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3D Printing is Additive to Supply Chain Agility

The world’s manufacturers have been stretching supply chains out, becoming ever-more complex, for years now. While in eras of relatively free flow of trade, this has let countries and regions specialize in specific manufacturing types that play into their competitive advantages, the consequence is increased risk and decreased agility. This is being brutally borne out today in light of the global COVID-19 pandemic, but the problem was becoming apparent even before that, particularly with the rise of Brexit and nationalistic manufacturing policies.

Additive manufacturing, commonly known as 3D printing, approaches can help reduce risk and restore agility when supported by AI-driven insights. By digitizing traditional manufacturing, introducing dual manufacturing approaches, and building out additive as a platform, manufacturing leaders can deliver the scale and efficiency benefits of global supply chains without being one black swan event away from disaster.

Framing the problem

The global COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically altered customer demand, created workforce challenges, and disrupted global supply chains in ways that few expected. For many business leaders, this pandemic has exposed risks in their global supply chains that they had not contemplated, and indeed, that supply chain organizations were never built to handle. It is time for business leaders to start looking at the global-level risks to their supply chains and manufacturing operations.

Disruptions happen in supply chains all the time. Unfortunately, they’re most often solved at the tactical level rather than the strategic level: Sudden imposition of tariffs? Profits are slightly down next quarter. Air travel cut in Europe because of a volcanic eruption? A solvable logistics problem. Escalating conflicts in a region? A few supply chain analysts must work a few late nights to find a second source.

The risks to global supply chains have been getting more obvious for years, and companies have had to react to events like Brexit and the sudden imposition of tariffs in trade wars, but this global pandemic has removed all doubt of the need to address these risks at the strategic level.

Lots of talk, but nothing new or actionable

In the last month, there has been growing interest in global supply chain risk, with articles in Harvard Business Review and the MIT Sloan Management Review publishing notable examples. The global problem is recognized.

Many have focused on how artificial intelligence, analytics, and even blockchain technologies can help mitigate these urgent risks. Indeed, AI and analytics solutions can help you understand volumes, production variability, escalating costs, or how much of your bill of materials is dependent on a commodity price. You can and should use these tools to optimize your supply chain, but they are just that: optimization tools; they break down when you uncover problems that require a new framing or need new and novel solutions.

Indeed, we’re uncovering a new problem: Over the last three decades, the relative free flow of trade has meant that manufacturing has concentrated in countries with comparative advantage in manufacturing that type of commodity. (One might expect that manufacturing in the west has declined in absolute terms with the rise of China; it hasn’t.) This means that structurally, how the world manufactures are highly-coupled to geography and is built on a model that targets efficiency at very specific production volumes. Manufacturers are unprepared to respond to global-scale threats (and opportunities) because of this strong coupling to geography and volume.

The need for a solution to macro-level risks

Supply chain analysts have historically been very good at understanding and addressing the micro-level risks associated with supply chains: Stock-outs, risk of a single supplier dropping out, commodity price increases… Consequently, the supply chain management industry has developed a suite of tools to address this: safety stock, dual sourcing, price guarantees, commodity hedges, competitive bidding, etc.

What the global disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic show us is that supply chain professionals have not been very great at understanding and assessing the macro-level risks associated with their manufacturing supply chains. What happens when disruption happens at country-, regional-, or global-scale? Clearly business leaders need to start contemplating these questions.

A better way to frame the problem

Start by acknowledging that most manufacturing is difficult to move once set up, so planners must predict the future and contemplate this risk over the life of a production line. Unfortunately, almost every macro-level risk to production is related to geography: Tariffs, labor disruptions, commodity unavailability, logistics breakdown. How do you tell if risk is geographic? Ask the question: If we could instantly move our production to somewhere else in the world, would this problem be solved? If the answer is yes, then the risk relates to geography.

Second, an often-overlooked element of risk is global demand. We’ve seen in the past several months that demand can be highly variable and spike (in the case of toilet paper) or drop (in the case of airplanes) dramatically in response to a crisis. It is not just in times of crisis that demand is variable; most product companies will experience a spike of demand upon release, and a tapering-off as a product matures, with consequences for production economies.

