Production Scaling Proposal
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Production Scaling Proposal Brief
by
Marcin Jakubowski, Ph.D.,
TED Fellow 2011, Sep. 19, 2011
http://opensourceecology.org, opensourceecology@gmail.com
Abstract: This is an investment offer requesting $1/2M seed money for the scaling of enterprise at Factor e Farm. We are proposing to scale Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) production earnings to our next milestone - $250k per year net earnings by year-end 2012 - for bootstrapping further open source product development. We are interested in the completion of the 50 GVCS tools by year-end 2012 within a budget of $3-5M, with additional investment motivated by the success of bootstrapping production. The economic significance is seeding the next trillion dollar industry within the next 5 years. We aim to achieve this in the form of open source economic production initiated worldwide via Distributive Enterprise, as enabled by access to the GVCS. One of the intended side effects is the reinvention of local production, thereby obviating resource conflicts, as a foundation for a more balanced civilization.
Investement Opportunity – We are offering a return of 10% per year, beginning after one year, for seed funding of $500k, for immediate application to production scaling of Factor e Farm. We will utilize all funding to scale our production capacity and on-site product development capacity – by recruiting additional fabricators/prototypers. We are currently building a 5000 sq ft digital fabrication facility and 10 living units for on-site, open source developers. We will utilize all earnings to continue open source product development of the 50 GVCS tools until product release.
Business Model
We have demonstrated $5k week earning potential with sales of the CEB press and tractor. Our business model is calls for an on-site crew of 12 skilled fabricators (currently we have recruited 3), who engage in 1 week per month of production, and 3 weeks per month of further GVCS machine development. Of this $60k per month, 10% will go to satisfy this investment, between 10 and 35% will go to the prototyper, and the rest will go be donated to further product development and optimization of the GVCS. We expect a training and optimization period of 6 months before such production earnings can occur. We will also recruit a number of technical documentors on site to generate rapid-learning fabrication instructionals, including augmented reality assist for fabricator training.
Earning Projections
We have begun selling 4 of our machines in their beta release stage – the open source tractor, automated, high performance CEB Press, Soil Pulverizer, and Power Cube. We have cleared $3k last year, $25k this year, and next year we expect a conservative estimate of $125k.
Enterprise Development
This investment will be allocated to developing open source prototypes, documentation, and enterprise models surrounding 12 prioritized GVCS tools by July, 2012. These tools are: induction furnace, ironworker machine, metal rolling, CNC torch table, industrial robot, CNC multimachine, CNC circuit mill, the modern steam engine, solar concentrator, gasifier burner, heat exchanger, and pelletizer. Bootstrapping production funding will be used for developing 9 more tools in the same time period – the dimensional sawmill, backhoe, deep well drilling rig, electrical motor/generator, power inverter, tractor-mounted cement mixer, nickel-iron batteries, baler, and agricultural combine.
The Next Trillion Dollar Enterprise
We are interested in seeding the world's next trillion dollar enterprise – in the form of the distributed, digital fabrication facility that can deliver the entire Civilization Starter Kit (50 GVCS products). This is to be achieved via distributive enterprise – ie, Factor e Farm training future producers based on access to state-of-art digital fabrication (a subset of the GVCS package) and access to a globally-collaborative pool of open source design (with the GVCS 50 at its core).
For the movement of distributed production in general, we predict that open source economics will become the next trillion dollar industry by 2016, primarily as a result of the GVCS platform:
Development Needs
Successful production scaling involves:
Perfecting our documentation, including Augmented Reality (AR) instructionals projected right on the working area.
Recruiting fabricators and fabricators-in-training
Continued improvement and testing of prototypes up to and past full product release stage.
Workshop ergonomic design to optimizing production effectiveness, primarily by optimization of materials handling and layout.
Development of automation to assist in the fabrication process
Building accommodations, including provision of organic food with an on-site, full-time farmer, to maintain health of the crew.
Securing bids for outstanding tools of the GVCS.
Timeline
We expect the workshop and infrastructure to be built by Nov. 15, 2011, and full documentation for the tractor, CEB press, soil pulverizer, and Power Cube to be released by Dec. 24, 2011. By that time, the existing equipment will be tested thoroughly and improvements will have been identified for the next production run. By that time, we expect to have recruited a total of 10 on-site fabricators. We will publish our complete cost structure by that time, and begin taking product orders once more.
Milestone Assessment
Overall success of GVCS development is based on the number of prototypes taken to product release. Each of the 50 GVCS tools goes through 3 prototype iterations prior to product release.
To remain on schedule, and to guarantee expanding earning potential - the following numbers of prototypes (blue line -150 total, for 50 full product releases (orange line)) should be achieved:
Keys to Success
We are basing the entire GVCS on proven technologies and techniques. We are simply open-sourcing these technologies, while adding lifetime, modular design that promotes cost reduction and maximum service to the user. Typical cost reduction of open source hardware is 8-fold. The keys to success are (1), recruiting skilled prototypers to accelerate development ; (2) optimization of production infrastructure and ergonomics within a 6 month period from Jan. 2012; (3) maintaining low development costs by globalo, collaborative, open source product development; (4) in-house capacity for scrap metal melting and rolling - to reduce material costs to the price of scrap steel; (5) and eliminating energy costs via renewable bio-fuels and solar concentrator energy.
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