A blog by Oleg Shilovitsky
Information & Comments about Engineering and Manufacturing Software

PLM and 3D printing revolution

PLM and 3D printing revolution
Oleg
Oleg
15 March, 2012 | 2 min for reading

3D printing is an important and cool trend these days. For those who are not in the business of 3D Printing, navigate to the following wikipedia article to close the educational gap.

3D printing is a phrase used to describe the process of creating three-dimensional objects from a digital file using a materials printer, in a manner similar to printing images on paper. The term is most closely associated with additive manufacturing technology, where an object is created by laying down successive layers of material.[1] Recently the term is increasingly used to describe all types of additive manufacturing processes, or even other types of rapid prototyping technology.

It started almost 10 years ago, 3D printing became much stronger and considerably cheaper lately. I’ve been monitoring multiple publications and announcements related to 3D Printing. You can navigate to few of them – The silent revolution – 3D printing in the workplace and the home by Develop3D, 3D color printing as common as a wooded lot tick infestations. it’s coming by SolidSmack and few more.

The last one that caught my attention yesterday was Playing the 3-D printing revolution by By James Saft (Reuter). Have a read. The following passage was my favorite:

If it takes off, it could radically change global trade flows, delivering a huge boost to the indebted and aging developed world, while threatening the fundamentals which underpin manufacturing success in China and some other emerging markets. 3-D printing is a process under which highly customizable products are literally sprayed into existence using something not too dissimilar from an ink-jet printer. Originally used mostly to provide build prototypes, it is now being used for actual production, notably by a unit of EADS which is working on developing 3-D printing-produced aircraft parts. The advantages are huge: easier customization, lower labor costs and, potentially, a severing of the reliance on a supply chain, a feature of manufacturing since the days of Henry Ford.

You may ask me – what is the relationship to PLM? Here is my take. If EADS is working on how to develop 3-D printing produced aircraft parts, it is going beyond toys and exhibition souvenirs. If so, companies will have to apply some production flow and decision-making processes to make it efficient and cost-effective. It also opens an additional market for supply chain relationships for businesses to specialize in operating and maintaining 3D printing facilities.

What is my conclusion? 3D printing revolution can change lots of stable manufacturing relationships. Moving from one state to another will require some new processes in place to make it happen. Another wake-up call for PLM vendors and opportunity for new businesses. PLM perfect storm is coming. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

pic courtesy solidsmack / zcorp.

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
20 July, 2018

Last year I shared my thoughts about how to replace legacy PLM and move forward. The idea is pretty simple...

26 May, 2010

An interesting research done by Economist Intelligence Unit, sponsored by Siemens PLM Software and Microsoft. You can get this report...

25 August, 2010

Cloud or SaaS application continue intriguing developers and vendors. In my view, during the last 2 years, talks around cloud...

1 December, 2009

The following NYT article drove my attention yesterday – Open Source as a Model for Business is Elusive. I already...

30 May, 2014

Few days ago, I captured the idea of building cloud PDM system on top of Dropbox infrastructure. It is hard...

19 August, 2010

One of the interesting trends in PLM is growing amount of vertical integrations between components of PLM portfolio. The following...

15 August, 2014

Part Numbers is a fascinating topic. I’m coming back to blog about what is the best approach to manage Part...

18 November, 2015

I had a chance to speak at PI Congress Boston yesterday. The topic of my presentation was to raise awareness...

25 March, 2016

A growing number of manufacturing companies are dependent on the experience of aging workforce. Often process guidelines or rules are...

Blogroll

To the top