Finally, we define companies’ ability to respond to changes in geographic or demand risk as “agility.” In a supply chain context, this is the speed with which manufacturers can shift production between geographies and the ability to quickly adjust production within a wide range of volumes. The tools that enable manufacturing agility often help address both demand and geographic risk, so we’ll conceptualize those in a single bucket.

Conceptually, you can think of this framework as being summarized in a simple equation:

Thinking of risk in this way, we can start to understand what the risks are, what flexibility is needed to address this risk, and what questions we should be asking within our businesses and to our suppliers:

Risk

Flexibility needed

Questions to ask?

Geographic risk – Risks of disruptions to supply chain based on national, regional, or global factors.

Risks could include disruptions caused by labor market dynamics, tariffs, war, pandemics, natural disasters, factory input shortages, political factors.

Geographic flexibility – The ability to move or shift production from one geography to another.

Where are my suppliers?

Where are my second- and third-tier suppliers?

What borders do my supply chains cross?

Do I manufacture in more than one geography?

What are the economic factors that cause us to produce where we do?

Demand risk – Risks of radical increases or decreases in demand, either regionally or globally.

Demand shifts could be localized or global and be caused by fiscal and economic policy, market competitive forces, economic pressures, pandemics, natural disasters, conflicts

Volume flexibility – The ability to economically produce goods across a wide range of volumes.

What is the event that could happen that will reduce demand the most?

How quickly can we scale-down production?

What fixed costs are we incurring, regardless of demand?

What event could cause the greatest spike in demand? Could that demand spike be regional?

How quickly can we scale up production?

Given our production capacity, what is the ceiling of production before more investment is needed?

The conclusion from this framework is simple: If business leaders in manufacturing reduce their dependence on geography, create manufacturing infrastructure that is less dependent on specific levels of production, and increase their ability to respond quickly, they will reduce their manufacturing risk, be ready to respond to the next crisis, and be more prepared to take advantage of future opportunities.

Enter 3D Printing

Additive manufacturing is not simply about purchasing some 3D printers. It is, in fact, a manufacturing process that can be applied strategically to address manufacturing risk particularly by optimizing the denominator in our equation – agility.

Some of the well-known advantages of 3D printing involve the ability to have similar economics at any scale, or to produce line-side at the point of need, but 3D printing is neither a blanket solution, nor the only way that you can reduce risk from geography and demand and increase agility. But it is a very good tool in some cases. Here are three cases you should consider as part of your manufacturing strategy.

Digitization of traditional manufacturing toolsets

Rather than replace traditional manufacturing with 3D printing, look to 3D printing to digitize the process. Many manufacturers use 3D printing for manufacturing jigs and fixtures, but applications can go beyond that: Specialized tooling, job aids, molds for direct production, and machine service parts are some of the applications we have seen at our clients.

The advantages to digitization of your manufacturing toolset are twofold: In an event where you need to switch production to another geography, the number of things that you need to pack up and ship somewhere is reduced. Further, if you have the need to scale, printing additional molds and toolsets can enable your operation to do that rapidly.

The more components of your traditional manufacturing process can be digitized, the more agile your manufacturing operation is and the less coupled to geography your business becomes.

Dual Manufacturing

Dual manufacturing can be summarized as follows: Designing and qualifying functionally equivalent parts for two manufacturing processes, one process that is efficient at volume, and one process that is efficient at unit-scale. The advantages of this come from the fact that many traditional manufacturing methods require capacity to be deployed in blocks and are most efficient when these blocks of capacity are fully utilized. An injection molding setup that can produce 20,000 pieces a day is most cost-efficient when running at full capacity. Producing 20,001 pieces a day requires an additional fixed investment and wasted capacity of an additional setup. Under a dual manufacturing concept, additive manufacturing is used to augment traditional production until traditional manufacturing can be deployed at scale.

This concept isn’t only applicable in a crisis and we see it as relevant at several points in the normal production cycle:

Early production – Low volume production of the first units for review, trade shows, product launches
Peak production – Augment traditional production to meet peak demand where excess traditional manufacturing capacity would otherwise need to be built
Aftermarket – Production at low volumes for servicing aftermarket needs.

An additional advantage is that, once you have contemplated dual manufacturing, you can make strategic decisions about how closely you want to couple your manufacturing to a given production scale. Shifting more production to additive, or similar technologies, can reduce your risk to fluctuations in demand.

