Every now and then, you come across something that makes you look at the world a little differently. FirstBuild, GE Appliances’ microfactory strategy, is a concept that could make you think differently about how new products are created and brought to market, as well as whether mass production and economies of scale are the only way to manufacture.
Economies of scale, as we all know, hold that if you mass produce a product you can spread the cost of production across millions of units. That lowers the price you charge consumers. Unless you’re playing in the luxury market, where a select few will pay big for exclusivity, mass production is the way to take market share. The downside of that approach is that it’s difficult to introduce new products into the market that don’t appeal to a broad spectrum of the population to get scale.
With FirstBuild, GE Appliances, a Haier…
