Resilient Engineering Manifesto

We believe that technology isn’t something that should be held by someone, only to maximize their own profit. Technology is and always was a better way of doing things. Something that could make lives better, save people’s lives, and allow them to do more than previously.

Nowadays, thanks to progress and technology, in developed countries, the average person can live better than kings of previous epochs. But that’s not true for everybody, due to technological disparities.

Technology of today is very often developed for profit, which is perfectly okay, since how else would you fund further progress? 
But with time, you can experience more and more monopolization of certain industries, which results in companies introducing more and more costs to the consumer, that are unjustified.

It’s especially prevalent in the medical industry, where after buying specialized equipment, any kind of repair requires a specialized request to the company, even for the smallest of things. We saw it with our own eyes, where a broken piece of plastic on laboratory equipment requires a technician to fly over from a different country, for a small fee of $10,000, while the replacement part could be found for less than $50. And if you were to take it into your own hands and create a replacement part using 3D printing and manufacturing it yourself.

The cost goes down to $2 worth of plastic filament.

And if there was any goodwill on the company’s part, the replacement could be sent over, with short instructions on how to replace 4 screws on the module and insert it into the machine.

The same issue, on different scales, exists in many of today’s industries.

On modern electronics, such as smartphones. Laptops. Fridges. Cars.

McDonald’s ice cream machines.

And thanks to the European Union, there is a slow change in this, with the introduction of policies supporting the idea of the Right to Repair. And this change shows a growing demand for something that we’d like to call Resilient Engineering.

It’s to design a solution that’s affordable and lasting. Something that can be easily repaired with commonly used items, to not rely on proprietary solutions, and instead focusing on what’s available. So it can be manufactured as easily as possible, without the use of specialized tooling or equipment.

We’ve seen companies that claim that their specialized hardware is so the product can be more efficient, thinner, or better. But with recent changes of EU policies, we’ve seen that’s not true. The same companies, after having to reengineer their products to fix these policies, were able to do so in a short amount of time. That’s simply over-engineering complexity, so you can push down the costs on the consumer.

And it’s a matter of efficiency. The moment you start to design with that in mind, you start to see the efficiency at every point. Why use 5 different types of screws when you can use one? Why design different casings for each one of your products when you can use a standard box that fits all of your components with standardized mounting? Why invent a different protocol for each one of your needs when you (obviously in a simple scale) standardize it for most of the devices? (REST, and recently Matter and Thread)

The more you think about reducing engineering complexity and using fewer types of parts, you start to see benefits. Of cost reduction from not doing custom elements. Of reducing the amount of suppliers. Of being able to reap the benefits of bulk manufacturing, increasing the easiness of assembly, and making your solutions easy to repair when needed. Relying on standardized equipment also makes it easier to provide security and reliability, because we know that one part is used on millions of machines, so it’s well known and was already thoroughly tested, the same can be said for standardization of electronic parts, protocols, processors, and so on.

All of it makes the stuff we use every day better, more reliable, and it gives back the power to the customer that is able to repair and even modify the equipment to suit their needs.

So now, a piece of equipment that is not supported by the manufacturer since 15 years could be fixed. People in regions of the world that have weak access to the supply chain won’t be blocked anymore due to a lack of technicians and equipment for using the product they bought. And end users of niche products won’t have to rely on overpriced services just to fix even the simplest of repairs on things that they bought.

And we want to help to make this happen. One step at a time, by spreading the idea, engineering practices, instructions, and parts that can be used in accordance with the principles of Resilient Engineering as well as providing open-source code and designs.

We’re a small team of dreamers that believes that we can put a dent in this world.