SOCIAL MANUFACTURING BAMBOO BIKES FOR AFRICA
J.F. Oberholzer · 2016
Manufacturing methods constantly change to adapt to societal needs. However, there is a new method aimed towards value creation emerging. This method or manufacturing paradigm is described as social manufacturing, which combines manufacturing with open design platforms. This paper discusses a Bamboo Bikes for Africa case study where the open design process is used through an online community using social manufacturing techniques. The best design is chosen, manufactured and compared to benchmark process chains. This study proved that using crowd sourcing and co-creation, designs can be developed and improved to generate a significant amount of innovative designs.