The Future of Making: Is Bespoke Toothpaste in our Future?

Autodesk serves three industries:

• Architecture, Engineering, and Construction
• Product Design and Manufacturing
• Media and Entertainment

We find that how people in these industries do things are becoming more alike and that their supply chains are starting to intersect. It's quite common for parts of buildings to be manufactured in warehouses instead of built as one-offs on site. It's also common for manufacturers to make bespoke products, i.e., one-offs, instead of mass-producing identical items. As an example of supply chains, look no further than the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where an architecture firm and a fabricator combined so manufactured panels were used for the building's façade.

Let's talk about toothpaste. There are many kinds:

• Whitening

  

• Extra whitening

  

• Whitening with Baking Soda

  

• Whitening with Charcoal

  

• Enamel Protection

  

• Enamel Rebuilding/Repair

  

• Sensitive Gums

  

• Bleeding Gums

  

• Cavity Fighting

  

• Breath Freshening

  

• Antiplaque

  

• Mint

  

• Peppermint

  

• Cinnamon

  

• Paste

  

• Gel

  

There are probably others, but I believe I have made my point.

Why are there so many? Why doesn't someone make a toothpaste with every ingredient — one toothpaste that does it all? Do the added ingredients cancel out each other's properties? Would it be too expensive? If that's the case, how about a vending machine that allows consumers to pick the additives they want, and the machine does the mixing and insertion into the tube? The machine would be preprogrammed to know which combinations were allowed (didn't cancel each other out) and could tally the cost based on the user's selections. This is not that farfetched of an idea with regard to the future of making.

For example, at our Autodesk office in San Francisco, we already have a flavored water machine where the user can select sparking/flat as a percentage, percentage of flavorings (e.g., cucumber, watermelon, coconut, lemon):

If it can be done for water, why not toothpaste?

Imagine a vending machine with a user interface where you would select:

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After making your selections via percentage sliders and check boxes and seeing a calculated cost based on your choices, you would press the GO button, and the machine would mix and dispense a tube of toothpaste customized to your needs. Toothpaste from such a vending machine would really have teeth. It would be another example of a product being manufactured as a one-off.

Autodesk has always been an automation company. Today, more than ever, that means helping our customers automate their design and make processes. We help them embrace the future of making, where they can do more (e.g., quantity, functionality, performance, quality), with less (e.g., energy, raw materials, timeframes, waste of human potential), and realize the opportunity for better (e.g., innovation, user experience, efficiency, sustainability, return on investment). The automated creation of bespoke products is part of the opportunity for better.

Wishing for bespoke toothpaste is alive in the lab.