Employing a dual manufacturing concept simultaneously reduces risk to both geography and demand. By designing for a platform that can be deployed anywhere in the world, you decrease your geographic exposure. Likewise, by adding a manufacturing method that is similarly efficient across any volume to your manufacturing toolset, you increase your ability to produce to fluctuating demand.

Additive as a platform

Businesses that think of additive manufacturing as a platform can decouple themselves from fixed investment in geography and volume commitments. Once a machine and material are selected, a lot of the complexity in manufacturing is abstracted by that machine; rather than requiring tooling and separate processes for every part, the tooling and processes become largely standardized. As the number of parts that are designed for your “additive platform” increases, your manufacturing capacity becomes exponentially more flexible; any platform-compliant additive machine can produce any part designed for the platform. Additionally, an additive platform can be deployed incrementally, or augmented by any one of hundreds of global service bureaus.

Summary

During times of uncertainty, the default playbook for many business leaders is to cut budgets and weather the storm; eventually the economy will turn around, demand will bounce back, trade disputes will be resolved, and we can get back to business.

In contrast, we recommend using this as an opportunity to reassess manufacturing supply chains. We think that forward-looking business leaders will make this choice.

By contemplating tools that reduce exposure to geographic and demand risk, as well as increase the ability of manufacturing to respond, business leaders can both be ready for the next macro-level disruption in their supply chain and be able to act on opportunities once we emerge from the global Covid-19 pandemic.

While we have shared some ways in which 3D printing can help you alter your supply chain risk equation by decreasing exposure to geographic and demand risk, and increasing your agility, the examples above are only some of the ways that one tool can assist a much larger initiative. Pivoting manufacturing away from risk and toward agility will require support at all levels, from the C-suite to the manufacturing floor: Executives must look at and evaluate risks they never considered before, designers must contemplate the design freedoms (and constraints) of new tools, product managers must consider the economics of production across a range of volumes and geographies, engineers must learn how to design for additive, and supply chain must learn to “source” parts in ways they never contemplated before.

For organizations willing to change how they think about manufacturing, this will be a multi-year journey, but the rewards are obvious: Lowered exposure to country, regional, and global macro-level supply chain risk and the ability to be more responsive to your customers and markets. And if you don’t do it, one of your competitors almost certainly will.

Aaron Hurd (Senior Manager, Blueprint)

Aaron is a Senior Manager with Blueprint, where he helps clients understand how additive manufacturing impacts their strategy, supply chain, engineering, and manufacturing processes. He holds an MBA from the University of Michigan and an engineering degree from Iowa State University.

Kunal Mehta (Managing Director of Blueprint)

Kunal is responsible for leading the global business of Blueprint and focuses on driving adoption of 3D printing across start-ups, Fortune 500s and governments. With his extensive experience deploying numerous emerging technologies, Kunal possesses a unique perspective in helping organizations achieve high performance by designing and executing additive strategies to reshape their manufacturing processes – consistently providing customers with a differentiated, more profitable, and more satisfying experience.

Blueprint is an additive manufacturing consultancy, bringing together more than 16 years of knowledge and experience across the industry. As the world’s leading additive manufacturing consultancy, Blueprint regularly assists future-ready companies achieve additive success. Based in Eden Prairie, Minn., and Milford, U.K, the firm offers a unique, technology-agnostic perspective on all things additive, from strategic advice to design optimization services. More information is available online at www.additiveblueprint.com.

If you want to discuss this article or your additive manufacturing strategy, the team at Blueprint is here to help. Let’s talk.

References:

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NV.IND.MANF.CD?end=2018&locations=CN-US-EU-8S-IN-VN-MX-KR&start=1990

https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/is-it-time-to-rethink-globalized-supply-chains/

https://hbr.org/2020/03/coronavirus-is-proving-that-we-need-more-resilient-supply-chains

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Interview with Kunal Mehta of Blueprint 3D Printing Consulting and Strategy

Just recently Stratasys launched Blueprint. Stratasys has had a consulting arm for a number of years now. The firm wanted to present and establish the Blueprint as independent-minded however. Application development and getting customers from standstill to up to speed in 3D printing is a hugely challenging task. It is rare that people can bridge both the technical side of things and business enough to translate needs into appropriate strategies. Industrializing processes and new materials is also very challenging and each new market or material has its unique challenges. Blueprint will have to also maintain its independence and independent thought while still being a part of one of the largest 3D printer OEMs in the field. Will the team succeed? This responsibility is on the shoulders of the very bright Kunal Mehta, whom we interviewed.

