In the recent years, we have seen strong technological advancements in additive manufacturing. Manufacturing companies can now build on the technology to create parts for serial manufacturing. This presentation will reflect on the transformatory challenges of the shift from prototyping to manufacturing 3D printing use cases and how to master this transition to the benefit of operations. The future of 3D printing will be driven by manufacturing applications. However, it is not trivial to identify the most suitable parts for additive manufacturing out of a portfolio of multiple parts that a manufacturing company has in its offering. This presentation will discuss a case study from the Energy Sector on how to leverage an Additive Manufacturing Opportunity Screening Tool into which a set of SKUs/parts is loaded into to identify not only the right parts for 3D printing but to also get a recommendation on which is the most appropriate technology to use. Moreover, manufacturing companies can now build on the technology to form distributed production networks to make their operations more efficient, more resilient, and more sustainable. We present a framework ensuring the right design choices and identify most suitable applications for distributed manufacturing that can also support manufacturing operations in a volatile trade and tariffs environment.
Learning Objectives:
... understand the importance to take a value perspective and identify the various levers that bring value to the end user of the AM technology
... understand that additive manufacturing can play a significant role in de-risking supply chains by leveraging distributed manufacturing to build geopolitical resilience in light of e.g. tariff uncertainty
... understand that large part of additive manufacturing’s value is not yet uncovered and that users need to be guided. This is the opportunity to form and grow the market
