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A third industrial revolution
第三次工业革命
As manufacturing goes digital, it will change out of all recognition, says Paul Markillie. And some of the business of making things will return to rich countries
保罗马吉利称，随着制造行业走向数字化，制造业变化之大将超出人们的认知。而且发达国家的某些制造行业将会东山再起。
译者：scottwoo
Apr 21st 2012 | from the print edition of The Economist
OUTSIDE THE SPRAWLING Frankfurt Messe, home of innumerable German trade fairs, stands the “Hammering Man”, a 21-metre kinetic statue that steadily raises and lowers its arm to bash a piece of metal with a hammer. Jonathan Borofsky, the artist who built it, says it is a celebration of the worker using his mind and hands to create the world we live in. That is a familiar story. But now the tools are changing in a number of remarkable ways that will transform the future of manufacturing.
法兰克福会展中心，是德国无数个贸易展览会的举办地。在这座造型不规则的会展中心外面，耸立着一座高21米的活动雕像——敲锤人。这个敲锤人手持锤子，稳稳地抬起、落下胳膊，锻打一块金属块。这座雕像的作者乔纳森博罗夫斯基称工人运用自己的大脑和双手创造我们生活在的世界，这是一个值得称颂的事情。这种故事人所尽知。不过劳动工具正在发生显著变化，将会改变未来的制造业。
One of those big trade fairs held in Frankfurt is EuroMold, which shows machines for making prototypes of products, the tools needed to put those things into production and all manner of other manufacturing kit. Old-school engineers worked with lathes, drills, stamping presses and moulding machines. These still exist, but EuroMold exhibits no oily machinery tended by men in overalls. Hall after hall is full of squeaky-clean American, Asian and European machine tools, all highly automated. Most of their operators, men and women, sit in front of computer screens. Nowhere will you find a hammer.
在法兰克福举办的其中一个大型商贸展览会名叫欧洲模具展。它展出了能够制造产品原型的设备，可用来把上述原型变成成品的工具以及其他各式各样的制造工具。老派的工程师使用车床、钻头、冲压机和制模机工作。这种生产方式至今尚存，但欧洲模具展展出了一些由身着工作服的工人操纵的不耗油设备。每一个展厅都布满了干净利落的机床，都是高度自动化的，有来自美国的，亚洲的，还有的来自欧洲。操作这些设备的那男女女都站在计算机屏幕前掌控设备。这里，你找不到哪怕一个榔头。
And at the most recent EuroMold fair, last November, another group of machines was on display: three-dimensional (3D) printers. Instead of bashing, bending and cutting material the way it always has been, 3D printers build things by depositing material, layer by layer. That is why the process is more properly described as additive manufacturing. An American firm, 3D Systems, used one of its 3D printers to print a hammer for your correspondent, complete with a natty wood-effect handle and a metallised head.
最近的一届欧洲模具展是去年11月举行的，展出了另外一种设备——3D打印机。3D打印机通过沉积一层层材料来生产产品，而不是像以前那样锻打、弯曲、压切材料。这或许是这项工艺之所以被恰如其分地称作添加型生产的原因吧。3D系统这家美国公司专门使用它的3D打印机为本刊记者打造了一把锤子，它完成的这把锤子有个整洁的仿木手柄，并且上面装了个仿金属锤头。
This is what manufacturing will be like in the future. Ask a factory today to make you a single hammer to your own design and you will be presented with a bill for thousands of dollars. The makers would have to produce a mould, cast the head, machine it to a suitable finish, turn a wooden handle and then assemble the parts. To do that for one hammer would be prohibitively expensive. If you are producing thousands of hammers, each one of them will be much cheaper, thanks to economies of scale. For a 3D printer, though, economies of scale matter much less. Its software can be endlessly tweaked and it can make just about anything. The cost of setting up the machine is the same whether it makes one thing or as many things as can fit inside the machine; like a two-dimensional office printer that pushes out one letter or many different ones until the ink cartridge and paper need replacing, it will keep going, at about the same cost for each item.
