i am suggesting that the interchangeability of parts is an epiphenomenon of
mass production.  mass production of identical products by repetitive
machine operation was the driving force of the industrial era.

example 1:  if you have a huge number of identical products in use, if
different parts of that product can break, any one of them making it
inoperable, there is a good chance that one can salvage the defective part
from another identical product that failed for a different reason. 

example 2:  mass production was greatly enhanced by modularization in the
sense that a product was conceptually divided into subassemblies,
subsubassemblies, etc, which could be combined variously and outsourced to
different manufacturers, specializing in these subassemblies, for example
screw manufacturers, carburetor manufacturers, engine plants.  today, car
manufacturers are mere assembly operations.  since industry was driven to
increase their markets, specialized manufacturers had an interest in selling
their products to a variety of manufacturers.  consequently, standards
developed that greatly increased the efficiency if mass production.

example 3:  carrying the emergence of standards further, while many mass
products end up in relatively unique situations (person X driving a mass
produced car), where mass products occur together, (combinatorially or
sequentially) they encourage standards as well. e.g., the standard spaces
for cars in parking garages.  the oldest combinatorial standard that i can
think of was for building material, which could be combined in numerous
ways.  the egyptians used stone blocks of identical sizes to build pyramids.
the romans had standard size bricks.  

the mayans, by contrast, made each stone to fit uniquely its neighbors.
just as the tailors, locksmiths, and carpenters of preindustral eras who
fitted each part to work with the other parts.  in the absence of mass
production, interchangeability was meaningless.

klaus   

-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ken
Friedman
Sent: Saturday, May 12, 2007 6:37 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Casting, cutting, and milling -- in the industrial context

Friends,

In my note to Karel, I was imprecise in my use of the terms casting and
milling. I should have been more careful in my usage. We cast type (or did),
we cut dies, and we mill many kinds of machine parts. 
We use dies and molds for casting, and we use jigs for milling.

Imprecision aside, I hope the principles in my note are clear.

The techniques and methods of industry changed over time. Some kinds of mass
production or mass craft production go back thousands of years, and
factories made those artifacts. The pin factory that Adam Smith describes in
The Wealth of Nations represents division of labor in a way that leads to
the logic of the assembly line. The modern Henry Ford assembly line
represents a new kind of scale, just as the Rouge represented a new kind of
scope. It led to the human ills that Charlie Chaplin represented in modern
times, and it shaped the foundation of a new kind of world that brought good
as well as bad.

Ford's goal in life was to get people off the farm and to free them from the
drudgery of life in the primary sector of the economy. The primary sector --
farming, fishing, forestry, basic minerals extraction -- employed over 90%
of the developed world's workers at the end of the 1800s. Today, at the
start of the 2100s, they employ fewer than 10% of the workers in OECD
nations. There is good news here as well as bad, for anyone who ever worked
on a farm in the era before industrialization. But that's a post for another
day.

What got people off the farm was the kind of technology that required
interchangeable parts of mass-produced machinery. This only began in the
1800s.

Many technologies began far earlier that we commonly realize. Robert Hooke
provided the first technical description of a working telegraph in the
1680s. In the 1670s, Father Ferdinand Verbiest, a Belgian missionary in
China, built a working steam-powered trolley and some sources suggest that
he built a working steam-powered automobile. 
Hooke's telegraph was far removed from the modern telegraph with Edison's
repeater that has now been replaced by still more advanced systems in the
Internet and satellite era. Verbiest's automobile was to today's automobile
what the 3-toed Eocene horse was to a modern horse. For that matter, early
modern auto manufacturing was 3-toed compared with the Toyota Production
System.

These are the things I'm struggling with. But I want to say again that
Karel's point was well taken -- all these issues evolve from human design
activity over time, and none of these processes emerged full-blown in recent
years.

On the confusion of casting, cutting, milling, please forgive a post written
swiftly while I think and work on something else.

Yours,

Ken




-- 

Prof. Ken Friedman
Institute for Communication, Culture, and Language Norwegian School of
Management Oslo

Center for Design Research
Denmark's Design School
Copenhagen

+47 46.41.06.76    Tlf NSM
+47 33.40.10.95    Tlf Privat

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