Klaus Schwab, the executive director and founder of the World Economic Forum, forecasts that, as part of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, smart manufacturing will converge with synthetic biology and AI to have a transformational impact on the economy and our daily lives. Smart manufacturing is a form of advanced industrial manufacturing that integrates innovative technologies such as 3D printing, robotics, and the Internet of Things (IoT) to provide data analytics in real time.
In traditional manufacturing, large corporations and conglomerates rely on expensive production equipment to mass-produce standardized parts and products—a business model that typically utilizes offshore production and extensive supply chains. Traditional manufacturing systems have high fixed costs and low variable costs, but mass-production enables economies of scale. Although robotics and data analytics are used more frequently today in manufacturing to increase efficiency, despite all of the hype surrounding 3D printing it has yet to replace traditional manufacturing.
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