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5 - 10 Years
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Seven ways 3D Printing helps a logistics organization become more environmentally sustainable

Source: All3DP (2023): 7 Ways 3D Printing Helps You Become Sustainable

Relevance to the Future of Logistics

Mass Personalization & Customization

With 2.64 billion people around the world – one in three – already shopping online, there is vast potential for mass personalization and customization of products using 3D printing technology. Businesses need to rethink manufacturing and distribution to meet customer demand.

Not just consumers but also industries can benefit from mass customization of products. 3D printing brings value to many sectors, from automotive to aerospace and from semiconductor capital equipment manufacturing to healthcare provision. This technology can improve efficiency by simultaneously producing numerous customized end-user parts.

The increase in demand for mass personalized and customized products provides many new opportunities for businesses to leverage the capabilities of 3D printing technology. Examples include manufacturing lenses and eyeglass frames designed and positioned to fit unique facial features, prosthetic implants catering to individual patient requirements, customized hearing aids, and personalized footwear for users with special needs. Strong and agile local supply chain networks will be needed to accommodate efficient distribution of on-demand 3D-printed mass production items.

Decentralized Production

Effective spare parts management is crucial for maintaining product uptime, especially with the shift towards servitization (when customers pay for the use of equipment rather than buy it themselves), to avoid high costs and reduce the risk of lost sales if machines stand idle because spare parts are unavailable. The irregular and still hard to predict demand for spare parts, coupled with the need to keep stock for the duration of a product’s lifecycle (depending on the longevity of the product), present a challenge for aftermarket logistics.

Creating and storing digital part files on cloud and printing these items on demand gives companies flexibility in managing the supply chain, reducing inventory, optimizing warehouse storage space, and achieving shorter lead times. This can be attained by setting up decentralized local 3D printing facilities. A logistics company can take advantage of this opportunity and build servicing capability by, for example, partnering with local 3D printing services or producing spare parts in-house, and can use its supply chain network to deliver parts on time.

Environmental Sustainability

3D printing can play an important role in enabling companies to reach their sustainability strategy targets, as it reduces waste through the process of building a product layer by layer rather than subtracting and discarding materials, which is common in conventional production processes. 3D printing is also an enabler for decentralized production reducing transportat distances and offers ways to optimize product design by eliminating the design constraints of traditional manufacturing, which in turn reduces material use.

Increased investment in material research and development has resulted in the creation of environmentally friendly materials such as ABS and bio-based materials which help reduce the carbon footprint. Leveraging 3D printing therefore results in less need for waste logistics and reduces overall carbon emissions during the printing process. Within logistics and the supply chain, the benefits of advances in the field of materials science (such as using more lightweight materials to build airplane parts and sustainable packaging material) also bring more opportunities to reduce the carbon footprint.

3D Printing in the Supply Chain

In logistics, 3D printing enables rapid prototyping, too. A good example of this is the creation of parts for automation trials, when it is better for new concepts to ‘fail fast’ rather than incur long lead times before a result is achieved. At DHL, one of our in-house technology teams has used 3D printing to develop a grabber for robotic arms deployed in supply chains.

Creating sample products for logistics operations could take weeks from design to prototype but, with 3D printing, this can be reduced to days, allowing logistics planners to minimize the optimization window. For logistics applications requiring high levels of design customization or flexibility, on-site printed automation parts are likely to accelerate project turnover and optimize goods flow. Obtaining bespoke parts is not just much faster; it can also be much more cost effective and sustainable.

To use 3D printing as an alternative to conventional production methods in the supply chain requires more documentation, along with new quality standards and product testing methods suited to this new type of manufacturing.

Challenges

Challenge 1

A small-batch production size compared to conventional manufacturing makes 3D printing more costly and slower than mass production; this restricts widespread adoption across industries.

Challenge 2

Another barrier to adoption is the limited range of materials that can be used in their raw state for 3D printing; in some cases it continues to be difficult to achieve the same material properties as in conventional manufacturing.

Challenge 3

The size of the printable object is restricted by the dimensions of the 3D printer chamber; larger items must be built in parts and then combined manually.

Challenge 4

3D printing risks intellectual property rights (IPR) infringement as, in the wrong hands, a printer can make lower-quality counterfeit products; original designers and manufacturers incur loss if fake goods find a way into the supply chain.

A small-batch production size compared to conventional manufacturing makes 3D printing more costly and slower than mass production; this restricts widespread adoption across industries.
Another barrier to adoption is the limited range of materials that can be used in their raw state for 3D printing; in some cases it continues to be difficult to achieve the same material properties as in conventional manufacturing.
The size of the printable object is restricted by the dimensions of the 3D printer chamber; larger items must be built in parts and then combined manually.
3D printing risks intellectual property rights (IPR) infringement as, in the wrong hands, a printer can make lower-quality counterfeit products; original designers and manufacturers incur loss if fake goods find a way into the supply chain.

Outlook

3D printing will remain a good fit for low- to medium-volume production. With the right level of planning, engineering, and materials development, it can be seamlessly integrated into production. As this technology moves towards integration into all stages of new product development from conceptualization to production, in future we can even expect being able to print objects embedded with electronic chips and sensors at reasonable cost. This will help reduce reliance on third-party suppliers, meaning companies gain more control of their production processes, mitigating risk in the supply chain.

For the most part logistics will play a supporting and enabling role within this trend.

There is significant market opportunity. The global 3D printing market size is projected to achieve a CAGR of 24.3% between 2023 to 2030, reaching a value of $105 billion.

This trend should be monitored TO SOME EXTENT,with developments and use cases on the horizon.

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Sources

  1. IDTechEx (2024): 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing 2024-2034: Technology and Market Outlook
  2. Meetanshi (2024): 45 Online Shopping Statistics to Take Note of in 2024