Additive manufacturing (3D
PRINTING): A long-term game changer for manufacturers
·
To get
the most out of additive manufacturing, companies need to think beyond
prototyping and understand what the technology means for production.
Additive manufacturing (AM)—the process of making a product layer by layer instead
of using traditional molding or subtractive methods—has become one of the most
revolutionary technology applications in manufacturing. Often referred to as
3-D printing, the best-known forms of AM today depend on the material: SLS
(selective laser sintering), SLA (stereolithography), and FDM (fused deposition
modeling) in plastics, and DMLS (direct metal laser sintering) and LMD (laser
metal deposition) in metals. Once employed purely for prototyping, AM is now
increasingly used for spare parts, small series production, and tooling. For
manufacturing with metals, the ability to use existing materials such as steel,
aluminum, or superalloys such as Inconel has significantly eased the process of
adopting AM.
Meanwhile, the number
of materials that AM can handle is constantly expanding. A wide range of new
plastics has been developed, along with processes and machines for printing
with ceramics, glass, paper, wood, cement, graphene, and even living cells.
Applications are now available in industries ranging from aerospace to
automobiles, from consumer goods (including food) to health care (where
artificial human tissue can be produced using AM).
Additive advantages
Compared with
traditional production methods, AM offers enormous benefits, including less
hard tooling and assembly. In the long run, AM can completely change the way
products are designed and built, as well as distributed, sold, and serviced.
Adoption of AM has been
highest in industries where its higher production costs are outweighed by the
additional value AM can generate: improved product functionality, higher
production efficiency, greater customization, shorter time to market (that is,
improved service levels), and reduced obsolescence, particularly in asset-heavy
industries. Engineering-intensive businesses such as aerospace, automotive, and
medical can accelerate prototyping, allowing them to explore completely new
design features or create fully individualized products at no extra cost.
High-value/lower-volume businesses see faster, more flexible manufacturing
processes, with fewer parts involved, less material wasted, reduced assembly
time for complex components, and even materials with completely new properties
created. And spare-parts-intensive businesses in fields such as maintenance,
repair, and overhaul get freedom from obsolete parts, faster time to market,
more local and on-demand production opportunities, and independence from
traditional suppliers.
Manufacturing market potential
Several analyst reports
expect that the direct market for AM will grow to at least $20 billion by
2020—a figure that represents just a fraction of the entire tooling market
today.1However, we believe that the
overall economic impact created by AM could be much higher, reaching $100
billion to 250 billion by 2025, if adoption across industries continues at
today’s rate. Most of that potential will come from the aerospace and defense,
automotive, medical, and consumer-goods industries.
Meanwhile, various
stakeholders are accelerating the overall market development for AM. Large OEMs
are investing significantly in R&D and building internal centers of
competence, while other large corporations—such as HP, from the traditional
printing business—are entering the market. Major governments are setting up
R&D funds, including the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program, or are
starting capability-building programs for their workforces, as in Korea.
Universities are
partnering with manufacturers’ research centers to create innovation centers
for applied R&D, with examples including Advanced Remanufacturing and
Technology Centre in Singapore and RWTH Aachen University/Fraunhofer Institute
for Production Technology. Finally, a vibrant start-up scene has arisen as most
patents on existing AM technologies have run out, leaving space for new (as
well as established) players from various industries to enter at all points on
the value chain. New design and service companies are being set up and new
technologies developed, such as by BigRep and Carbon3D.
AM’s limitations
Despite all of the
optimism about AM, there are still major challenges to be overcome before the
technology enjoys truly widespread adoption.
·
Lack
of design knowledge. There is still a
significant worldwide skills gap when it comes to product design for AM.
Capturing the technology’s full potential often requires completely rethinking
the way products are designed, because AM allows nearly complete freedom:
product designs can be calibrated to eliminate unnecessary materials, and inner
or organic structures can be incorporated, thus overcoming the limitations of
traditional milling or injection molding. Our sense is that companies are only
scratching the surface of what is possible.
·
High
production costs. This is the major
barrier to more widespread use of AM. Although AM avoids the high up-front
tooling costs that traditional processes (such as injection molding) require,
those advantages tend to fade quickly as production volume increases. The good
news, however, is that with plastics, the volume threshold where AM has an
advantage is increasing, with one AM company claiming to have pushed it to
5,000 units for a relatively small, simple object. But even at low volumes, AM
with metals often remains much more expensive than traditional methods because
of several interconnected factors: high materials costs, slow build-up rates,
and the long machining hours that result, high energy consumption, and postprocessing
costs, which are often underestimated.
·
Limited
production scale. Because most
current AM machines are made for prototyping rather than series production,
mass production scale is hard to attain. The next-generation machinery needs to
keep reducing production costs while adding capabilities necessary to support
industrial production, such as process-stability management, in-process quality
control, faster changeovers, greater reliability, and easier maintenance and
repair.