What is Blueprint?

We’re the world’s leading 3D printing consultants. We have 15 years of experience helping clients across virtually every industry. We’re engineers, innovators, analysts, and strategists. We are laser-focused on helping our clients make sense of 3D printing.

So, I pay you and then you tell me to get a Stratasys Printer?

No. We’re technology agnostic. We help our clients find where 3D printing will deliver the most value in their business and make recommendations based on that. Sometimes, the answer isn’t a printer; it could be a relationship with a service bureau, a change in operating model, or upskilling a department. In fact, in the last few projects, our recommendations led to new business models, including suggesting competitors printers.

What kind of engagements have you done?

We’ve done engagements ranging from high-level strategy and innovation, to deeply technical design optimization, at startups and Fortune 500 companies alike. Generally, our engagements fit into one of our seven offerings:

Strategic Impact, helping senior leaders understand how 3D printing will impact their business

Product Innovation, helping professionals understand how 3D printing can drive top-line growth through innovation

Additive Deployment, creating the model for deploying additive in organizations

Operational Improvement, diving deep into processes to help clients learn how additive can make operations leaner and smarter

Application Validation, validating the business case for specific additive applications before committing to a manufacturing process

Design Optimization, diving deep with engineers to realize their design intent using 3D printing

Think Additively, teaching clients how to understand design for additive manufacturing with a business mindset

For what kinds of customers would you like to work with?

We bring the most value with engaged clients that are forward thinking and looking to really innovate in their businesses. Those are the types of clients that are willing to take a leap of faith, trust us, and trust what the technology can deliver. These types of clients can be new to additive or can be established power users, and they can be big or small.

What kind of experience do you bring to the table?

The origin of our group was Econolyst, a world-leading additive consultancy, started over 15 years ago, which Stratasys acquired in 2015. That said, the Blueprint team has worked with hundreds of clients and has developed a deep bench of methodologies, tools and thought leadership; but what’s really special about us is that we have deep experience in additive combined with a diverse array of talent. On our team, we have customer experience experts, people who have experience in supply chain, industrial engineers, and we even have a person with a degree in model making.

So, what advice would you give me if I’m a firm looking to use 3D printing?

Start by understanding why you want to use 3D printing and what 3D printing is being used for in your industry and related industries. Spend time thinking about your business case for additive before you start looking at machine specs. Figuring out how 3D printing makes sense for your business is much harder than purchasing a machine. Then come to us to help you understand your business case and generate concepts, ideas and applications.

And if I want to use 3D printing for production?

That’s a risky proposition unless you’re already using it for applications like prototyping, jigs and fixtures, and tooling. You need to get your hands dirty and use the technology for some prototypes or tools first. You need to botch a few builds and learn from that. You’re not going to paint the Mona Lisa the first time you pick up a paintbrush.

On what technologies do you advise customers?

We help clients find the business case for 3D printing. Our methodology informs our technology recommendations. If 3D printing has value for a company, we analyze what is available today and what is on the horizon; we don’t limit the scope by technology, material, manufacturer, or supplier. Case in point, we developed the 6 Business Driver Framework for 3D printing which is described in our recently released book – “The Little Blue Book of 3D Printing,” that can be downloaded directly from our website.

How does a typical engagement work?

We start with a conversation. We start by understanding what our clients are looking to solve. We then create a bespoke approach and leverage our arsenal of tools to deliver.

We live by our values. We are Trusted. We are Enablers. We are Human. That means we’re motivated by our clients’ success, we take a genuine interest in helping and we never forget that we’re working with people. At the end of the engagement, we’ve all learned something, we’ve created demonstrable value, and we’ve had some fun.

What stumbling blocks do companies entering 3D printing often encounter?

If you ask engineering, you’ll hear something about materials. If you ask procurement, it’s all about cost. The truth is that the biggest stumbling blocks are very human issues. Based on talking to our clients and our experience, we have the data on this. Lack of talent, management focus, project ownership, change management… These are the same things that affect every initiative.

Also, there’s a tendency to believe the hype around any technology, but a big part of the story that gets left out is how anything worth doing takes time, effort, and focus. If it didn’t, you’d already be doing it. Consequently, companies often bite off more than they can chew, and they’re the ones who end up getting bitten.

