Summary and Aims of our policy.

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We will support and regulate manufacturing and construction businesses, in order to achieve a total macroeconomic saving to the UK of upto £54 billion every single year, and the following goals: 

 

1. Ensure all manufacture is sustainable.

2. Support and regulate to reduce costs of manufacture and use of resources.

3. Support and regulate to optimise design.

4. Support and regulate to optimise quality.

5. Standardise the specification of parts.

6. Reduce or eliminate throw away culture and maximise the repairability & recyclability of products.

7. Ensure all specification and description of products is easily available and accurate.

 

Current unresolved issues.

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There are huge opportunities to improve all aspects of our manufactured products and bring widespread benefits to all of society as a result, however there are fundamental issues in our manufacturing industries which prevent this, many of which spill over into our construction industries:

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Lack of standardisation.  The specification of parts is generally not standardised, this causes endless increases in overall cost of manufactured goods in our world economy.  Many people will have experience of throwing out endless electronic cables, power supplies, and many other products, because everyone is making products to different specifications.  This is just the beginning, the problem is vast.  For example consider how many different designs of electric motors there are in the world, maybe hundreds of thousands.  All electric motors do the same thing, they cause a shaft to spin, and the speed, torque, and voltage are the main specifications of the motor.  For every requirement of a motor, it is perfectly possible to have one design that meets that requirement.  So for example starting motors on cars (and all engines) could be limited to say 3 designs of motor to allow for small, medium and larger engines, whereas we estimate there is thousands of designs of starting motors.  Furthermore the starting motor itself will have many equivalent uses such as a winch motor, thus reducing the number of designs to the minimum required to satisfy all requirements.  Doing this across all products creates huge benefits and savings, whereas having multiple designs from multiple manufacturers creates many problems, as follows:

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1. Huge extra repeated design costs of many companies having to design their own version of the same product.

2. Reduction in the quality of design, because companies struggle to find the design and testing resources they  need for every product they make.

3. Massive increase in overall world production costs, as many companies are making a similar product to a different specification.

4. Increased speed and costs of obsolescence.

5. Increased difficulty and costs of finding out which spare part you need, and finding a supplier for it.

6. Massively increased world stock of products and spare parts, creating huge extra costs of infantry, and waste.

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All of these problems were discovered and resolved in a specific case as early as 1841 (there are probably examples many years before this).  It was realised that not standardising the specification of nuts and bolts caused endless problems, and so Whitworth standardised their design in Britain during the industrial revolution.

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Poor Design.  To design even a simple product well requires huge knowledge, experience and training.  Design is a very complex process when done well, as it should include and consider every aspect of a product, its manufacture, its use, and its disposal.  Just a few of the considerations are; the source and nature of the raw materials used, the manufacturing procedures available, technology, environmental considerations, the purpose the product must fulfil, how it will be transported, recycled, repaired, and ultimately how suitable it is for the end user.  There is a continual lack of knowledge, experience and training in design, companies struggle to find the resources to fix this problem, and as a result design in general is not optimised.  We estimate the costs of poor design possibly runs into $trillions in the world economy.

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Poor Quality.  Many products are deliberately made to poor quality, either to be cheap, because they are disposable, or because the life expectation of the product, on the part of the buyer, is short.  There is another even more insidious reason for poor quality, and that is because manufacturers deliberately design products to fail after a period time, so that you have to go back to them and buy another one.  We estimate the costs of replacing poor quality products possibly runs into $trillions in the world economy.  Many products can with moderate extra cost be made to last indefinitely.

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Our Policy - How it resolves the issues and achieves the aims.

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Our policy is an ultimate policy.  This means that there has to be fundamental changes in our paradigms, economy, and politics, before we would be able to fully enact this policy.  The key paradigm shift is that all manufacturers worldwide would have to change their view that they are all isolated from, and competing with, each other.  The shift would be to the view that there is still competition, but within a bigger picture of have a common goal to optimise the industry for the benefit of everyone, and make sure the necessary  in order to achieve this.  We note also that regulation of design and manufacture is present to a lesser or greater extent in all countries, and that in a sense there is nothing new in our policy at all.  Rather it is a case of comprehensively and effectively applying principles that have already been established.  Our policy aims to do the following things:

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1. Provide basic manufacturing and design education in school education.

