off introduction:

Today, firms are developing methods to print food, clothes or organs as well as parts for airplanes or even entire houses. Machines communicate with each other to steer the production of goods autonomously and individually customised for buyers at low costs. New technologies offer the opportunity to produce a number of existing products or product parts faster, cheaper and in better quality compared to traditional production processes. Digital production processes can easily and without significant costs adjust to both very small and very large lot sizes, volatile demand and changes in the product. Production may take place centralised – or decentralised in mini-factories in a community or a household.

This is the vision of digital manufacturing, sometimes also called digital fabrication or digital production. It is based on the idea of a universalistic production of goods. Universalistic production means the ability to generate (nearly) every kind of product as a replication of a digital model that can be copied and varied easily. Moreover, products are created from only a few basic resources like energy, metal and plastic and they are the output of quasi-automatic interaction of smart producing units. This vision is related to and based on current technologies like additive manufacturing and smart devices that allow for rapid prototyping and self-regulated production without a lot of human interaction. It might – in the very long run – turn into something that resembles the famous Star Trek replicator.