Why is it difficult to design for additive?

Remember, additive manufacturing is a very new tool. Additive has only been technically viable for production for maybe a decade. Like any new technology, it takes time to learn. It took 40 years for computers to become commonly used tools in business… and in many cases, the jury’s still out on whether we’re more effective with computers on our desks. It will take time for most engineering organizations to build up this experience.

More to the point, additive manufacturing grants you a unique set of design freedoms, but it also imposes some constraints. Being effective with additive will require designers and engineers to understand the freedoms and constraints. We’ve created a training offering around this. It’s called “Think Additively.”

From an organizational perspective, why do 3D printing implementations go wrong?

Silos. The most impactful and interesting opportunities in additive manufacturing are at the intersection of engineering, supply chain, and manufacturing, but these groups often don’t work together. It requires a fundamentally different way of collaboration.

Also, people have unrealistic expectations. There is no one silver bullet technology or machine and you’re not going to see an immediate return on investment the first time you print something. Anyone who tells you differently is probably selling something.

What materials are you looking forward to seeing?

More than materials, we’re looking forward to seeing processes improve. Being able to build faster, cheaper, and more consistently, is what is going to be the enabler. Also, we’re looking forward to seeing more process certifications. Once heavily regulated industries like aerospace and rail become comfortable with the consistency of the available printing processes, we’re going to see some interesting stuff.

Where will Blueprint be in five years?

Probably mostly on planes, en route to our clients. But, in general, we want to be a household name in the manufacturing industry. And we want to be able to say that we had a hand in changing a few industries for the better.

3D Printing Interview with John Hauer of Get3DSmart

John Hauer

John Hauer has founded and launched several tech-related businesses. In 2013, he co-founded and served as CEO of 3DLT. The company provided a platform for 3D printing as-a-service, helping Amazon, Walmart and other global retailers sell digitally manufactured products, online and in-store. In 2015, he founded Get3DSmart, a consulting practice which helps companies innovate with 3D printing and other related technologies.

Give us some background on how you’ve gotten to this point.

I spent 25 years in the 2d printing industry I worked for Xerox and several large commercial printers. I was involved in that industry up until about 2012. In 2012, I was at the 2d printing industry’s biggest trade show and the writing was literally on the wall. Books, magazines, newspapers, and direct Mail were all dead or dying. I spent 25 years in the 2d printing industry I worked for Xerox several large commercial printers and following that was involved in that industry up until about 2012. In 2012, I was at the 2D printing industry’s biggest trade show and the writing was literally on the wall. Books, magazines, newspapers, and direct mail were all dead or dying at that time. I started to wonder if maybe 3D printing was the future for the 2D printing industry because staples had just announced they were going to start putting m-core printers in the Netherlands and Belgium and there was some signs attraction so I started a blog called 3D for printers and began evangelizing 3D printing to 2D printing companies. It culminated with the first article that I wrote for TechCrunch about why 2d printing and 3d printing really are a lot alike. There was a lot of people at that time saying you can’t call it printing because it’s not printing. It’s not the same, but essentially the workflow is the same. A file gets created something gets sent to a device. It gets manufactured. It gets post processed or finished and then it gets shipped. So the workflow is pretty much the same. Some fellow Cincinnatians saw that and convinced me to start a business called 3DLT. We began as the first for-pay file marketplace in the United States and then we pivoted our business to become a platform for 3D printing as a service.

We worked with global retailers like Amazon, Walmart, Sears and others to help them sell 3d printed products online and in-store. We were the first to launch with Amazon and Walmart. We did it practically at the same time and it was right after we left an accelerator in Northern Kentucky called Up Tech. On that day we announced our partnership with Amazon.

