Virtual Workshop
new tools and production organisation

by Felice Ragazzo

new craftsmen have less and less to do with classical craftsmen’s tools, but, with a little knowledge about geometry and mathematics and with the new digital devices, many opportunities are available for them for improving their new conditions

Some year ago, there was a debate on the difference between industries and craftsmen. Undoubtedly, at times the discussion could lead nowhere, since establishing clear boundaries between the two fields was not easy.

Nowadays, there is no longer any reason for such a reflection, since industry, in the sense that Ford intended it, has been replaced by computer and telematic post-industrialism, while craftsmen evolve through a gene mutation that make them impossible to recognise in the light of our usual standards.

However, there are still many goods which are produced, moved and consumed, though they are now giving way to the circulation of information. Goods are still made in production centres that we keep calling factories and craftsmen’s laboratories, maybe because of inertial movement caused by residual similarities with the outdated model.

If there is still a distinction between industry and craftsmen, such a distinction does not regard so much the workplace, the quality of the products, and the technical process of production, but rather the availability of technologically advanced equipment, generally based on electronics and computers, like devices for remote monitoring, work stations for automatic design, tools for advanced prototype creation, CNC work stations.

In large manufacturing companies, the Design Centre and the Technical Office have undergone an enormous expansion, and in some cases they are the company themselves. Machines, where they still exist, become more and more integrated and, as it is said, capital intensive devices, that is, a large and complex piece of equipment that requires few skilled workers to monitor its functioning.

Craftsmen, conversely, on the one hand are trying to enter this sphere more and more, but on the other hand, they have not been able yet to add the new devices to their organization. And how could they do so, since the necessary capital is well beyond their resources?