From Atoms and Molecules to Information and Knowledge: New Driving Forces in Manufacturing

In the 40 years since Gordon Moore articulated his famous Moore's Law, enormous changes have taken place in all industries and particularly in the semiconductor industry. The first decade of Moore's Law, the 60's and early 70's was dominated by semiconductor process development, which gave the world the foundation devices that now empower the world through advanced communication and computation capabilities. The second decade, the late 70's and early 80's, was dominated by computer architects, who defined the memory and microprocessor devices that led to the personal computer industry. The third decade, the mid 80's to the mid 90's, saw device design as a core competency; as the ability to link millions and tens of millions of devices to make more sophisticated circuits led to vastly more sophisticated devices. The next decade, the 90's to the present time, was dominated by manufacturing, where making these great devices by the hundreds of millions became a competitive advantage, leading to advanced computing, communication and Internet capabilities. So what's next; what will emerge from this decade? The most significant attributes of the coming generations are the introduction of ever newer, lower cost, more sophisticated devices and the opening of new markets, particularly in emerging economies; consequently, there will be a major emphasis on the manufacturing domain as pressure continues to be competitive in price, quality, performance and in particular, delivery time. This paper discusses some of the major trends that will impact manufacturing, given these competitive product pressure; it seems to me that the most significant impact will be through sharing and leveraging of manufacturing-related knowledge, as process complexity increases and the work is more globally distributed. Maybe knowledge is power, but globally distributed shared knowledge is certainly GREAT power!