The Digital Future: Services Oriented Architecture and Mass Customization, Part 5B

From Previous Parts

Part 1 discussed the four ages of mankind.  The first was the Age of Speech; for the first time humans could “learn by listening” rather than “learn by doing”; that is, data could be accumulated, communicated, and stored by verbal communications.  It also transformed the hunting and gathering into an economic architecture of small somewhat settled communities over the course of 300,000 years.   Settlement produced first significant increase in economic activity, wealth per capita, and in the academics in the form of the shaman for tribal organization.

The second, the Age of Writing, produced a quantum leap in data and information that could be accumulated, communicated, and stored.  This was over a period of at least 6,500 years.  During this time, academic activity evolved from everyone working to survive to a diversity of jobs and trades and the economic stratification of political organizations.   Again, the total wealth of humanity took a leap of orders of magnitude as the economic architectures of city states, then countries, and then empires evolved.  The academics evolved from the shaman, to priests, clerics, researchers, mathematicians, and universities (e.g. the Museum at Alexandria ~ 370 BC and the University of Bologna, 1088) and libraries.

 

The third, the Age of Print, started with Gutenberg’s press in 1455, but blossomed with Luther’s radical admonition that everyone should “read” the bible about 1517.  Suddenly, the quantity of information and knowledge to a leap of several orders of magnitude as all types of ideas were accumulated, communicated, and stored.

 

Part 2 dealt with history of Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) as it developed hand in glove with computing architecture—a natural fit.

Part 3 A, deals with how SOA works with mass customization of products, systems, and services.

 

Part 3 B, discussed the three economic architectures, infrastructure, mass production, and mass customization will be employed in the Digital Age.

Part 4 discussed how the Mass Customization (Services Oriented Architecture) will change the culture within which the individual lives.

Part 5A and B will discuss the effects of the  paradigm shift to Mass Customization (Services Oriented Architecture) will effect various industries and the Mass Production Culture currently in vogue. 

In Part 5A I discussed and forecast how I see Mass Customization will effect Golf Clubs, Education, Retailing, and Entertainment industries.

In this part, 5B, I will discuss how I see the Mass Customization of the Digital Age effect transportation, medicine, housing, the infrastructure, and space.

Mass Customization of Transportation

The transportation of products and people and the communications of data, information, and knowledge has long been an impediment to the increase of wealth for humanity.  Cities formed for this reason.  They became the centers of wealth because they were at the nexus of transportation and communications.

With the coming of the transition to the Digital Age this is changing.  Already, ideas flow across social media including news, fake news, truths, half-truths, and spin-doctored truths; as well as outright lies.  However, most data and information is also stored and communicated digitally.  This means anyone anywhere has access to the same data and information (with the right security clearance).

This means that with the exception of “hands on” jobs anyone can work from anywhere.  This means that employees don’t need to leave home to work.  This has several long-term effects.  First, employees can live wherever they want and work anywhere.  For example, soon, working from a boat in the middle of the ocean will be no problem (it already is to some degree). 

In turn this means that there is little need for great cities as in the prior ages—New York and San Francisco may become the museums or ghost towns of the future.  There is no need for rush hours because most people can roll out of bed and into the office in a single roll.  (Note that this will have a side benefit of reducing the use of petroleum products).

Companies will find great value in this because they will not have to pay the costs for office space and so on.  Instead, they may pay their employee’s Internet bill, provide suitable computers, and rent meeting space for the occasional face-to-face meeting they may need.

However, this will also lead to the reinvigoration of small towns.  These will be the manufacturing (for Mass Customized goods) and distribution centers (for mass produced goods, like various foods)—systems and services will be generally ubiquitous across the Internet.  This means that the value of land, etc. in and near small towns will increase while that land values, etc. will drop.

The actual transport system will change as drastically as it changed during the Age of Print.  First for movement of people and goods within a local area there will be golf cart or ATV like vehicles.  These vehicles may be hybrid style.  But instead of using internal combustion engines, I suspect that some auto company will remember that at a constant speed, turbine engines much higher efficiency; and constant speed is really what is needed for power generation.

For local delivery of goods (ordered across the Internet) there will be package drones.  These drones will fly from the local distribution centers.