We were featured in 250 press outlets in one day and I did my first national TV appearance on Fox Business. We got some amazing traction and started to take off. The business was venture funded and you know we were trying to build something really big and that takes a lot of money. It’s hard to do in the Midwest when 11 of the 20 billion dollars in venture capital is all coming out of Silicon Valley. So we were still able to do it and move forward. By about 2015, I had clients that were coming to me and asking me to help them with things that were related to 3D printing but weren’t in the retail space. I started a consulting practice called get 3d smart and began working with those clients by the end of 2015.That consultancy was self sufficient and I had a choice to make. I could continue you know working with this big opportunity at 3d LT which is probably a little early, in retrospect from a time perspective, or I could go and do the consulting thing and kind run my own show and you know control my own destiny. So I made a choice to exit 3DLT in December of 2015 and begin working at Get 3D Smart full time. Get 3D Smart helps clients identify and capitalize on opportunities in 3D Printing. Typically we do that from a marketing perspective. We do a lot of market assessments for our clients, helping them figure out which verticals and which segments of the industry they want to play in. Then we help them craft their strategy and communicate their strategy internally and externally. That can include everything from training sessions for their sales reps on different vertical markets, to white papers case studies interviews. As I mentioned before I write for several publications; Forbes, TechCrunch, 3D print, and a host of others.

Get 3D Smart

What initially got you interested in tech journalism in particular?

I’ve been blogging and writing for 15 years now and I write about all kinds of emerging technologies. I wrote a series for Forbes about IOT. I write about artificial intelligence,automation, virtual reality, and all of those are of interest to me mostly because they are platform type technologies. They can drive the development of many different types of new businesses, and I’m especially intrigued when people combine one or more of those platform technologies. I wrote an article about this for Futurism how when you look at things like artificial intelligence and 3D printing, or virtual reality and artificial intelligence, or IOT and 3D printing, and you start to look at those technologies and combine them, it creates all kinds of new but interesting business opportunities. That is what’s most fascinating to me. How do you take some of those very disruptive platform technologies and bring them together to create a new business model?

In general, why are you interested in 3D printing?

I come from a background of having been involved in digitization. When I started for Xerox in 1990, digital printing was just coming on the scene. It was a whole new world for people. There was no functional internet. All the things you take for granted in printing today like PDF and all those things, none of that existed. It had to be created, and I watched the market grow from being a small cottage industry within a really big industry. Digital was tiny and the overall print industry to a point. Now we’re here thirty years later. In some cases it represents 50 percent of the market share, and it depends on what side of the market you’re in. Digital is pervasive and one of the other things that we saw about it was the breakeven of when it made sense to use digital technologies versus when it made sense to use analog technologies continue to shift inward. When Xerox brought out one of their first digital color copiers it printed five pages a minute, blue looked like purple, and it cost five dollars a page. Everybody said there’s no way it’s going to be successful; No one’s gonna pay that kind of price yet. They did because they could have one of whatever they wanted. They didn’t need five thousand, ten thousand, or a hundred thousand. They could get one. 3D printing is doing that today, What digital printing eventually did is have a breakeven that went from five to fifty to five hundred to five thousand. HP has wide format inkjet presses that can compete with analog technologies that a half a million units or more we’re seeing the same thing happening in 3D printing already. HP just announced that it had printed its 10 millionth part off of their technology. That might seem like a lot, but in reality there’s some build boxes that might have a thousand or more parts in them so it’s not a huge endeavor to get to ten million parts. It is a harbinger of things to come when you look at what’s happening now. The breakeven for a product might have been fifty pieces. Now it’s 500 and with that next evolution maybe the 5200 series or whatever comes after. Maybe whatever Carbon brings to the table or you or any of the other manufacturers, we now get to 50,000 and that’s when it gets really interesting but that’s not the only reason 3d printing is compelling. It’s not just a price issue. Sometimes it’s personalization and customization. Sometimes it’s the ability to manufacture on demand like I talked about before. Sometimes it’s about speed to market and being able to get a product to market before any others. Before you could in any other way and if you’re talking about marketing in the moment that stuff is critical so all of those things were interesting for me in part because I saw the parallels to 2d printing, and in part because I know those use cases. Those scenarios where there’s a value add, there’s a significant opportunity to go out and build an industry, and for 30 years 3d printing was a cottage industry. Now all of a sudden that’s on the cusp of going mainstream, and it took big players like HP, Carbon, Desktop Metal GE, and others to help make that possible. Now that they’re here it’s game on.

Desktop Metal

How has journalism helped you in your entrepreneurial career?

