Michigan has endured nine straight years of job losses--the worst since the Great Depression.  The auto sector across the country has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs, forcing huge numbers of people into early retirement, under-employment and unemployment.  

Photo by Katherine Lynn

Fact: Many of these highly skilled former manufacturing workers have home workshops outfitted with expensive wood/metal working tools. 

Fact: The internet exists.

Each home workshop taken by itself does not present much manufacturing capacity beyond small batch hobbyist work.   

Link up thousands of home workshops to create de-centralized manufacturing powerhouse

Link thousands of them together, however, and they represent an aggregate manufacturing capacity potential that, if harnessed, could stand up a high-volume, high-value-add, high-profit, rock-bottom-cost company.

Each hobbyist produces a single part.  Each home worker could produce or refine a single part.  These workers could then ship the parts to a second tier of home laborers who create small sub-assemblies. 

A vast, untapped opportunity exists to link these interested parties together...

Sub-assemblies become whole machines.  The sub-assemblers then ship to other sites (former small commercial machine shops, or perhaps to at-home worker participants that have large workshops, perhaps farms?) to complete assembly of the whole machine. 

Are there enough potential shops?  Millions are out of work.  Even if only 5% of ex-manufacturing sector employees want to labor at home, that still leaves >100,000 hobbyist manufacturers out there.  A vast, untapped opportunity exists to link these interested parties together...

Hand-built and mass-produced, for less??  Imagine the marketing advantages of the company I propose.  High quality mass-production all accomplished at piece-work rates with near-zero overhead costs.  No healthcare costs, no retirement plans, no HR, no employees except a few to coordinate part flow.  It is quite probable that such a company could out-compete overseas competition--even on a cost basis .  

Photo by Matt Desmond

Customers Feel Good. 

Beyond huge marketplace advantages in cost, quality and customization, customers of our proposed company would enjoy the feeling that comes with helping out your down-on-their-luck neighbors.  Keeping the supply chain based in America means that the ripple effect of buying-American is a genuine public good. 

Think it can't be done? Surprise: What is past is prologue. 

Great Britain faced an existential threat back in the 1940s in the form of the overwhelming Nazi military juggernaut that conquered all of continental Europe. Hitler then blockaded and prepared to invade isolated England. 

Without enough metal to re-build new airplanes with, England turned to home wood workers and small furniture builders to build a wood-bodied, twin engine light fighter bomber that became known as the de Havilland Mosquito.  The resulting plane became the fastest (>400 mph) bomber of the war and contributed in large part to eventual Allied victory.    7,800 wooden planes were made.

The idea that helped win WWII could make our manufacturing sector roar again...this time with unmatched cost, quality, and flexibility.

(work in progress)