How Everyday Things Are Made

OckNock writes "The Alliance for Innovative Manufacturing at Stanford University in conjunction with Design4x has released online courses on design and manufacturing that include over 4 hours of streaming video (Flashplayer required). Some of the topics include airplanes, crayons, and waterjet cutting. If only they had this when I had studied mechanical engineering - maybe I would have stayed awake in class more."

Comments

Ah, the memories

[Megane]

When I was a kid, all you had to do was tune in Mr. Rogers to see crayons being made.

Re:Ah, the memories

[MikeD83]

Yes, I remember an episode where they went to a pencil factory. The interesting part was that all the waste wood was ground down and combined with glue to form a Duraflame faux fireplace log.

great stuff!

[seanadams.com]

During this internet craze, I think a lot of techies have lost touch with the amazing techniques that we develop for designing and manufacturing all the physical things around us.

If you're an out of work geek, consider looking into the "old smoke-stack" industries for places where you could apply your software skills in helping companies improve margins through better automation and more efficient processes.

Re:great stuff!

[PurpleFloyd]

Sorry, but process engineering is a dead field right now. Many companies are cutting "improvement" departments like process engineering and IT to the bone because they don't directly produce end products; middle and upper management often look down on divisions that don't do "real work." While companies doing this are essentially shooting themselves in the foot, most of manufacturing is cutting back or eliminating entirely divisions that serve to improve productivity. Since they're not directly related to product output, they get cut first and the company doesn't suffer immediately.

Also, what makes you think that an out-of-work sysadmin or programmer would be qualified? All the process engineers I know have spent many years working on the shop floor in their industries, and know the processes involved like the back of their hand. If they can't find work, what hope is there for someone who walks in from what is essentially a completely different industry?

Re:great stuff!

[digitalunity]

It depends very much on the process and the industry. I work for one of the largest silicon wafer manufacturers in the world. Our automation is so complex and mature that the only way we could lay off more workers is if we reduced capacity. That's the key. We did lay off almost half of the workers, but through efficiency increases, the capacity is where it was two years ago. The company saved a decent chunk of change because they kept the automation engineers around. I know of another similar company that just layed off quite a few people, but their automation is very poor. Overall, the company is doing very bad. Their capacity is less than a third of what it was two years ago and the company still isn't making much money.

There's two ways to save money in manufacturing: less workers & lowered capacity, or increased efficiency and increased profits. The method used depends highly on existing conditions.

And yes, as embedded devices become more commoditized, special education in the field becomes less important. One quick read through this boook and most good programmers would capable of automating simple tasks that more often than not require people to perform.

Re:great stuff!

[Jardine]

middle and upper management often look down on divisions that don't do "real work."

I wonder if that might be considered irony.

Re:great stuff!

[weave]

True, but capitalism would demand that at some point one of their competitors would figure out how to squeeze more productivity out of their employees who produce, and use process engineering to do it, and gain a competitive advantage.

I know in my own work place, and I can't stress this enough, I can look and identify a plethora of processes and issues that my team could help my site's employees become more productive at their jobs, but we don't because we're drowning in doing tech support for braindead software on buggy and security-deficient desktop software.

For example, our marketing department has employees who spend a few days taking a list of courses we offer and typing them into a page layout program to produce a brochure every month or so. Why not hack some code to pull that information out of our course database, format it, and produce the publication (or most of the grunt work of it) automatically, using some sort of style transformation. But I can't provide this service because my staff are too busy with the daily cost of supporting desktop PCs, despite my own efforts to streamline that. (And yes, I've bought it to management's attention that we spend most of our time chasing our own tails instead of working to improve employee productivity).

At some point, someone will have to "get it." Adapt or die.

Just on time!

[sinserve]

Some of the topics include airplanes, crayons, and waterjet cutting.

I was depressed after reading the story about tech jobs being
outsourced. But this new story suggests me a new career and I can already
see the light at the end of the tunnel. I am gonna become a World-Class
Crayon maker.

/me "borrows" candles blackout and emergency box ...