It’s been great. I mean it’s forces me to soak in more knowledge to become an expert in areas that I wasn’t in the past you know because you start you come up with a concept and you say okay now I have to dig deep and understand what this industry really means. I have the research at my disposal to be able to talk intelligently about it. That’s one side of it, and then the other side of it is it’s just from a marketing perspective it’s been fantastic. It’s helped me build the name recognition and thought leadership that I want in the industry as kind of an outsider. My tag is that I’m a gonzo technology journalist. Hunter Thompson is one of my favorite journalists of all time. I love that approach. I want to take a different slant at it, and you know maybe it’s gonna ruffle some feathers along the way, but that’s alright. You can’t try to please everybody you’re probably not doing it right so journalism has been great for me for both perspectives it’s helped me become smarter and knowledgeable about topics within our industry but also it’s been a great marketing tool.

What are some big trends in 3D printing media that you are kind of looking out for in the media or with 3D printing in general in the media?

That’s a good question. The problem with 3d printing is it goes through hype cycles right, and we went through that and call it 2009 through 2012 and then maybe again over the last couple years like 14 to 16, where it gets the attention and hype of the mainstream press. Then it goes into a lull where it’s not quite as covered maybe as it would have been and then you know it goes back into one of these hype cycles again. I think we’re probably hitting a little bit of a lull to some degree with mainstream media, but that’s okay because you know what’s happened is there’s been a big shift in 3D printing from this concept that everybody was going to have a 3d printer in their home and make everything that they wanted to ever need to back to this is more of an industrial and commercial opportunity where it’s going to impact consumers because they’re going to be able to get better products faster and potentially less expensively. They’re not going to manufacture them in their home and that’s just not as glamorous to the mainstream media. Maybe you know it’s very important to industrial publications and trade publications and you know that kind of thing but it’s just not glamorous to Forbes in a Wall Street Journal and those kinds of publications and you know. I think it’s going to be that way for a long time even if 3D printing in the home becomes ubiquitous like inkjet printing where everybody has one. It’ll probably follow the same model. Less than 10% of all the pages produced are produced on those devices. The vast majority are printed for pay by somebody else, and the likeliness is that in 3D printing the same thing will happen now. Who that is and where and how are all up for debate but that’s the sign of a growing and big market. I mean look at how HP just did a deal with Smile Direct for 50 machines and that was big. Somebody made a lot of money on that deal and there are going to be orders that are five times that size as this market continues to grow. When you’re selling an order of five million or ten million dollars a pop that starts to build some scale pretty quickly. Even more than 50 million or 100 million versus you know small desktop printer, it’s just not the model that’s gonna work.

Customization is pretty cool it when it comes to 3D printing – what are you thoughts on specific industries that can really benefit from customization?

The medical industry certainly has been the leader in that charge so far. When you look at the hearing aid business or you look at dental aligners or you look at prosthetics or orthotics, all of those have been what I would tag as killer applications so far out of the gate. Almost every one of them relies heavily on customization and personalization but you know there are plenty of other consumer products that are going to be a big. Automotive has a lot of potential. There are other markets where customization and personalization is gonna play. One value add people think of when they get a new technology a new digital technology like this is on-demand manufacturing. I firmly believe and I’ve written about this a lot, that speed to market is probably the bigger opportunity in the end. It doesn’t even matter whether or not it’s competitive with what you’re gonna pay to mass-produce something it’s a matter of how fast you can get it to market and if there’s any kind of sensitivity around timing whatsoever either a competitive environment or you know it’s marketing in the moment there’s some trend you’re trying to hit right now. I think speed to market is probably the one that drives the greatest growth and end-use production parts. There is always friction when you’re attempting to customize or personalize.

Interview with Vinod Devan of Deloitte on Their 3D Printing Approach

With 3D printing moving towards broader adoption many companies are now entering our market. One of these is Deloitte. The professional services firm that does everything from accounting to tax and M&A also wants to guide firms into the 3D printing world. We interviewed Vinod Devan, Product Strategy and Operations Lead at Deloitte Consulting to see what the firm’s plans are in 3D printing and how it hopes to help customers.

Why is Deloitte entering the 3D printing market?

Additive manufacturing (AM) is a critical component of the Industry 4.0 digital transformation.AM technology is finally at the point where companies are starting to realize significant, tangible, new value for themselves and their customers. Deloitte is making significant investments in 3D printing knowledge and capabilities so that we can advise and join with our clients as they revolutionize supply chains, product portfolios, and business models.

What competencies does the team have?

