Message from the President May.2013

I hear that there is a movement to start new industrial revolution in the United States. U.S. President Barack Obama mentioned about widespread adoption of new manufacturing business utilizing 3D printing as a part of regaining status of U.S. manufacturers in his State of the Union address.

In short, since the 3D printer is less expensive, various people involved in manufacturing are connected by the form of crowdourcing and cooperate, if they have ideas, anyone can become manufacturer with small amount of fund. And he sees it as new industrial revolution. Some people call it “Makers: the New Industrial Revolution”. In fact, starting from U.S., companies and people working in such a new manufacturing is, seems to be spreading around the world. And recently, services that lend the 3D printer for individuals have started even in Japan.

Although I do not know how this movement will evolve, I think that, until now, the manufacturing could only be carried out if there were certain company scale and funds, but has come to be on the individual level, and we should consider it as a major change. Although there are various issues, such as strength and safety of products, which to be solved. But if this movement become a full-scale, segmentation, where mass-production is to be carried out by companies, and small lot production and one-off production is to be done by individuals, might occur.　　If that happens, it will really be a new industrial revolution.

I believe that idea of how we can make such movement into our business opportunities is needed, as our business’s customers are the manufacturing industries. Activities under a new web site for outside of company which the Meitec Group is preparing now include purpose of working together toward such idea.

I think that we should not just take this phenomenon as change in manufacturing, but we should focus on that there be possibilities in change of how engineer would work.