Mr. Wizard

[Jason1729]

I learned about this sort of thing watching Mr. Wizard's World when I was a kid. I gained my interest in science watching this show.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Re:Mr. Wizard

[josh crawley]

Hmmm.

Mr. Wizard: So this old man invites little boys and girls over to his house to do "experiments". We never meet Mrs. Wizard.

No, there's nothing suspicious here.

Re:Mr. Wizard

[ruprechtjones]

If you saw Bill Nye's original work on "Almost Live", a local Seattle comedy show that had its heyday in the early nineties, you would actually dig him. To me, he went to shit when he was picked up by Disney, but so be it. I still have some props from his studio (a killer 5-foot paper-mache T-Rex foot, I think it was used for prints in the sand, whatever, it's cool hanging on my wall), even tho I stopped watching him on cable, I still respect the dude. Like most other 'mericans, he followed the money, and hopefully he's doing alright now.

Really usefull if you learn by example

[strider3700]

I love it when places do this. I've always found it easiest to learn by watching someone else doing it, then copying, and then experimenting. I've learned basic cooking and baking, simple home repair and basic automotive repair this way all from tv. From there I usually realize I enjoy it, pick up a book or find a web site and get better at it. I'm currently in the middle of rebuilding a car using a manual a web forum and what I learned watching those hotrodding shows on TV saturday mornings. Now if only someone would release free videos of how to play with fiberglass and carbon fiber.

Re:Really usefull if you learn by example

[buck_wild]

"...easiest to learn by watching someone else doing it, then copying, and then experimenting"

Sounds like you're talking about puberty. Well, mine anyway.

Re:Really usefull if you learn by example

[cap'n foolsy]

you were able to experiment? i got as far as the theory, then i felt all dirty.

Take a look at

[AchmedHabib]

Take a look at http://www.howstuffworks.com/. There's a lot of explanations for just about anything.

this is college level?

[paradesign]

it seemed to me like a crappily edited tape that theyed show to middle schoolers before a field trip. i watched the 'transportation / automobiles' and it was HORRIBLE. no mention of tolerances, or part placement. well no, the narator did say, "up it goes" when they put the engine in. this is hardly up to teh quality of MIT's open courseware, but hey, if perty colors is your idea of an education, go for it, im sure your 'accredited' degree is in the mail.

Re:this is college level?

[Hal-9001]

You're thinking of a physics for non-majors course at the University of Virginia. The instructor, Louis Bloomfield (author of How Things Work: The Physics of Everyday Life), used a program to check the final papers for that course for plagarism, and came up with a disturbing number of positive results.

Hmmm

[Timesprout]

I dont see anything there about how babies are made

It is introductory.

[Anonymous Coward]

Which means interesting and undestandable by anyone without specific prior knowledge. Their disclaimer says (with highlights added):
AIM has developed an introductory website showing how various items are made. It covers over 40 different products and manufacturing processes, and includes almost 4 hours of manufacturing video. It is targeted towards non-engineers and engineers alike. Think of it as your own private online factory tour, or a virtual factory tour, if you wish. We are able to cover only a small number of products and processes, but we believe it will give you a good introduction to the world of manufacturing.

No way!

[jeffkjo1]

You mean I've been lied to all these years.... stuff isn't made by tiny gnomes who live inside of everything?

Re:No way!

[Timesprout]

We prefer to be called Gnomes of Small Stature you insensitive clod

oh so true.

[twitter]

When I was a kid, all you had to do was tune in Mr. Rogers to see crayons being made.

That was back when you did not need to sign a NDA or EULA to get a propriatory player to learn something. Mr. Rodgers came to you via published standard broadcasting signal. Now you gotta have a silly flash player, tomorrow you will have to have a DRM OS and dissapearing files for the distributed memory hole and universal censorship to work.

Oh yeah, just try opening that door.

[twitter]

If you're an out of work geek, consider looking into the "old smoke-stack" industries for places where you could apply your software skills in helping companies improve margins through better automation and more efficient processes.

Good luck. You are likely to be trampled by all the early retirement package, people from closed plants and layoffs who were hoping that this new fangled IT thing might make them useful again. People like me, who would be happy to have another job at a power plant. Manufacturing has been "contracting" in the US for the last 25 years. It's been moving to Mexico, Canada, East Europe and other places. Trade with China put that trend on th fast track. Big dumb companies have moved lots of IT offshore, engineering jobs took off with the factories and soon the consulting firms will have serious competition from them.

