The pandemic lockdown of 2020 is taking its toll on factories of all kinds. Many are lost in bankruptcy and others are closing their doors forever. For some, there were more options, as owners were faced to make the decision to shut down your factory or crowd manufacture.
Due to the current restrictions, many workers have taken their jobs home and continued to telecommute or work from home. This is a transition that went relatively smoothly for office workers who were able to adapt to the teleworking model.
There is a general train of thought which excludes certain types of businesses, like factories, whose working environments call for a large space divided into sections, where employees perform specific functions within the manufacturing process.
It is assumed that these businesses are not able to transfer their business to remote work or jobs online. Some companies are proving them wrong by experimenting with crowd manufacturing.
What is Crowd Manufacturing?
Crowd manufacturing is a remote method of manufacturing wherein the craftspeople perform their work functions from home, when and if it is possible, as an alternative response to surviving and weathering the COVID-19 lockdown.
You may ask,
How does crowd manufacturing work?
Here’s an example of how crowd manufacturing works for one furniture factory that has adapted this remote manufacturing method during the shutdown:
Chris, the production manager starts with a panel truck that can hold 36 pieces of boxed ready-to-ship pieces of furniture, and loads it up with the raw wood components and packing materials, then drive’s the truck over followed by his wife to Michaels house. Chris drops the truck off and rides home with his wife.
Michael has a planer and sander in his shop at his house. He sands and planes the raw components there, loads up the truck and Mandy follows him as he drives to Jason’s house to drop off the goods.
Jason is the assembler. He assembles all the components, loads them into the truck, and takes them over to Amy and Brandon’s house, where the finishing magic takes place. Robert, who doesn’t live far away, drives over to Amy’s place and installs the hardware, and final touches.
Then the truck gets loaded again and taken over to Adam’s house, where, after Juan approves the quality check and signs off on each item, all the packaging and crating takes place (except items that do not pass Juan’s QC standards). When he’s done, Chris picks up the truck and takes the ready to ship goods to the warehouse, and routes the items that did not meet quality control standards to another division.
If necessity is the Mother of Invention, then crowd manufacturing may the answer to the challenges faced by a business economy in crisis due to the coronavirus.
This furniture company and many other businesses that are adopting the crowd manufacturing model are applying ingenuity to an otherwise impossible set of circumstances in an effort to survive the lockdown.
This is just one example that depicts how any assembly line could be reconfigured to work remotely from home. In time, it could be greatly improved upon.
Replacing the conveyor belt with a shuttle system
Sue Singh is a production seamstress who worked in a dress-making factory setting prior to the COVID-19 lockdown. Her production workstation is now located in her home and a company van shuttles unfinished products to her door, as they pick up projects which she has completed her portion, then those are shuttled to the home of the next worker.
Singh says, “They say that there’s talk among the higher-ups saying that we might be able to continue to do this work from home in the future.” According to Singh, the majority of the crowd manufacturing dressmakers are in agreement that continuing to operate in this manner is preferable to returning to the factory.
Not unlike telecommuting, crowd manufacturing could replace traditional forms of manufacturing into the future. Just like telecommuters became a more efficient way of conducting business while greatly reducing costs, crowd manufacturing as the new virtual assembly line may the burgeoning new normal.
How could you apply Crowd Manufacturing to your current business?