Second for travel for people beyond the local area there will be driverless drone vehicles (the “Jetson’s car”).  Yes, people with still travel for business, to see families, or for recreation.  They and the airspace of the local area will be controlled using automated control systems.  These drones will land in the backyard or other point designated by the traveler to take them to the closet transportation hub. 

I say transportation hub because they may be either air/spacecraft or maglev trains.  For regional travel, high speed maglev trains may be both the most effective and cost efficient (but there is a problem with the term “regional”, is it 200 or 500 miles?).

Beyond, regional is national and international travel which is the purview of air/spacecraft.  Yes, spacecraft, because as they refined they will become increasingly cost efficient “flying” near space.  And they will be the fastest way to “fly” intercontinental.  These hub airports are likely to be where most of the physical “mass production shopping” will occur.  They are likely to be as close to the current city as any urban area of the Digital Age.

 

Likewise, the transport of goods will change drastically.  First, raw materials, especially metals and other materials that need to be refined will be manufactured close to the source of the raw material.  Second, the raw material will be processed on “Just In Time”; therefore, much small quantities will be shipped.

Because of the costs of ocean shipping, some materials, like crude petroleum will continue to be shipped on large vessels.  However, most other materials, parts, and components (like fasteners, screws, and bolts) will be shipped using small “Just In Time” shipments.  These will be automatically transshipped using a variety of automated methods.

But the Digital Age has more to offer; for example, adaptive trip planning.  Any person that travels a lot finds that a wide variety of things will interrupt and greatly affect their travels, from weather to meetings that run late, to the costs of a trip, and so on.  To some extent, this has happened.

But I can foresee that in the near future there will be concierge services will be upgraded to provide alternate travel at the last minute depending on weather and other external events, and dependent on whether the business meeting or visit takes longer than expected.

While I know I’m sounding like a Sci-Fi writer from the 1950s to 1970s, the technology is here or almost here to make all of these changes.  It is no longer science fiction.  It is now questions of engineering and overcoming the current transportation system business and its governance, that is, governmental laws, rules, and regulations.

Mass Customization of Medicine

In the past 80 years, medicine has moved from a cottage type economic architecture, which has hovered at the edges of many civilizations since the at least the start of the Age of Writing to a Mass Production Architecture.  Unfortunately humans are not currently clones, they are bedroom biological experiments and produced based on reproductive urges.

What has happened is that the healthcare system is still using the Mass Production Architecture in its diagnosis, treatment, and the business elements (including the governmental regulations and insurance). 

For example, under the current system, a doctor will recommend a particular dosage of a medicine based on a patient’s weight, age, and general health.  If the dose is too high or low, the doctor will adjust the dosage.  If after several adjustments the medicine still is not performing its function for the patient, the doctor will another or several other medicines.

There are two reasons for all of this “fooling around”.  First, there are many factors beyond the obvious as to what dosage is good for this particular bedroom biological experiment (aka. person).  Second, it’s unclear if the medicine will perform effectively on the particular strain of the virus or bacteria, and what dosage is required for the strain.  And there are other considerations as well.

Mass Customization of Diagnosis and Treatment

Currently, there is a nascent revolution going on in medicine.  With the initial decoding of DNA there is hope that soon when you walk into a medical office the people will check your DNA record and will take a sample of the virus, bacteria, or agent, and then generate a prescription for a drug that will best meet your needs in dealing with the sickness or disease.  This may be one chemical or a mixer of several.

When the prescription is transmitted to a new version of the pharmacy, this pharmacy, incorporating most of the functions of pharmaceutical manufacturing, will formulate and assemble tablets, serum, or other medication exactly to meet your requirements for ridding yourself of the malady.

Further, this medication will have reduced side-effects because it has been formulated for your body.  This means that all medications will be one off, customized medication, the result of Mass Customization and SOA.

Ownership of Personal Medical Data

Mass Production Architecture has created vast databases of medical information within insurance companies, medical facilities, and local, state, and the federal government.   Frequently these are called “Big Data” simply because they hold so much of everyone’s data and documentation.

