Could you please read the "Last Word:3D Printers"and discuss the following:

Part 1:The article gives some historical examples of goods/services where fixed costs have dramatically fallen.Like the iPhone (yes,the book is old,we know the price of a current iPhone is NOT $199),many goods have low enough prices that an "average Joe" can potentially afford.Many consumable items, from airline flights to electronics, have high fixed costs but very low marginal costs (the cost to produce an additional item of output).

For this week,give an example of a good that is affordable to the average Joe.What are the fixed and variable costs?In the example of the 3D printer,some fixed costs remain,such as the making of blueprints needed to be downloaded for production.In your example,how have fixed costs changed over time?In your post, make sure to highlight your economic terms usingboldfont and reference your textbook concepts and models.

Part II: Describe the industry of the company you work in.If you do not currently work,describe an industry of a company you would like to work in the future.What is one specific problem or challenge in this industry?What effect do market power and concentration of sales have on your particular company?How does/will it affect you as an employee?

Describe the industry of the company you work in.If you do not currently work,describe an industry of a company you would like to work in the future.What is one specific problem or challenge in this industry?What effect do market power and concentration of sales have on your particular company?How does/will it affect you as an employee?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------(Next is a paragraph about "Last Word:3D "Printers" Please read and answer the part1 and part 2 question.

LAST WORD

3-D PRINTERS

3-D Printers Are Poised to Replace Mass Production with Mass Customization.

Both a billionaire and your Average Joe can buy a pocketknife for $10. They can also both buy an iPhone for $199. And they can both purchase a new compact car for under $15,000.

The fact that all of these items are affordable to both a billionaire and your Average Joe is due to mass production and economies of scale. The iPhone, for instance, is one of the most complicated devices ever made. It contains cutting-edge technologies for graphics, voice recognition, battery length, screen durability, and many other features. Most of those technologies took hundreds of millionsif not billionsof dollars to develop and the factories that manufacture the iPhone and its components themselves cost many billions of dollars to set up. Yet, the iPhone is so inexpensive that the Average Joes can afford to buy one.

That mass affordability is the result of mass production coupled with mass sales. Marginal costs are typically quite low with mass production. So if manufacturers can tap mass markets and sell their products in large numbers, they can achieve low per-unit costs by spreading the massive fixed costs (for developing the new technologies and setting up the factories) over many units. Doing so results in economies of scale, low average total costs per unit, and low prices that even average folks can afford.

Mass production and mass sales first became possible during the Industrial Revolution, which began in England during the late 1700s and then spread through most of the rest of the world during the next two centuries. The Industrial Revolution occurred when steam-powered engines became powerful enough to drive factory equipment, propel ships, and pull trains. Engineers and inventors used steam power to automate factories and initiate the low-cost mass production of consumer goods. That process only accelerated when, in the late nineteenth century, the so-called Second Industrial Revolution saw electricity harnessed to drive factories and provide lighting.

Source: Timur Emek/Getty Images

Mass sales, however, are not easy. They require large distribution networks, massive advertising budgets, and, perhaps most important, cheap ways of shipping products from factories to consumers. Thus, it was crucially important that transportation was also vastly improved during the First and Second Industrial Revolutions. If not for better ships, smoother roads, and cheap transportation by railroad, transportation costs would have been so high that consumers would not have been able to afford mass-produced products shipped from distant factories.

Now, new technology promises to deliver a Third Industrial Revolution that will feature not only low production costs but also zero transportation costs. Even better, both of those highly attractive features will be possibleeven if you make only a single unit of a product.In addition, each unit can be fully customized to a consumer's wants and needs. As a result, our world of affordable mass production may soon be replaced by a world of affordable mass customization.

The new technology is called additive manufacturing and it creates objects using computer-controlled devices known as "3-D printers." The 3-D (three-dimensional) printers contain a fine powder of metal or plastic particles that sit in a bin. A laser moves rapidly over the powder, the heat of its beam fusing small clumps of the powder together. Guided by a computerized blueprint, the rapidly moving laser can fuse a single layer of a complicated object together in just a few seconds.

The bin is then lowered a bit, another layer of powder is placed on top, and the laser again begins to shoot, this time fusing together both the previous layer as well as the current layer. Doing this over and over, one layer atop another results in a solid object whose shape is limited only by the complexity of the blueprint. Any powder that is not struck by the laser and incorporated into the object is simply recycled for later use.

Because 3-D printers are inexpensive, they could potentially be located anywhere. Thus, there is no need to worry about transportation costs since objects could be manufactured by consumers in their own homes or in local workshops located only a short drive away. And because the powders are cheap and the machines only require a modest amount of electricity, anything that could be made using a 3-D printer would be inexpensive even if you were only making a single unit.

The First Industrial Revolution delivered low prices by spreading massive fixed costs over many units. The Third Industrial Revolution is set to deliver even lower prices by eliminating two types of coststhe massive fixed costs necessary to set up large factories and the transportation costs needed to ship resources to factories and then finished goods to consumers.

One major cost might still remain, however. That is the cost of paying people to make the blueprints that drive the 3-D printers. But just as digital file-sharing has pushed the price of recorded music toward zero, many analysts suspect that digital file-sharing will also drive the price of blueprints very low. If so, the cost of manufactured goods may soon plunge to levels even lower than what has been achieved through mass production.

So far, only relatively simple objects can be made with 3-D printers. But some engineers see a day in the not-so-distant future when it may be possible to create even complicated devices like an iPhone using additive manufacturing. If so, people will simply download inexpensive blueprints, make a few changes to customize the product, and then "print" what they want.