Scaling up local production: introducing our new 'kits' program

In 2017-18 Field Ready is developing a way to package up our local production systems so that they can be used more widely.  

This is part of our strategy to scale up our impact, so more people can benefit from our work, so it can be scaled up more rapidly, increasing local production capabilities. This will support more local manufacturing of humanitarian items in a way that leads to surplus revenue for Field Ready (more money we can use to support our work) and increasingly bigger impact in the aid sector.

We have called this program "kits." A Kit is a box of manufacturing equipment and instructions, which will enable someone (who may not be a manufacturing or design expert) to make a specific item or set of items. For instance, as a simple example, a kit might be a 3D printer, some digital designs preloaded onto it, essential hand tools like scrapers, and instructions as to how to successfully print those items. That set of items would be selected to be a useful and coherent suite of things, that there is a demand to make locally.  We've realized that the term "kit" may not be the right name for this program, as "kits" are an existing concept in humanitarian aid, and it doesn't mean quite what we mean here. So we might rename the program later!

There are a number of things for us to figure out.  What manufacturing techniques and machines might we use?  What items might the Kits enable someone to make? How would we get kits to people? This includes distribution, business, and revenue models to support local manufacturing, and so on. We need to understand the value local manufacturing can offer to people and organizations, so that we can make sure we create something useful and sustainable that can scale up, offering locally made humanitarian items to more people around the world.

As part of this work, we are making sure we're systematic about how we document the things we've designed and made, and that we understand how "Field Ready" different manufacturing methods and designs are. We'll be sharing more thoughts on manufacturing maturity, safety and replicability in the coming months here on our Technical Blog. 

Our starting point is to identify items and manufacturing techniques which can be reproduced by nonspecialists in the field, and to make the process of doing this robust and repeatable. 

 

Success by 2019

We've set out what we want to achieve by the end of the two years during which we have support from the Humanitarian Innovation Fund for our Journey to Scale:

* 15 of each kit in use in a range of sites (eg clinics/hospital/camp/village) over 3 countries

* 2 x 2-minute videos showing non-FR staff using each kit in country

* List of potential buyers

* Recording system to know number of items made (manual system ok if used)

* Cost is known for present kit including labor, and cost estimate for making larger numbers of kits

* 1-page flyer to set out the benefits persuasively to potential purchasers (value for them, in their terminology)

* Documents translated into at least one language other than English

* Estimate of worldwide market size

* Local regulations understood for safety, performance and finances (eg tax and tariffs)

* 1 kit sold for real money

* 10 solid reliable items being made

We've got an initial plan for the first phase of this work and will be blogging more often here in the coming weeks.