However, the Liberal Left in Congress in 1996 established the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) HIPA rules for electronic healthcare data.  This act has caused a major disruption in information transfer, often exactly when the medical personnel need it most and it has added major cost to the healthcare architecture.

If I can get someone’s (anyone’s attention), I have suggested technology and a process that would create an ultra secure data store for medical information that would enable the data owner, the patient, to control who gets what access to which information (see a couple of my previous posts), while enabling medical personnel to have immediate access.

A data store, such as this, where the data is owned by the patient, not the government, insurance, or medical personnel, would obviate the need for many of the current regulations, included the HIPA regulations because they would be embedded in the technology and processes.

This data store would form the foundation of an entirely new Mass Customized healthcare system, based on the requirements of a particular patient and not the needs of the mass production healthcare system.

I know this system will work, but the impediments are great, starting with the infighting in the US Congress, the major insurance companies, the IT suppliers of the medical facilities, and many others.  This will cause the kind of disruption and dislocation found with the changes from the Age of Writing to the Age of Print (and I hope without the major consequences of the 100 years war and all of the others up to WWII).

Mass Customization of Housing

At least from the early 1940s entrepreneurs in the housing construction industry have attempted to apply the Mass Production architecture to housing construction; with little success.  I suspect it was because they were looked at as using the same techniques as were being used to build RVs and house trailers.

However, since the 1970s, at least, relatively high quality (quality meaning conformance to customer requirements) manufactured house have been available.  In fact, I lived in one in Pennsylvania.  Some of them are kit houses that are constructed onsite, and some are constructed as modules in various states of completion.

In the future houses will be built from interlocking modules, (or in the ship industry, lifts).  There will be bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, and other modules totally customized in a local manufacturing/assembly facility or facilities to meet the exact requirements of the customer/homeowner.  While the modules will be brought together onsite, the assembly facility will fit out the electrical, heating, and plumbing systems as well as attach the “built-in cabinets, corners, and so on, as far as possible.  That would include the painting and varnishing of the interior walls and floors.

Once the foundation is laid onsite, a crane would lift the modules into place and interconnect the systems—actually; most of this is being done now.  Then the finishing of the interconnection of the modules begins.

In the near future, Mass Customization of house manufacturing will enable the manufacturer to more fully meet the customer’s requirements for room size and shape and interior functions.  The interconnections will use various standards and protocols to enable the modules to be much more quickly connected.

This will additionally enable the second and third house owner to reconfigure the modules or change modules.  For example if an existing or new homeowner wants to “redo” the kitchen, a new kitchen module will be manufactured and then in a day or two, the old one will be replaced by the new one.

However, in the future there will be some kind of composite foundation construction.  For houses in flood prone areas this foundation will float the entire dwelling vertical with floods, while the electrical, communications, and plumbing services remain intact throw movable connections.  These connections will link through an advanced design piling that is hold the foundation in place.

There are two reasons that manufactured houses are much less expensive than houses constructed onsite.  The first is that the work environment is much more conducive to getting work done.  It much easier to work in an air conditioned building than in 100 degree heat or 10 degrees with snow.  So the productivity of the employees will greatly increase.

The second is that, as Adam Smith discussed, the right tooling is a process multiplier.  You can keep a great deal of expensive tooling in a building where the components of the house are manufactured and assembled, greatly reducing the time and cost per unit.  Even with the “extra” cost of transporting the units it still drastically reduces the cost.

Infrastructure, the Great Conundrum

To me it’s unclear what will happen to the infrastructure of civilization.  It is the great conundrum of the future, though it’s clear that it will change.  I suspect that these changes will occur in the next fifty to one hundred years.

Electrical

I suspect that electrical power production may, down the road fifty years, (maybe less), house will be self-powered or will be connected to the “power-grid” by wireless connections as suggested by Tesla.  The sources of energy will include the wind, the sun, water, and nuclear.  Yes water; backyard turbines, not giant dams. 

Currently, this technology (except nuclear) is becoming more readily available and cost efficient for cruising sailors and other adventurers.

The restructuring of the electrical system will greatly facilitate the demise of mega-conurbations.