·
Limited
cybersecurity and IP protection. Current-generation AM machinery is vulnerable to
two especially important security issues. The first is the protection of
original designs, including the identification of parts—particularly if parts
are designed in ways that make them replicable after the product is sold. The
second is protecting data from cyberattacks, the risks of which are increased
by tighter integration with suppliers and customers.
Manufacturers of AM
machines, however, are addressing these limitations with significant results.
Specialized AM service companies, along with engineering and consulting firms,
are now bridging the design-skills gap. In addition, regional governments are
funding AM-focused production clusters for applied R&D. Several analysts
predict that next-generation machines will cut current AM production costs
dramatically because of factors such as patent expiration and reduced
postprocessing needs. Manufacturers will also benefit from increasing economies
of scale and sourcing opportunities in low-cost countries.
AM machine
manufacturers are working on better in-process control, advanced quality
diagnostics, and data storage along the entire production process for
certification purposes. Large AM manufacturers, including Materialise and
Stratasys, suggest that AM can achieve material properties in both plastics and
metals comparable to those from traditional production techniques.
We are also seeing an
increasing availability of materials with properties comparable or even
superior to those of existing ones. These materials include polymers such as
nylon, PEEK, and ULTEM that are becoming more heat resistant and lending
themselves to more applications, and metals and alloys within the standard
range of available materials: industrial metals such as steel, aluminum,
titanium, and Inconel; precious metals such as gold and silver; and new
materials including amorphous, noncrystalline metals.
The AM value chain—players and business models
The AM landscape is
diverse. In the plastics printing market, larger, integrated players cover the
entire value chain from supplying materials to manufacturing printers to
providing printing services. Several have added services by making targeted
acquisitions. The larger players are also very active in creating new use cases
in particular industries, driving sector-wide adoption and sale of equipment.
In the metal printing market, by contrast, relatively small players focus more
on certain parts of the value chain, such as in printing equipment or in
printing services.
Given the investments
necessary for developing the next-generation machines, many of these smaller
players are looking for capital. Consolidation in the market has therefore
begun. Uncertainty about which manufacturers will survive will change the face
of the industry, creating risk for manufacturers investing in equipment even as
improving technology holds out the promise of surmounting current barriers to
the adoption of AM.
Meanwhile, in addition
to the traditional material, printing, and service businesses, fast-growing
niche players are starting to arise. These companies ground their entire
business models on AM, ideally combined with digital sales and service models.
Align Technology, with its product Invisalign, provides an alternative to metal
dental braces; there are similar examples from Sonova for in-ear hearing aids,
Mykita with eyeglasses, and Shapeways with crowd design of consumer products.
New competitors are
also entering the OEM market. Large players such as Stratasys and 3D Systems
are certifying an end-to-end process for producing medical parts with newly
developed materials, using their own printing technology and offering printing
services to customers such as hospitals, which formerly purchased from OEMs.
We see little evidence
of a race toward a single technology, since—because of factors including
variations in cost, available materials, and surface finish—the existing
technologies serve different purposes. To explore the potential of AM,
manufacturers therefore often need access to more than one technology, which
they can get via specialized service providers that offer all the key ones.
This picture may change, however, if new entrants dramatically increase
performance by improving an existing technology or creating a completely new
one.
Disruptive potential of AM for value chains
and traditional company functions
People tend to
overestimate the short-term impact of technologies and significantly
underestimate the long-term impact. Yet there is currently a lot of uncertainty
about the long-term impact of AM on traditional value chains. Understandably,
the issue is being raised by traditional players such as logistics companies
that will be directly affected, and by governments that aim to prepare their
manufacturing ecosystems and workforces for changes that may be coming soon.
How will the
traditional way of serving markets change, and what are the implications for
traditional plant setups and value chains? As far as production and
distribution are concerned, a few things seem clear. Advantages from production
in low-cost countries will likely diminish. New, customer-centric plants will
emerge, allowing the finishing of products according to local demand and
significantly reducing the need for long-distance transport of finished goods.
We may also see new production-network models—for example, production of
half-finished products in low-cost countries, with finishing done close to
customers to adjust for local taste, seasonality, and similar factors.
With these changes in
production capabilities will come equally dramatic shifts in company functions
and their relative importance on the value chain. The ability to make
completely customizable products will shift the traditional manufacturing
mind-set of “What is feasible?” to one of “What is possible?” Design
capabilities will therefore become an even more important strategic asset.
Company functions of
today will also change when, for example, operators skilled for one production
line will need to operate new AM production lines that produce a large variety
of products. Traditional engineers will need to be trained in AM design.
Marketing and sales, meanwhile, will need to learn how to market individualized
products that can be produced anywhere in the world.
By Jörg Bromberger and Richard Kelly September 2017
http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/additive-manufacturing-a-long-term-game-changer-for-manufacturers?cid=other-eml-alt-mip-mck-oth-1709&hlkid=19f9a07d6b1a422c84f3d0337278ec15&hctky=1627601&hdpid=7ef5c88c-d567-414b-a910-e95cf17a9b2f
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