THE THIRD WAVE
After the arrival of the Second Wave, we began to manufacture identical clothes on a mass-production basis. Under this system the worker placed one layer of cloth on top of another; he laid a pattern on top; then, with an electric cutting knife he cut around the edges of the pattern and produced multiple, identical cutouts of the cloth. These were then subjected to identical processing and came out identical in size, shape, color, and so forth.
The new laser machine operates on a radically different principle. It does not cut 10 or 50 or 100 or even 500 shirts or jackets at a time. Its cuts one at a time. But it acutally cut faster and cheaper than the mass-production methods employed until now. It reduces waste and eliminates the need for inventory. For these reasons, according to the president of Genesco, one of the largest manufacturers of apparel in the United States, “The laser machines can be programmed to fill an order for one garment economically.” What that suggests is that some day even standard sizes may disappear. It ma} be possible to read one’s measurements into a telephone, 01 point a video camera at oneself, thus feeding data directly into a computer, which in turn will instruct the machine to produce a single garment, cut exactly to one’s personal, individualized dimensions.
What we are looking at, in effect, is custom tailoring on a high- technology basis. It is the reinstatement of a system of production that flourished before the industrial revolution— but now built on the basis of the most advanced, sophisticated technology. Just as we are de- massifying the media, we are de-massifying manufacture.
Several other quite extraordinary advances are transforming the way we make things.
As some industries move from mass to small batch production, others are already moving beyond that toward full customization on a continuous-flow basis. Instead of starting and stopping production at the beginning and end of each short run, they are advancing to thepoint at which the machines can continuously reset themselves, so that the units of output—each one different from the next—stream from the machines hi an unbroken flow. In a nutshell, we are racing toward machine customization on a round-the-clock, continuous basis.
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