这就是制造业未来的趋势。现在你可以找个工厂让它为你生产一个你自己设计的锤子，而你将为此支付上千美元的费用。这是因为制造者首先要生产一个模子，浇铸锤头，磨平锤头，车削出木质手柄，最后把这些部件装配起来。仅做一个锤子，成本将无比高昂。不过由于规模经济，如果你要生产成千上万个锤子，每个锤子的成本将大大降低。对3D打印机来说，规模经济这条定理并不怎么适用。无论是生产一件产品还是生产机器能容纳的最大量的产品，开动机器的成本都是一样的。这就像二维的办公打印机一样，无论打印一个字母，还是直到打印到墨盒没墨，纸槽没纸，打印的单位成本总是一样的。
Additive manufacturing is not yet good enough to make a car or an iPhone, but it is already being used to make specialist parts for cars and customised covers for iPhones. Although it is still a relatively young technology, most people probably already own something that was made with the help of a 3D printer. It might be a pair of shoes, printed in solid form as a design prototype before being produced in bulk. It could be a hearing aid, individually tailored to the shape of the user’s ear. Or it could be a piece of jewellery, cast from a mould made by a 3D printer or produced directly using a growing number of printable materials.
添加型生产还没有好到可以造出辆汽车或者一部iPhone的地步，但它已被用来生产汽车的个性化部件或者各户定制的iPhone外壳。尽管这是一个相对稚嫩的技术，但大多数人或许已经拥有在3D打印机协助下生产的产品了。它可能是一双鞋子，在批量生产前作为一种设计原型被实体印刷出来。它或许是部助听器，被单独定做下来以适合使用者的耳朵。它甚至有可能是件首饰，由3D打印机浇铸成型或者直接采用越来越多的可打印材料做成。
But additive manufacturing is only one of a number of breakthroughs leading to the factory of the future, and conventional production equipment is becoming smarter and more flexible, too. Volkswagen has a new production strategy called Modularer Querbaukasten, or MQB. By standardising the parameters of certain components, such as the mounting points of engines, the German carmaker hopes to be able to produce all its models on the same production line. The process is being introduced this year, but will gather pace as new models are launched over the next decade. Eventually it should allow its factories in America, Europe and China to produce locally whatever vehicle each market requires.
添加型制造业只是引领未来产业的众多突破之一，而且传统生产设备正变得越来越智能，也越来越灵活。大众汽车已经推出了一项全新的生产战略——横置发动机模块化平台，简称MQB。通过实现某些部件参数的标准化，如发动机的挂接点，这家德国汽车制造商有望能在同一条生产线上生产所有的模件。这项工艺今年刚被引进，且进展迅速，因为十年之内将有新的型号面世。最终它将使美国、欧洲和中国的分厂能够根据当地市场的要求生产本土化的车辆。
They don’t make them like that any more
全新技术 改头换面
Factories are becoming vastly more efficient, thanks to automated milling machines that can swap their own tools, cut in multiple directions and “feel” if something is going wrong, together with robots equipped with vision and other sensing systems. Nissan’s British factory in Sunderland, opened in 1986, is now one of the most productive in Europe. In 1999 it built 271,157 cars with 4,594 people. Last year it made 480,485 vehicles—more than any other car factory in Britain, ever—with just 5,462 people.
由于自动化的铣床能够互换部件，进行多维切割，能够“感知”故障，再加上装有视觉和其他知觉系统的机器人，工厂的生产效率可以大幅度提升。建于1986年，位于桑德兰的英国尼桑汽车厂是目前欧洲生产效率最高的汽车厂。1999年，它雇佣4594名员工共生产了271157辆汽车。去年该厂制造了480485辆汽车，是英国产量最高的汽车厂，它的员工只有5462名。
“You can’t make some of this modern stuff using old manual tools,” says Colin Smith, director of engineering and technology for Rolls-Royce, a British company that makes jet engines and other power systems. “The days of huge factories full of lots of people are not there any more.”
