As COVID-19 wreaks havoc on global supply chains, a trend of moving manufacturing closer to customers could go so far as to put miniature manufacturing plants in people’s living rooms.
Most products in Americans’ homes are labeled “Made in China,” but even those that say “Made in USA” frequently have parts from China that are now often delayed. Some products are becoming harder to find.
But at the same time, there are open-source, freely available digital designs for making millions of items with 3D printers, and their numbers are growing exponentially, as is an interest in open-hardware design in academia. Some designs are already being shared for open-source medical hardware to help during the pandemic, such as face shields, masks and ventilators.
The cost of 3D printers is low enough to be accessible to most Americans. People can download, customize and print a range of products at home, and they often end up costing less than it takes to purchase them.
More than a decade ago, the patents expired on the first type of 3D printing, and a professor in Britain had the intriguing idea of making a 3D printer that could print itself. He released the designs with open-source licenses on the web. The designs spread like wildfire and were quickly hacked and improved upon by engineers and hobbyists.
Many of these makers started their own companies to produce variants of these 3D printers, and people can now buy a 3D printer for $250 to $550. Today’s 3D printers are full-fledged additive manufacturing robots, which build products one layer at a time.
The technology threatens major disruption to global value chains. In general, companies are moving from using 3D printing for prototyping to adopting it to make products they need internally. They’re also using 3D printing to move manufacturing closer to their customers, which reduces the need for inventory and shipping.
The adoption of 3D printing and the move toward distributed manufacturing was expected to be a slow process as more products were printed by more people. But that was before there was a real risk of products becoming unavailable as COVID-19 spread.
Already, because of the global impact of the coronavirus, 94% of Fortune 1000 companies are having their supply chains disrupted and businesses dependent on global sourcing are facing hard choices.
The value of industrial commodities continues to slide because the coronavirus has put a major dent in demand as manufacturers shut down and potential customers are quarantined.
The disruptions to global supply chains caused by strict quarantines, stay-at-home orders and other social-distancing measures in industrialized nations around the world present an opportunity for distributed manufacturing to fill unmet needs.
In many cases, people will be able to make the products they need themselves (if they have access to a printer).
There are some hurdles, particularly for consumer 3D printing. The 3D printing filament, the raw material for 3D printers, is itself subject to disruptions in global supply chains. Some metal 3D printers are still expensive and the fine metal powder many of them use as raw material is potentially hazardous if inhaled.
If the coronavirus continues to disrupt supply chains and hamper international trade, the demand for unavailable or costly products could speed up the transition to distributed manufacturing of all products.
Joshua M. Pearce is a professor of materials science and engineering, and electrical and computer engineering at Michigan Technological University. Distributed by The Associated Press.