2. Provide extensive, general and specific, compulsory education and training to anyone who wishes to enter into design and/or manufacturing jobs.  This training will be largely open source, and therefore at no cost to companies; it will ensure that everyone is knowledgeable, and qualified to carryout their job.

3. Provide support to all design and manufacturing companies.

4. Regulate products and components, to ensure the best possible design and quality.  Benchmark these designs to establish which are the best.

5. Grant licences for manufacture to the product design with the highest overall performance when benchmarked, similar to a patent. 

6. The companies who create these licensed designs, are free to licence it's manufacture to other companies, to recoup their design costs.

7. Create an international opensource database of these products and their accurate and comprehensive specification, so everyone has access to the products and information they need.

8. Ultimately regulate, optimise, and standardise the design of the majority of mass produced components and products worldwide.

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A key aim of our policies is as follows:  Imagine that there are 500 companies in the world who design (and probably make also) a common product such as a lawn mower.  Each company spends on average £100,000 designing each new model that they bring out.  This is a total of £50 million spent on design.  What happens if we used all of that budget within 10 specialist companies only, who were the leaders in their field.  Each company would now have £5 million to spend on designing each new model, this would mean they would have far better facilities, and equipment, and could employee more designers of a much higher calibre, thus resulting in a far better product for everyone, which can be manufactured at a lower price.   Indeed they probably would not need all the £5 million, so the cost of the mower would be still further reduced.  The five companies can then license manufacture of their designs to the other 490 companies.  This is the situation we wish to achieve with the design and manufacture of all products, as it brings benefits to everyone.

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Education and qualification in design and manufacture would include understanding all the following design considerations and goals, along with many others:

 

1. The product fulfils every aspect of it's purpose.

2. Maximum ease of use for the end user.

3. Indefinite or maximum life of product.

4. Maximum reliability.

5. Strong and durable products that will last in all their working environments.

6. Easily repaired.

7. Optimised use of materials.

8. Easy to recycle.

9. Greatest possible simplicity of the design.

10. Minimum no of parts.

11. Minimum technological and engineering difficulty of manufacture.

12. Design to minimise cost of manufacture. 

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Cost savings of this policy

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Our policy targets one of the costliest hidden drains in the industrial economy: parts proliferation and fragmented design education. When every manufacturer creates proprietary, bespoke variations of basic components (like pumps, filters, motors, and fasteners), society pays a compounding tax in the form of massive inventory overhead, dead machinery, and wasted engineering hours.

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In engineering and manufacturing, it is a well-established maxim that up to 70% of a product's lifetime cost is determined during the design phase.  Standardization reduces product costs in engineering

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By universally standardizing common components and educating the workforce to design around this "interchangeable matrix," the total macroeconomic saving to the UK would be approximately £38 billion to £54 billion every single year.

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Here is the exact breakdown of how this policy eliminates structural waste across the British economy:

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1. Slashing Inventory and Warehouse Overhead: £12 Billion – £17 Billion Saved

 

Right now, British businesses hold hundreds of billions of pounds worth of capital locked up in stagnant inventory. Much of this is "just-in-case" spare parts—specific to one exact model of a kitchen appliance, factory pump, or vehicle engine.

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• The Waste: Storing, tracking, insurance-protecting, and logistics-managing thousands of non-interchangeable components creates massive administrative friction.

• The Policy Impact: Universal standardization allows for the "Zero-Based Principle" in supply chains. If twenty different brands of washing machines, boilers, or industrial pumps all utilize the exact same standardized electric motors, filters, and valves, the total volume of safety stock required across the country drops drastically. Industry data shows that parts standardization reduces total inventory holding costs by 40% to 50%, immediately liberating billions in trapped corporate cash.  Using Manufacturing Standardization to Reduce Costs

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The Evidence Base

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• The UK Macro Baseline: The Office for National Statistics (ONS) tracks total inventories held by UK businesses. On average, the UK holds roughly £300 billion to £350 billion in commercial inventory at any given time (across manufacturing, wholesale, and retail).

• The Logistics Cost: In supply chain finance, the standard cost of carrying inventory (warehousing, tracking, insurance, depreciation, and capital tie-up) is universally calculated at 20% to 25% of the inventory's absolute value per year. Therefore, simply holding Britain's stock costs businesses roughly £70 billion to £87 billion annually.

