In some forms of manufacturing, processes that are currently performed in capital-intensive factories, often thousands of miles away from end customers, will migrate to smaller facilities. The logic of economies of scale will still apply in some cases, but in others, the increase in responsiveness, personalization, and/or inventory reduction will favor decentralized productive capacity. This decentralization already can be seen in publishing: rather than my university library purchasing a paper volume from a journal, I print out the article I need on my desktop (if I in fact want paper at all).
Navy ships already print some parts on board. Downloadable 3D files are already helping replace broken oven knobs in both restaurant and home kitchens. Auto manufacturers could install small polymer printers at dealers to save on inventory costs for thousands of small but important plastic parts; Mercedes was already 3D printing spare plastic parts for its trucks as of 2016 and began making metal parts a year later (Woodard, 2017). Porsche went a step further and is using additive techniques to recreate obsolete parts—with “absolute fidelity to the original specifications”—for its classic models without having to tool up mass production (Porsche Classic supplies classic parts from a 3D printer, 2018). Moving the locus and scale of production in turn affects the size and activities of the purchasing organization, the inventory management function, and of course factories. Previously impossible repairs (such as rebuilding broken teeth on a large, complex, and/or obsolete gear) can become feasible. Forecasts may need to become much more granular, responsive, and localized to reflect smaller production facilities closer to end demand.
At the same time, putting more productive capability closer to end users, without layers of intermediaries, can result in accelerated innovation. The smartphone app industry is a case in point: when enterprise software took huge teams years to write in the 1960s and 1970s, there were no social applications, no mass-market computer games, and no integration with GPS (as in Waze) or photography (as in Snapchat). Decentralized makers on shared platforms, running ever more powerful software, and collaborating outside organizational boundaries are likely to make things that large companies never attempted or conceived of (Gershenfeld, 2012).
A company designed from the ground up to exploit the advantages of additive manufacturing will employ new business models, organizational shapes, marketing channels, and other practices.
One example of such an organization is Robot Bike, a British maker of custom-fit mountain bikes. Unique frame geometries are built from additively manufactured custom titanium lugs (joints) that connect to carbon-fiber tubing cut to length. Market reaction has been highly positive (Wight, 2017).
Robot Bike’s founders were college classmates who combined their hobby with years of professional experience in aerospace and software-driven manufacturing. Their unique combination of skills and experiences led them to build a new kind of company. On the production side, Robot Bike partners with one manufacturing software company to do topology optimization (which balances size and shape vs strength) for each bicycle part, a different software company to develop digital blueprints for the parts, and a 3D printing vendor to build the actual metal components (Saunders, 2016). On the demand side, the Internet and social media word of mouth help make the startup competitive with established cycling giants, whose supply-push channel cannot readily adapt to demand-pull customization. Thus, a new kind of bike is being built by an organizational model completely unknown in the traditional cycling industry.