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C H A P T E R 13
Sharing Society
13.1 SHARING ECONOMY
Sharing Economy is getting wide attention these days. Why it spreads so fast may be because
people come to look at products in a much broader perspective than before. ey realize that
the same product can be used in a wide variety of ways.
To put it another way, no more “Grass is Greener on the Other Side of the Fence.” e
fence is gone. So, we can enjoy the neighbor’s grass and neighbors can find another way of
enjoying it.
13.2 CHANGING INDUSTRIAL FRAMEWORK
As modularization progresses, our industrial framework has changed from a open-loop, one-way
system (Fig. 13.1) to a closed-loop system with feedback (Fig. 13.2). Yesterday, we, engineers,
had to use available materials. And the choice is very limited. erefore, engineers started their
activities with this hard constraint. But at that time, the main stream of industry was producer-
centric, so they could manage to develop good-quality products.
Raw
Materials
Intermediate
Components
Final
Products
Figure 13.1: Traditional industry framework.
e progress of modularization and rapidly increasing diversification and personalization
changed the scene. Now, the stream flows in the opposite direction and a customer-centric
industrial framework is emerging. But, this shift also benefited engineers as well. Now, they can
select materials among a very wide variety of choices. Materials are no more hard constraints.
And, if engineers wish, material developers can possibly come up with a new material which
answers their requests. Materials are now soft or negotiable constraints.
Not only at material level have we a wide variety of intermediate components. Until today,
these component companies worked for specific integrated companies. ey worked under their
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