The philosophy of open manufacturing is close to the open-source movement, but aims at the development of physical products rather than software.
[8] The following points are seen as key implications of open manufacturing:[6] In the context of socioeconomic development, open manufacturing has been described as a path towards a more sustainable industrialization on a global scale, that promotes "social sustainability" and provides the opportunity to shift to a "collaboration-oriented industrialization driven by stakeholders from countries with different development status connected in a global value creation at eye level".
[3] A number of factors are seen to hamper the broad-based application of the model of "open manufacturing" and / or to realize its positive implications for more sustainable global production pattern.
[9] Other problems include missing or inadequate systems of quality control, the persistent paradigm of high-volume manufacturing and its cost-efficiency, the lack of widely adopted platforms to share hardware designs, as well as challenges linked to the joint-ownership paradigm behind the open licences of open manufacturing and the fact, that hardware is much more difficult to share and to standardize than software.
Scholar Waldman-Brown names the following: lack of manufacturing expertise and informality of current SMMs[clarification needed] in emerging markets as an obstacle to quality control for final products and raw material as well as universities and vocational training programs not apt to react rapidly enough to provide the necessary knowledge and qualifications.