Community Supported Manufacturing

Community supported manufacturing (CSM) is a business model where a production facility - a digital fabrication facility - is co-funded by a large number of individuals interested in a certain product. In this model, product development costs are covered by a voluntary, open source product development process. This development process produces documentation of fabrication procedure, and continues up to creating access to digital design files for Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM) using the above digital fabrication facility. The consumer in this relationship obtains product at-cost, by paying for materails and labor. The producer captures the value of their labor. The producer is the organizer of the crowd funding necessary for the digital fabrication facility to be produced. This model is a win-win situation for at-cost production - for the producer and consumer, and relies on the elimination of all waste involved in fabrication processes.

External Work

• Good background theory on CSM - [1]