From mind to products: towards social manufacturing and service

TLDR

Social manufacturing (SM) is introduced as an innovative solution for the personalized customization era, enabling prosumers to transform ideas into products and fulfilling both tangible and intangible needs, and is anticipated to become increasingly popular across industries. The authors compare mass customization with SM, analyze its social‑network‑driven foundations, describe supporting technologies such as IoT, cloud computing, 3D printing, and intelligent systems, develop an SM platform prototype, and propose three transformation modes for different user cases.

Abstract

After reviewing the development of industrial manufacturing, a novel concept called social manufacturing (SM) and service are proposed as an innovative manufacturing solution for the coming personalized customization era. SM can realize a customer's requirements of "from mind to products", and fulfill tangible and intangible needs of a prosumer, i.e., producer and consumer at the same time. It represents a manufacturing trend, and is expected to become popular in more and more industries. First, a comparison between mass customization and SM is given out, and the basis and motivation from social network to SM is analyzed. Then, its basic theories and supporting technologies, like Internet of Things (IoT), social networks, cloud computing, 3D printing, and intelligent systems, are introduced and analyzed, and an SM platform prototype is developed. Finally, three transformation modes towards SM and 3D printing are suggested for different user cases.