Summary and Aims of our policy.

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We will support and regulate manufacturing and construction business, in order to achieve the following goals:

 

1. Ensure all manufacture is sustainable.

2. Support and regulate to reduce costs of manufacture and use of resources.

3. Support and regulate to optimise design.

4. Support and regulate to optimise quality.

5. Standardise the specification of parts.

6. Reduce or eliminate throw away culture, and maximise the recyclability of products.

7. Ensure all specification and description of products is easily available and accurate.

 

Current unresolved issues.

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There are huge opportunities to improve all aspects of our manufactured products and bring widespread benefits to all of society as a result, however there are fundamental issues in our manufacturing industries which prevent this, many of which spill over into our construction industries:

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Lack of standardisation.  The specification of parts is generally not standardised, this causes endless increases in overall cost of manufactured goods in our world economy.  Many people will have experience of throwing out endless electronic cables, power supplies, and many other products, because everyone is making products to different specifications.  This is just the beginning, the problem is vast.  For example consider how many different designs of electric motors there are in the world, maybe hundreds of thousands.  All electric motors do the same thing, they cause a shaft to spin, and the speed, torque, and voltage are the main specifications of the motor.  For every requirement of a motor, it is perfectly possible to have one design that meets that requirement.  So for example starting motors on cars (and all engines) could be limited to say 3 designs of motor to allow for small, medium and larger engines, whereas we estimate there is thousands of designs of starting motors.  Furthermore the starting motor itself will have many equivalent uses such as a winch motor, thus reducing the number of designs to the minimum required to satisfy all requirements.  Doing this across all products creates huge benefits and savings, whereas having multiple designs from multiple manufacturers creates many problems, as follows:

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1. Huge extra repeated design costs of many companies having to design their own version of the same product.

2. Reduction in the quality of design, because companies struggle to find the design and testing resources they  need for every product they make.

3. Massive increase in overall world production costs, as many companies are making a similar product to a different specification.

4. Increased speed and costs of obsolescence.

5. Increased difficulty and costs of finding out which spare part you need, and finding a supplier for it.

6. Massively increased world stock of products and spare parts, creating huge extra costs of infantry, and waste.

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All of these problems were discovered and resolved in a specific case as early as 1841 (there are probably examples many years before this).  It was realised that not standardising the specification of nuts and bolts caused endless problems, and so Whitworth standardised their design in Britain during the industrial revolution.

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Poor Design.  To design even a simple product well requires huge knowledge, experience and training.  Design is a very complex process when done well, as it should include and consider every aspect of a product, its manufacture, its use, and its disposal.  Just a few of the considerations are; the source and nature of the raw materials used, the manufacturing procedures available, technology, environmental considerations, the purpose the product must fulfil, how it will be transported, recycled, repaired, and ultimately how suitable it is for the end user.  There is a continual lack of knowledge, experience and training in design, companies struggle to find the resources to fix this problem, and as a result design in general is not optimised.  We estimate the costs of poor design possibly runs into $trillions in the world economy.

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Poor Quality.  Many products are deliberately made to poor quality, either to be cheap, because they are disposable, or because the life expectation of the product, on the part of the buyer, is short.  There is another even more insidious reason for poor quality, and that is because manufacturers deliberately design products to fail after a period time, so that you have to go back to them and buy another one.  We estimate the costs of replacing poor quality products possibly runs into $trillions in the world economy.  Many products can with moderate extra cost be made to last indefinitely.

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Our Policy - How it resolves the issues and achieves the aims.

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Our policy is an ultimate policy.  This means that there has to be fundamental changes in our paradigms, economy, and politics, before we would be able to fully enact this policy.  The key paradigm shift is that all manufacturers worldwide would have to change their view that they are all isolated from, and competing with, each other.  The shift would be to the view that there is still competition, but within a bigger picture of have a common goal to optimise the industry for the benefit of everyone, and make sure the necessary  in order to achieve this.  We note also that regulation of design and manufacture is present to a lesser or greater extent in all countries, and that in a sense there is nothing new in our policy at all.  Rather it is a case of comprehensively and effectively applying principles that have already been established.  Our policy aims to do the following things:

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1. Provide basic manufacturing and design education throughout all of schooling.

2. Provide extensive, general and specific, compulsory education and training to anyone who wishes to enter into design and/or manufacturing jobs.  This training will be largely open source, and therefore of no cost to companies; it will ensure that everyone is knowledgeable, and qualified to carryout their job.

3. Provide support to all design and manufacturing companies.

4. Regulate products and components, to ensure the best possible design and quality.  Benchmark these designs to establish which are the best.

5. Grant licences for manufacture to the product design with the highest overall performance when benchmarked, similar to a patent. 

6. The companies who create these licensed designs, are free to licence it's manufacture to other companies, to recoup their design costs.

7. Create an international opensource database of these products and their accurate and comprehensive specification, so everyone has access to the products and information they need.

8. Ultimately regulate, optimise, and standardise the design of the majority of mass produced components and products worldwide.

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A key aim of our policies is as follows:  Imagine that there are 500 companies in the world who design (and probably make also) a common product such as a lawn mower.  Each company spends on average £100,000 designing each new model that they bring out.  This is a total of £50 million spent on design.  What happens if we used all of that budget within 5 specialist companies only, who were the leaders in their field.  Each company would now have £10 million to spend on designing each new model, this would mean they would have far better facilities, and equipment, and could employee more designers of a much higher calibre, thus resulting in a far better product for everyone, which can be manufactured at a lower price.   Indeed they probably would not need all the £10 million, so the cost of the mower would be still further reduced.  The five companies can then license manufacture of their designs to the other 495 companies.  This is the situation we wish to achieve with the design and manufacture of all products, as it brings benefits to everyone.

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Education and qualification in design and manufacture would include understanding all the following design considerations and goals, along with many others:

 

1. The product fulfils every aspect of it's purpose.

2. Maximum ease of use for the end user.

3. Indefinite or maximum life of product.

4. Maximum reliability.

5. Strong and durable products that will last in all their working environments.

6. Easily repaired.

7. Optimised use of materials.

8. Easy to recycle.

9. Greatest possible simplicity of the design.

10. Minimum no of parts.

11. Minimum technological and engineering difficulty of manufacture.

12. Design to minimise cost of manufacture. 

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Conclusion.

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There are huge opportunities to improve the design and quality of all products worldwide, and eliminate the costly waste of throwing away products because they are poor quality, disposable, or of an obscure design.  Standardising only the best designs, and licensing these for production, will further reduce the costs and the complexity of manufacturing, stocking, and supplying the world market.  The sourcing of products, and spare parts for repair, will be infinitely easier, and the existing market for resale of used parts will be greatly increased.  This is because it will be so easy to service these parts and find uses for them, given that they are standardised and therefore universally used by all manufacturers, thus further reducing the need for their disposal.  Achieving the full integrity of all our design and manufacturing in Britain would save billions in our economy, and trillions worldwide, this resource can then be redirected to solve the issues we have, and create the things we want in our lives.  Our full strategy for this is laid out here and in the supporting policies below. 

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Supporting policies.

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Education Policy

Technology & Machines Policy

Standardisation & Simplification Policy

Efficient work Policy

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Witten by Marcus white 29-4-2024 ©.

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