Re:chickenwire?

[Timesprout]

A bunch of chickens are fed a large amount of cocaine and then show a video of the life and works of Buckminster Fuller. They are then let loose in a wire factory and hey presto Chicken Wire.

I hope the poster didn't pass

[Anonymous Coward]

"I only they had this when I had studied mechanical engineering - maybe I would have stayed awake in class more."

Stick to the crayons, dude. I wouldn't want to cross any bridges you "engineered."

How Everyday Things are Mad

[pe1chl]

This is what it says in the upper-right corner of the screen.
Or is that only when played on Linux?

Hate to say it, but it's a good thing

[weave]

Anything that increases productivity is a good thing. You want people to increase their standard of living. There is only so much wealth in the world to go around. You can either muck with the system to redistribute that wealth, or you can work to create more wealth so there is more to go around.

Increasing productivity increases wealth. Unfortunately, some people don't get it. For example, if you force redistribution of wealth to balance things out and screw it up by removing incentives to increase productivity, you often descrease productivity and hence destroy wealth.

Imagine back about 150 years ago when most of our society was agrarian. More than half of all labor went into producing food. Not a lot of luxuries back then. When automated farm equipment came out, a lot of farm hands lost their jobs. Was this a bad thing? Of course not. Because food became cheaper, jobs shifted to manufacturing where goods were produced to make people's lives easier, etc, etc...

When jobs shift to other countries, some wealth shifts there too. But usually the productivity gains are more than enough to offset the loss in wealth because there's more of it to go around. It also helps the lives of other people in other countries to improve. Is that such a bad thing? Having a billion people in this world just sitting around and not being productive is a horrible waste of the world's potential. They should be out there making cheap toys for Happy Meals damn it!

Beyond the economic benefits there are also other benefits. As each country's economy becomes dependent on others, they are less likely to take hostile action against each other (although introduce religion into the mix and all logic and sense goes out the window).

As was posted by someone else above, there are still opportunities in IT to increase productivity in workers in your native country. As I look around my job site now, I see a tremendous amount of time spent in desktop support issues. I think the current design of software and OSes really suck. Lack of security, viruses, software that, when installed, can negatively affect other software on a PC, user's mucking with and destroying settings on PCs, etc, etc. Too much time in IT is spent with desktop support issues, fixing software issues, supporting users and not finding ways to improve the business process and hence increase productivity all around. There's also a horrible lack in adequate training. There are software tools out there to help, but employees don't know how to use it. How many in management know how to use software to plan things using a project-planning program for example?

Re:Hate to say it, but it's a good thing

[gears5665]

very good post. While I'm for redistribution of wealth from people who don't contribute through some kind of labor, the comment I had is that the reduction in food pricing and clothing pricing is wonderful until there is price fixing in Cereals that cost 4$ a pop or clothing that costs 30 cents to make,transport,etc and 50$ on the shelf.

Taking a step backwards...

[swordgeek]

The first thing I thought of when I read the subject was closer to 'how everyday things are created,' a cause near and dear to my heart.

Manufacturing is fascinating stuff, but my wife is an industrial designer, and as a result I get to see the REALLY neat parts--the research/design/prototype/test process that feeds into manufacturing.

Not too many people thing about the work that goes into making a chair (for example) fit properly, but it's a complex process and one that requires a lot more engineering than people realise.

Nothing really important to say here--just thought that people (especially those younger /.ers who haven't yet decided on a career) who find the manufacturing process interesting might also give a thought towards the industrial design aspect.

And today kids

[TCM]

we learn how molten piles of server goo are made.

Re:still need to replace more people with machines

[Cyno01]

I'm in milwaukee right now watching the Harley 100 aniverssary parade on tv right now. A bit of history, Harleys used to be manufactured by assembly line, but their quality declined so much that the company almost went under, it changed hands a few times, and was eventually bought by the employees. Now the bikes are hand assembled by four man teams.