Opportunities and challenges of distributed manufacturing for humanitarian response
I’m delighted that a paper I wrote about Field Ready’s work and some of the engineering challenges we face was accepted by the IEEE for the Global Humanitarian Technology Conference, which is taking place this weekend in California.
I am permitted to share the accepted version of the paper [PDF] which is copyright IEEE. Once the official version is published, I’ll link to that and add the full citation. Abstract:
Distributed manufacturing, where decentralized small, local sites are engaged in production, often supported by digital systems and networks, can be a powerful tool in humanitarian aid. Field Ready uses distributed manufacturing to produce essential non-food items locally where they are needed during humanitarian responses. Such supplies can be available to communities in need and to relief workers more quickly, more cheaply than alternatives, and provide appropriate solutions to problems, often engaging local people in designing and making necessary items, and supporting economic development. Scaling up this requires local production capabilities (skills, tools, and information such as designs), which can be boosted by adoption of these methods by aid agencies, international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) and others. Local manufacturing offers the potential for disaster affected communities to be engaged in recovery, and long term to become more resilient, with access to all the equipment and information required to make the supplies they need. However, there are challenges: appropriate quality control for distributed manufacture, unlocking the potential for in-region manufacturers to engage in humanitarian response, and uptake of digital knowledge sharing and collaboration to the humanitarian sector. In this paper, we share experiences of human-centred design and global collaboration to solve local problems, of manufacturing in remote and challenging locations, community building and bridging sectors through the Humanitarian Makers network, and new ideas for distributed manufacturing standards and quality.
Whilst it’s great to have work published, it’s also quite challenging for small organisations and NGOs like Field Ready who are actually practicing humanitarian technology, and not just studying it. The minimum cost to get the paper published was $650, and the paper will be locked up on the IEEE’s publication platform, inaccessible even to my own colleagues without paying. This is not how knowledge transfer — especially to those in greatest need, and the humanitarian groups who strive to assist them — should work. But it’s still the dominant scholarly publication system we have in 2017.
Edited to add: The paper can be found on the IEEE site (if you have access to IEEE papers!). DOI: 10.1109/GHTC.2017.8239297