Paul's Viewpoints
By: Dr. Paul Pierpoint, NCATC Board Member, Northampton College
December, 2006
PF could become the new PC
A group of teenagers in inner city Boston creates custom-designed jewelry and sells it on the street. Sheep herders in the far northern reaches of Norway create their own own RF tags allowing them to track their herds even during the 24-hour darkness of winter. Farmers in rural Ghana build deviced that allow them to harness the power of the all-too-ubiquitous Ghanian sun. In India a small village makes its own parts that allow modern cable television services to be delivered throughout the region at a price that its poor residents can afford.
So what? What makes these people and these products special? People have always tinkered and created their own products - although not nearly as much as they did before the age of mass manufacturing. What makes these special is the technology they used to make their products. A new technology that could be as transformational to our way of life as the personal computer.
They all used table-top manufacturing equipment to make their products. They all used a Fab Lab.
If you have not heard about Fab Labs, you will. In his book, FAB: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop - From Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication, Neil Gershenfeld of MIT describes these and dozens of other examples of people with little or no manufacturing background using laser cutters, water-jet cutters, numerically controlled milling machines, 3D printers and other machines commonly used in rapid-prototyping to create final products. But there are a new generation of machines that fit on a table and cost a fraction of what current mainstream rapid-prototyping equipment costs.
And just as personal computing became almost universal when table-top computers and the applications software to use them became affordable to the masses, Gershenfeld predicts that "personal fabricating" will become the norm in the near future. He claims that in a few years people will own or have access to a Fab Lab, be able to buy digital designs online or create their own, download them to their personal fabricator and make their own products.
The implications for everyone from engineers and machinists to artists and musicians will be profound. The idea of hundreds of millions of table top factories throughout the world is staggering. But Gershenfeld is absolutely convinced it is inevitable. The PF will be as plentiful as the PC and it will change the world.
What does this mean for manufacturing in America? Maybe nothing right now. A handful of Fab Labs scattered around the planet are not going to change the way most people do business. But if Gershenfeld is correct and if the spread of personal fabricating occurs at even a fraction of the rate personal computing has spread, we will see entire industries disappear and new industries appear all over the world. The barriers to entry for manufacturing will virtually disappear for millions of new producers.
Is this emerging technology or is it Science Fiction? I am not sure. But as I write this column on my $500 personal computer and reflect upon the punch-card machine and multi-million dollar mainframe computer I used in 1975 to solve a simple equation, my money is with Gershenfeld.
Paul's Viewpoints
By: Dr. Paul Pierpoint, NCATC Board Member, Northampton College
October, 2006
An
Sometimes it takes a little extra help to take an emerging technology and make it a mainstream technology. Here is a chance for NCATC to be a catalyst for change.
The
But one formidable barrier remains. There are just not enough people out there with the skills necessary to use this technology effectively. A CompTIA survey found that 75 per cent of respondents believe there is not a sufficient pool of talent in RFID from which to hire, and 80 percent of these respondents say the lack of skilled individuals will affect adoption of the technology. This is a significant jump from a year ago when 53 per cent of respondents said the skills shortage would be a problem.
According to Sommer, “there are two types of skills that are critical to successful implementations: radio technology skills and software/business process/data architecture skills.” The NACFAM article includes a summary of skills Sommer says radio technologists need as well as those needed by the second type of jobs.
This is a great opportunity for NCATC and its member colleges to take the next step in creating a skilled, educated RFID workforce.
If we do it right, we could have programs in place to train RFID workers across the country in a very short period of time.
This looks to me like an opportunity for NCATC to play a major role in converting an emerging technology into a mainstream technology while serving our members well in the process.