 

The Calculation Method

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Industrial optimization data (such as studies on Manufacturing Postponement and Modular Supply Chains) shows that moving from highly fragmented, proprietary parts to standardized, interchangeable components reduces total required safety stock by 40% to 50% via a statistical principle known as Risk Pooling.

 

Using the standard economic equation for inventory holding cost savings:

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Savings = Total Inventory Value x Carrying Cost % x Standardization Reduction

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• Lower Bound: £300 x 20% x 40\% = £24 bn.  Total inventory reduction £12 bn annual holding cost saved.

• Upper Bound: £350 x 25% x 50\% = £43.7 bn.  Total inventory reduction £17.5 bn annual holding cost saved.

 

2. Eliminating Product Maintenance Waste & Premature Scrap: £16 Billion – £22 Billion Saved

 

Every year, thousands of perfectly viable British appliances, vehicles, and machines are thrown into landfills or left broken because a single, minor, proprietary component failed and the manufacturer stopped producing it.

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• The Waste: Consumers and businesses are forced into expensive, premature replacements because a proprietary starting motor or plastic gear casing is obsolete or back-ordered for months.

• The Policy Impact: With interchangeable common parts, the Right to Repair becomes effortlessly weaponized. A broken pump filter in a commercial kitchen or a starter motor in an engine can be swapped instantly with a universal, off-the-shelf British Standard component. This dramatically extends the operational lifespan of all physical goods, slashing the cost of maintenance and stopping the destruction of wealth caused by forced consumer cycles.

The Evidence Base

• UK Household and Corporate Spending: Combined consumer and business spending on maintaining, repairing, and replacing machinery, transport, and household appliances in the UK exceeds £110 billion annually.

• The Obsolescence Rate: According to European consumer safety data and Right-to-Repair impact assessments, up to 30% of mechanical and electrical products are prematurely scrapped or require total replacement purely because a single, low-cost, proprietary component (like a unique seal, pump casing, or gear) failed and was no longer stocked by the original manufacturer.

 

The Calculation Method

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If parts are universally standardized, the cost of parts drops due to mass production, and the labour time required to source them drops to near zero. Studies on standardized fleet maintenance show that component interchangeability lowers lifetime maintenance and premature replacement costs by a baseline of 15% to 20%.

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• Lower Bound: £110 bn x 15% = £16.5 bn

• Upper Bound: £110 bn x 20% = £22 bn

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3. Boosting Design and Manufacturing Efficiency: £10 Billion – £15 Billion Saved

 

When engineers lack unified standardization training, they waste millions of collective hours "re-inventing the wheel"—manually designing, testing, and sourcing slightly unique versions of basic parts that already exist elsewhere.

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• The Waste: Every custom part requires its own unique tooling, quality assurance testing, individual supplier negotiations, and separate production line setups.

• The Policy Impact: Educating designers to use a standardized baseline eliminates this redundant labour. Manufacturing plants can achieve true economies of scale by long-running the production of universal parts rather than frequently shutting down lines to re-tool for custom variations. Industrial automation becomes radically simpler and cheaper to implement when machines are handling identically specified components, reducing manufacturing defects and picking errors by up to 50%.

• Academic reviews of companies implementing strict internal parts-standardization programs show an average drop of 5% to 7% in total manufacturing cost of goods sold (COGS) across the entire product line due to economies of scale on the standardized components.

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Summary of cost savings

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Category of Saving                                               Annual Value in British Pounds

Inventory & Warehouse Reduction                     £12 – £17 Billion

Maintenance, Repair, & Asset Extension            £16 – £22 Billion

Production, Tooling, & Design Efficiency           £10 – £15 Billion

TOTAL ANNUAL DIRECT DIVIDEND                 £38 – £54 Billion

 

By implementing this policy, Britain would essentially build a modular economy. Instead of a chaotic landscape of isolated, incompatible products designed for forced obsolescence, you create an efficient, high-trust ecosystem where physical objects are cheaper to build, effortless to maintain, and mathematically optimized to preserve wealth rather than drain it.

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Supporting policies.

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Education Policy

Technology & Machines Policy

Standardisation & Simplification Policy

Efficient work Policy

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Witten by Marcus white 29-4-2024 ©.

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