劳斯莱斯是英国的一家企业，它生产喷气式飞机的发动机和其他动力系统。其工程与技术部门主任科林史密斯称，“我们不能指望使用过时的手动工具生产现代化的部件，厂大人多的时代已经一去不复返了。”
As the number of people directly employed in making things declines, the cost of labour as a proportion of the total cost of production will diminish too. This will encourage makers to move some of the work back to rich countries, not least because new manufacturing techniques make it cheaper and faster to respond to changing local tastes.
随着直接从事制造行业的人数的下降，作为生产成本一部分的人力成本也会下降。这将鼓励制造商将一部分制造行业输回发达国家，尤其是因为新的制造技术使得制造商面对地方偏好变化时做出的更快的响应举措，而且代价更低。
The materials being used to make things are changing as well. Carbon-fibre composites, for instance, are replacing steel and aluminium in products ranging from mountain bikes to airliners. And sometimes it will not be machines doing the making, but micro-organisms that have been genetically engineered for the task.
制造产品的原材料也在变化。例如，不管是山地自行车的生产还是大型客机的生产，碳纤维复合材料都正在逐步取代钢铁和铝。再过些时日，连制造设备都有可能不再是机器了，而是由经过基因处理后的微生物完成这样的工作。
Everything in the factories of the future will be run by smarter software. Digitisation in manufacturing will have a disruptive effect every bit as big as in other industries that have gone digital, such as office equipment, telecoms, photography, music, publishing and films. And the effects will not be confined to large manufacturers; indeed, they will need to watch out because much of what is coming will empower small and medium-sized firms and individual entrepreneurs. Launching novel products will become easier and cheaper. Communities offering 3D printing and other production services that are a bit like Facebook are already forming online—a new phenomenon which might be called social manufacturing.
未来工厂的一切都将由智能软件操纵。制造行业的数字化将会跟已经完成数字化的其他产业一样，产生断裂效应。这些已经完成数字化的产业包括办公设备、电信行业、摄影行业、音乐行业、出版行业和电影行业。这种效应将不会局限在大型制造商中间；事实上，这些大企业应当未雨绸缪，因为这种即将实现的技术将会使中小企业甚至个人企业家深深受益。发布新颖的产品将会更加容易，成本更低。提供3D打印和其他有点类似于脸书的生产服务的社区已经在网上兴起——这是一种新的现象，可以称之为社会化生产。
The consequences of all these changes, this report will argue, amount to a third industrial revolution. The first began in Britain in the late 18th century with the mechanisation of the textile industry. In the following decades the use of machines to make things, instead of crafting them by hand, spread around the world. The second industrial revolution began in America in the early 20th century with the assembly line, which ushered in the era of mass production.
本报告接下来将要讨论的，以上所有变革的后果将会促成第三次工业革命。第一次工业革命始于18世纪晚期的英国，以纺织行业的机械化为标志。在其后的几十年里，使用机器而不是手工生产的生产方式扩展到世界各国。第二次工业革命始于20世界初的美国，以装配线为标志，将制造业领入大规模生产的时代。
As manufacturing goes digital, a third great change is now gathering pace. It will allow things to be made economically in much smaller numbers, more flexibly and with a much lower input of labour, thanks to new materials, completely new processes such as 3D printing, easy-to-use robots and new collaborative manufacturing services available online. The wheel is almost coming full circle, turning away from mass manufacturing and towards much more individualised production. And that in turn could bring some of the jobs back to rich countries that long ago lost them to the emerging world.
随着制造业实现数字化，第三次工业革命正呼之欲出。由于采用了新材料，全新的生产工艺如3D打印，易用的机器人，以及在线制造协作服务的普及，制造业能在经济的前提下，生产更少量的产品、生产组织更加灵活，需要更少的劳动投入。生产方式像个轮子一样兜了个圈又回到了原点，从大规模生产方式又转到了更加个性化的生产方式。这一转变反过来将会把制造业的某些就业岗位带回发达国家，这些工作岗位一度被发达国家丢弃至新兴世界。
来源于 ECO中文网
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