Water

Pure drinking and bathing water will become ubiquitous worldwide, and not from central sources (e.g., bottled water).  Again, the reason is that current technology is making “water makers”, which make very pure water, much more cost efficient for RV owner, cruising sailors, and others.  And I can see sun-based purification processes and technologies that will further greatly reduce the cost.

Waste Management

Currently, it is not feasible to reduce waste reusable packets cost efficiently.  But, this is changing.   In the past 100 to 150 years the reliability of products has increased, while serviceability of products has been drastically reduced.

The reason for the consumer-based as opposed to a customer-based culture is that it’s a component of the Mass Production Architecture of the Age of Print.  With the coming Digital Age, this too will change.

In the future, creating products that are more reliable, maintainable, serviceable, and with a process for disposal, will become the norm.  The “21^st Century Manufacturing Enterprise Strategy: Key Need Areas for Integrating the Agile Virtual Enterprise” paper from the Agility Forum of Lehigh University, 1994 first discussed this matter of disposal.

Communications

As noted earlier in the Section on Entertainment, communications is currently undergoing the start of a transformation equivalent to all of the previous changes in communications combined.  I fully expect that TVs and landline/broadband communications will go the way of the horse and buggy and drive-in movies.

Instead, within the next twenty years, a series of communications satellites will be put into orbit that will be maintainable, serviceable and upgradeable, as well as highly reliable.  These satellites will have enormous bandwidth so anyone anywhere on earth can talk with anyone else.  (The exceptions will be countries, like China due to the political organization, those controlled by dictators, and territories like those controlled by ISIS, and by religious organizations like the San Francisco bay area where only the “politically correct” can currently speak without group bullying.)

These satellites will be constructed using an SOA-based architecture so that single components can be replaced or upgraded as necessary.  They will be maintained, serviced, and upgraded by technicians residing in space stations (or space habitats).

This will mean that there will be no need for wire or glass cables.  This will greatly reduce the cost of the communications infrastructure.  It also means that if hurricanes hit like in the Caribbean in 2017, as long as the “satphone” continues to operation they will have communications with the rest of the world.

Space, the Final Frontier

Then there is the rest of the Universe; “Space, the Final Frontier” will be built on Mass Customization using a Services Oriented Architecture.   There are two reasons for this.  First, space is inhospitable to life as we know it.  Second, resources are spread widely, not concentrated as here on earth.

Consequently, like when the settlers first traveled to the west across the Appalachian Mountains, they had to take enough with them to survive and the “enough” had to be reliable, maintainable, and serviceable.  These characteristics can only be found in products with a Services Oriented Architecture base because SOA enables MacGyver-like reuse of components to perform functions other than that for which they were originally designed.

And in the “wild west” culture that will be inter-planetary space for a 100 years or so, this type of use and reuse will be invaluable.

Conclusions and Forecast

For the only change in the ages of knowledge technology and management in historic times, moving from the Age of Writing to the Age of Print, the first 400 years were years of economic and political turmoil.  And there are still vestiges of the Age of Writing and the Age of Speech inculcated in all cultures.

For some cultures, especially fundamentalistic cultures, the printing press is an anathema.  For them, all knowledge, not in their holy book, is derived from the devil and only written, (not printed), versions of their holy books are allowed.

These cultures and other religious cultures created to fulfill various ideals, like the Liberalist/

socialist/communist religion, where the state owns everything and everyone is a serf or slave to the state, will fight to stay in the Age of Print.  Each one of them is attempting to order the economic and social order to fit their religious ideals.  Unfortunately for them, life (including economic life) only occurs at the nexus of chaos and order.  Too much chaos and you have the Wild West with every man for himself and women only as sexual objects and baby producers, too much order and you have a dying dystopia of the destitute.

Having said these cultures are trying to kill off life through regulation and political correctness, the Digital Age will cause the dissolution of industrial and service empires.  This includes all of various financial services except for personal banking services.

The reason is that large organizations lack of agility, (the ability to react quickly and positively to an unexpected event).   The need for Agility is caused by the Digital Age its property of Mass Customization.

The only large entities will be the infrastructure, like the organizations that enact and enforce trading standards and provide external and internal security; those that the world needs to create value for everyone, must be financed and are the cost of creating wealth.