#micro manufacturing

by Anthony Roll May 11th 2011

After hearing about, then reading up on Muhammad Yunus and his Nobel Peace Prize  micro credit/micro finance revolution, I couldn't help but think that this way of doing business could translate to America. The concept could be both in its current form be moved to urban communities in America and used as a model to fuel America's economic engine by creating a model that would both reverse outsourcing and breathe new life into dead blocks of land from coast to coast.

Not only could the actual practice of micro credit lending through a US version of the Grameen Bank be put in place in inner city communities all across America in place of or as an extension of check cashing centers.  But the concept of micro financing can be extended to a new industry of micro-factories in every major city in America.  These factories would not be traditional behemoth warehouses that are the size of a rural town; they wouldn't even be new buildings.  They would in fact be put into existing foreclosed buildings that anyone and everyone living in America sees every time they drive into an urban environment, and no I don't just mean poor inner city sects of major American markets.

There are so many abandoned buildings of varying size both in the cities and suburbs just waiting for a purpose. Micro factories/warehouses would put these properties to use, employ multiple segments of the population that are habitually unemployed due to socio-economic and/or educational status, be a practical public works project in a still depressed economy, utilize new technological infrastructure to put make the buildings functional for current and future use, reverse outsourcing, and will reduce fuel and transportation costs on products.  Since there will be more warehouses in more places, there will be a reduced need to transport products cross country, they will now just need to be moved cross county.

We see existing templates for this in America already with mini malls filled with international franchises. Drug stores, eateries, salons, services, and stores that were once local, now are subsidiaries of large corporations.  Full sized malls now all contain by and large the same clothing, apparel, accessory, and lifestyle stores of conglomerates in the global market. It is just a natural growth of this movement to move the warehouses and assembly lines of where these products are made to the markets where they are sold.

Sweatshops and slave labor will only be an option for so long. Not only for moral reasons since the consumer nation of America has long since decided they don't care about work conditions or multiple suicides, however with rising fuel costs, and rising standards of living in the countries that have led to the outsourcing business revolution of the last 25 years, slave labor and slave wages will only be an option for a limited time.  And if the wages don't catch up to the falling American dollar, the cost to consistently import our products from boat, semi truck, to delivery fan will.

Micro warehouses, and micro factories can be set up in all the abandoned strip malls that are seen in every rural and urban town, city, and state from sea to shining sea.  Put a three dimensional florescent sign out front just like the stores that sell the products, only these locations will be building them, or storing them in bulk.  Think of it as outlet malls with an actual purpose to serve humanity.

Many of these micro factories/warehouses would likely need micro credit to get off of the ground, well micro credit by American standards. This would require a new generation of lenders since the traditional banking powers have their money tied up in lobbyists and turning Wall Street into a VIP casino. Young money, philanthropists, entrepreneurs, and the government will likely have to provide the financial incentives to get this movement off the ground since it fundamentally will change the import/export system for our consumer economy.

This would bring towns and cities back together as now everyone would be both buying and selling local again, buying and selling American. E-commerce would be the middle man for long distance delivery items.

Its not that every McDonalds or GAP would have a factory in every town, more like every state, depending on population, perhaps multiples.  Ever been in a Krispy Kreme that didn't just have a small assembly line for that location but had a giant donut assembly line to distribute to the state/region?  Think that, for everything.  Small scale, on a large scale.

Micro credit and micro financing by Muhammad Yunus has given more than $6 billion to over seven million of the poorest of the poor people in the world, mostly women in male dominated societies in the Middle East.  I believe that his model can be translated into the manufacturing and consumer economies of America to both reverse the trend of outsourcing, restore a robust middle class, create new wealth, a whole new generation of careers not just jobs, and lead America's economy into the future with a model of the future, not a patch job on a model of the Industrial Revolution.