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In 1917, exactly 90 years ago to the day of this posting, the New York Times, wrote in an article about the steel industry,
“Despite the larger amount of merchant shipping expected to be turned out by the extreme standardization of designs, the steel industry expects to be able to meet al the plate and structural shape requirements.”
The extreme standardization of the turn of the 20th century saw smaller machine shops and custom design houses give way to the more standardized needs of assembly line work and war production.
Just as the early 20th century saw extreme standardization (relative to current practices) of methods and materials used in manufacturing, so shall the 21st century see radical changes in the move towards standardization.
Many of the same benefits will be seen once again by industry. These will include reduced cost for overall product production, faster time to market, and increased market domains. Unlike the 20th century where extreme standardization was driven by the needs of the new assembly line manufacturing technique as well as the demands of two world wars, the current round of extreme standardization will be driven by the need to optimize the use of natural resources and increase the efficiency of energy used in the manufacturing process.
We refer to these current developments as Extreme Standardization or XS. XS is designed to remove the excess design time, excess raw materials, excess production time, and excess energy from the product lifecycle process. The XS concept looks at the entire product lifecycle and not just they initial production to market. This includes the issues of reuse, repurposing, recycling, and disposal.
The ExtremeStandardization.org project intends to lead this round of Extreme Standardization through development of an open source library of reusable interlocking parts designs. Please consider adding your contribution by joining or supporting the ExtremeStandardization.org project.
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