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Additive manufacturing: the missing link in the global supply chain

Since the onset of the pandemic, many manufacturers have discovered that 3D printers can produce parts that they couldn’t get because of supply chain problems

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COVID-19 gave additive manufacturing a stage to strut its stuff on.

At the pandemic’s outset, healthcare facilities found themselves with depleted inventories of PPE, nasal swabs, and other disposable tools of the medical trade. Thanks to AM’s highly compressed design-to-production time, though, companies of all sizes—and DIYers—were 3D-printing medical supplies within weeks of the outbreak.

One example is ROE Dental Lab. The state of Ohio awarded the company a contract to 3D-print 1 million nasal swabs. Within 30 days, ROE went from printing zero swabs a day to 15,000. No other manufacturing technology is as adaptable or nimble.

COVID is giving AM another chance to strut. As the pandemic has regularly rattled the global supply chain the past two years, some manufacturers have discovered that 3D printing is a viable option for making industrial components. Additive allows companies to produce parts when needed, design and redesign them quickly and at a low cost, and locally print parts designed anywhere in the world.

“The key to supply chain resiliency is the ability to have parts when you need them, on demand, and close to the point of consumption,” Xerox Elem Additive Solutions Vice President Tali Rosman told the Additive Reporter. “Everything going on in the last two years really hammers home the point that having supply chain resiliency and agility is a matter of national security.”

Rosman suggested that companies not involved in AM consider adopting the technology in some way to keep their products flowing in the event of future supply chain disruptions.

Many in industry feel that AM will become a critical link in a stronger, more secure supply chain.

Many in industry feel that, going forward, AM will be a critical link in a stronger, more secure supply chain. They also believe that additive’s heightened profile during the pandemic has legitimized it as a manufacturing technology.

But there’s a rub. Additive manufacturers are subject to the same sourcing challenges as other industrial suppliers. These include shortages of components needed to build equipment, crazy-high logistics costs, and frustratingly long lead times.

“This is the best time ever for additive to prove it’s worth in the market,” said Zac DiVencenzo, president of 3D printer builder JuggerBot3D. “But guess what. 3D printer OEMs are running into the same problems every other OEM is running into.”

It will take a while to know whether additive manufacturing has, indeed, become the link in the supply chain that connects demand for parts and instant fulfillment of that demand. A factor that favors AM assuming the role is that it’s a largely digital technology and, as such, primed to enter an increasingly digitized manufacturing world.

About the Author
FMA Communications Inc.

Don Nelson

Editor-in-Chief

2135 Point Blvd.

Elgin, IL 60123

(815)-227-8248

Don Nelson has reported on and been in the manufacturing industry for more than 25 years.