Insights on Additive Manufacturing: Value, Volume and Reshoring
Conclusions The metal industry is evolving rapidly. Some aspects of that change are clear and relatively uncontested such as the diversification of applications and the logic of using AM.
Others are more hotly debated, including where improvements need to be made (equipment, materials, supply chains, or all of these), where the greatest growth potential lies (sectoral and geographical) and how the industry should be most efficiently organised in the future. There are still some serious challenges around how AM is sold. Part of this process, which relates back to the race to high volume being contexualised within conventional understandings of how products should be designed and manufactured, is emphasising that more systemic change needs to happen. ‘Which I think is the crucial difference with AM, isn’t it? That’s what the selling point is, it’s actually we’re not saying we can do existing things better, we’re saying we can do totally different things. And proving that there’s a business model underlying it’ (Firm 33, US). Two things need to happen in relation to how the business model of AM is understood within the industry and externally. First, there needs to be greater transparency around existing business models. Many expressed extreme frustration
at business models that were marketed as being successful but which were increasingly questioned regarding their feasibility. Some interviewees felt that the high publicity cases were used to drive market growth and raise the profile of particular AM firms. Second, the tendency to view AM as a unique and special technology is potentially alienating potential users and limiting application. ‘We think the A-list celebrity status of AM needs to be normalised’ (Firm 14, Germany). We do know that in the short term the AM sector is going to be sitting under, or alongside, traditional manufacturing. ‘AM is a technology like many others. It will play a key role in the factory of the future, but it will not replace everything. It is going to be important in interacting with all other technologies’ (Firm 12, Germany). This means that long-standing concerns about the state of manufacturing in advanced economies remain a concern for AM. In the case of reshoring there is some debate ‘if 3D printing is going to bring the supply chains back to the UK, what does that
mean? Does it mean we’re going to manufacture components or does it mean we’re going manufacture machines, or what does that actually mean? The whole point about 3D printing is supposed to be local for local manufacture’ (Firm 11, UK). The AM value chain has its own vulnerabilities (many interviewees cited material supply as one), and research participants noted the relative lack of 3D printing processes in their own production of AM machines. Issues such the manufacturing labour market (education and skills), government policy making and uneven regional economic development will impact on traditional manufacturing and AM. At present the AM industry is offering a compelling case for increased public and policy interest and funding, but the majority of interviewees in all three countries were either unaware or scathing of current national government initiatives to support AM. If it is to achieve the lofty ‘transformative’ ambitions set by policy makers and popular media, the industry may well need it.
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