaluative
Rules-in-Use
Criteria
Outcomes
Figure 1. Institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework

29. understanding how best to restore the Great a baker (the artisan) applies decisions and
Lakes (Sproule-Jones 1999); monitoring fishery methods in the mixing, kneading, rising, and
management (Rudd 2004); analysing environ- baking (artisanship) in order to produce a loaf of
mental governance (Myint 2005); modelling bread (the artifact). The complexity of the
operational decision making in public organisa-
IAD
coordination, actions, and decisions increases
Bio-Physical ACTION
Characteristics ARENA
Action
Situations Patterns of
Attributes of the Interactions
Community
Actors Evaluative
Rules-in-Use
Criteria
Outcomes
Figure 1. Institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework

30. understanding how best to restore the Great a baker (the artisan) applies decisions and
Lakes (Sproule-Jones 1999); monitoring fishery methods in the mixing, kneading, rising, and
management (Rudd 2004); analysing environ- baking (artisanship) in order to produce a loaf of
mental governance (Myint 2005); modelling bread (the artifact). The complexity of the
operational decision making in public organisa-
IAD
coordination, actions, and decisions increases
Bio-Physical ACTION
Characteristics ARENA
Action
Situations Patterns of
Attributes of the Interactions
Community
Actors Evaluative
Rules-in-Use
Criteria
Outcomes
Figure 1. Institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework

31. Roadmap
• How
to
build
effec=ve
forms
of
collec=ve
ac=on
and
self-­‐organisa=on
for
Fab
Labs?
• How
to
break
free
from
tradi=onal
systems
and
crea=vely
design
new
systems
that
tap
into
the
capabili=es
of
Fab
Labs?
• How
to
protect
the
interests
and
crea=ve
freedom
of
makers
while
also
ensuring
wide
access
to
new
knowledge,
processes
and
products?
• How
to
appropriately
and
effec=vely
create
and
capture
value?
• How
to
achieve
equity
and
fairness?

32. Why
This
is
Important

33. • The
hardest
thing
at
this
point
is
the
social
engineering
and
the
organiza=onal
engineering,
but
it’s
here
today.
• 3rd
Industrial
Revolu=on
…
away
from
hierarchical
power
and
toward
lateral
power.
• A
con=nuum
from
creators
to
consumers,
servicing
markets
ranging
from
one
to
one
billion.

34. FabLab
is
also
Prototyping
Lateral
Manufacturing
(Commons-­‐Based
Peer
Produc=on)
in
Distributed
Direct
Digital
Manufacturing