At Deloitte, we have incredible depth in supply chain and manufacturing and have been helping companies digitize their operations.This includes product design and development, manufacturing, production design, and in-market management – all of which are impacted by AM. Through our growing ecosystem of collaborators and global alliances with leading hardware and software players in this space, we bring a holistic view of the benefits and impacts of AM and complementary digital technologies.

What kind of projects have you done with customers?

Our projects generally fall into three buckets: Helping clients who are new to additive manufacturing enter the space in a strategic manner, helping clients operationalize and scale their existing – but relatively foundational – AM efforts, and helping clients that are already mature in AM transform and optimize end to end product and supply chain operations. Regardless of the project type, we strive to strike a balance between technical feasibility, business viability, and customer desirability. This approach is necessary for a ‘play to win’ strategy in AM.

What advice could you give me if I was a large manufacturing company and I’d want to get started with 3D printing?

Start small and focus on high value areas – this could be rapid prototyping, production of spare parts, or tooling components.Use this exercise to get comfortable with the technology, economics, and value of 3D printing. Build a roadmap to demonstrate success, and keep expanding the AM applications portfolio within your enterprise. Don’t treat AM as a fad; it will change manufacturing in unprecedented ways.

What application areas do you see opening up?

Over the next three to five years, we expect growth and scale in applications that are gaining significant traction today – long tail spare parts, tooling, bridge production, product personalization, and mass customization.

What are the next products that will be industrialized with 3D printing?

Automotive and large manufacturing companies are leading the industrialization of AM, due to the significant cost savings associated with digitizing their inventory. Consumer products and med tech companies benefit from the high degree of cost-effective personalization that AM offers. The range of products that will be additively manufactured will depend on the rate of development of specialized materials, adoption of the digital thread, integration of digital security to protect IP, certification of AM products by regulatory agencies, and perhaps most importantly, the willingness of innovative executives who choose to be bullish on digitizing their businesses.

What are some of the technologies that you’re most interested in?

The ability to 3D print has been around for a long time. While recent developments in AM are certainly encouraging and exciting, the development of complementary technologies that accelerate and expand the value of AM are very interesting. These include IoT, data analytics, and AR/VR. Together with AM, these technologies unlock the true potential of Industry 4.0.

What are some key developments in 3D printing materials?

Materials are definitely on the critical path for large-scale adoption of additive manufacturing. Getting AM products to be the same or better than those produced by legacy manufacturing processes often comes down to material science and engineering. Given the unique requirements for each application, we are seeing material producers develop new strategies and even new business ventures to not just develop specialty materials, but also to provide supplemental services that accelerate the adoption of their materials.

What are the key stumbling blocks in 3D printing implementations?

There are two primary stumbling blocks – the first is companies that don’t believe that AM is finally here, not just hype. Current manufacturing processes have been around for a lot longer than AM and have reached a high degree of efficiency and optimization. AM has been touted as disrupting those legacy models for almost three decades, but has fallen short until very recently. There is an entrenched mindset that will require a cultural shift to facilitate adoption. The second stumbling block is the lack of a holistic approach to AM. There is a tendency by executives and engineers to focus on either cost or quality or some other standalone benefit. That results in a narrow adoption strategy, which often does not yield sufficient value to justify additional investment.

A lot of people can never tell me how much a 3D printed part costs. How much would a 3D Printed pen cost? How many could I make a day?

Cost and volume questions are valid, but the answers vary greatly by technology, material, and process. And in our opinion, they do not provide sufficient information when evaluating 3D printing. Along with the cost elements (once to determine how you intend to print a part), other important questions should be considered. For example, could a 3D printed pen function BETTER than a traditional pen? Could it be lighter weight? Could it be personalized to the user? Could you sell more of a 3D printed pen relative to a regular pen because of its added value? Would the lifecycle cost – not just a production cost – of the pen be lower?

What products would make sense for 3D printing, which would not?

Despite the advancements in recent years, some limitations remain. For example, products or parts that exceed the optimal build size of current machines can’t be printed. Products in sectors with heavy regulatory oversight and lengthy certification processes make the scaled adoption of 3D printing a cumbersome exercise. Products that cannot be accommodated by today’s material set require additional design cycles to determine feasibility. Like with any disruptive technology, the number of products that can be “onboarded” to AM will increase exponentially as demand increases.