Accenture-Disruptive-Potential-3D-Printing

3D printing’s
disruptive potential

Where does 3D printing fit in
today’s brave new world of
digital business?
And what can companies do to
fully leverage this powerful and
surprisingly versatile innovation?
2

Now and well into the future, digital is how
companies work. Respected business guru
Jeremy Rifkin claims that digital technology
is one anchor of a “third industrial
revolution.” 1 Perhaps Rifkin is exaggerating,
but digital technology clearly has become
a momentous disruptor of traditional
business paradigms, as well as an enabler
of new business approaches and customer
relationships. This is why, according to Cisco
Systems, Inc., an estimated 14.4 trillion
“digital disruption dollars” are up for grabs
between now and 2022. 2
Accenture believes that digital supply
networks (DSNs) are the backbone of this
new ecosystem: worldwide conduits that
streamline and accelerate the exchange
of products, materials, components and
(perhaps most important) information. We
also believe 3D printing is an ideal illustration
of the digital supply network’s vast potential.
In addition to helping companies
collaborate more rapidly and effectively,
DSNs maximize 3D printing’s potential
by making vast quantities of information
available wherever and whenever needed.
3D printing, enabled by a digital supply
network, has the potential to drive
unprecedented rapid product iterations;
economical mass customization of goods
and components; and altogether new ways
to think about manufacturing, supply chain
management and customer service.
In this Point of View, we look at three ways
that 3D printing, abetted by digital supply
networks, will continue stoking innovation,
adding value, and disrupting traditional
business and operating models.
Traditional Supply Chains
Digital Supply Networks
Supplier
Manufacturer
Distributor
Logistics provider
Retailer
Customer
R&D
Marketing
Linear supply chains are moving to become Digital Supply Networks enabling more flexible processes
3

A 3D printing primer 3
3D printers build physical representations
of digital models, using additive
manufacturing techniques or manipulating
lasers to bind materials. This is a diametric
contrast to traditional manufacturing
processes, which are fundamentally
reductive and typically produce waste while
casting, molding, forming, machining and
joining a part. A 3D printer may create
the same part in one smooth process with
literally no waste.
The most common approach to 3D
printing—fused deposition modeling
(FDM)—prints different forms using plastics
such as acrylonitrile butadiene styrene
(ABS) and polylactic acid (PLA). Materials
are heated to reach a melting point. Moving
mechanically along two axes, an extruder
layers the material down. It then shifts
slightly higher and repeats the process.
For objects requiring overhangs,
manufacturers can print with multiple
materials, one of which supports the main
structure and is easily removed in the
finishing process. Other techniques, such as
stereolithography and laser sintering, use
lasers to precisely heat alloys or powders
and make them into solid forms. These laser
technologies may deploy various metals that
cannot be handled with FDM. However, both
plastic and metal materials for 3D printers
have been achieving increasingly higher
pressure and temperature thresholds, and
many are stronger than previously engineered
designs because they require no welds.
The market for 3D printers used to be
quite small, because their primary use was
rudimentary prototyping. However, new
applications are continually appearing and
prices are dropping commensurate with
demand. In the near future, investments
focused on adding speed, precision and
capacity will allow 3D printers to create
more complex products in larger volumes.
The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge
National Laboratory and machine tool
manufacturer CINCINNATI® Incorporated
recently announced a partnership that will
seek to create a 3D printer with 200 to 500
times the speed, and 10 times the size, of
most current printers. Moreover, several
patents for technologies such as laser
sintering will expire soon, thereby spurring
additional innovation. Printers also are
being combined with traditional subtractive
manufacturing tools to produce metal parts
that rival or surpass the quality of older
techniques. Many of these can be produced
with less material and in various weightsaving
shapes. General Electric, for instance,
is “printing” jet engine brackets that weigh
84 percent less than their predecessors.
Prototyping
Spare Part
Production
Ultra
Postponement
Business
Value
Today
5 Years 10 Years
Time / Technology Maturity
4

Three ways 3D printing can change
the manufacturing landscape
Staples, Inc. and Amazon.com, Inc.
have launched early concepts for 3D
printing services that enable justin-time
manufacturing of consumer
products. 4 General Electric’s oil
and gas division is set to pilot
production of 3D printed metal fuel
nozzles for its gas turbines. 5 Ford
Motor Company uses 3D printing
to make prototypes of auto parts,
such as cylinder heads, brake rotors,
shift knobs and vents. 6 A California
company is even working to build
houses using a 3D printer which,
mounted on a tractor-trailer, squirts
out layers of special concrete and
builds entire walls. 7 A short list
from The Economist notes that 3D
printers are hard at work making
medical implants, jewelry, football
boots designed for individual feet,
lampshades, racing-car parts, solidstate
batteries and customized
mobile phones. 8
In short, the adoption of 3D printing
is accelerating and is poised
for massive growth. According
to Wohlers Associates, Inc and
Deutsche Bank AG research, from
2010 to 2014 the 3D printing
market more than doubled and grew
at a CAGR of 27 percent. Jefferies
LLC forecasts a greater than 22
percent CAGR for the 3D printing
market through 2021, and Wohlers
estimates that the 3D printing
market will reach $6 billion by the
same year.
As was the case in the early days
of the personal computer or the
Internet, the full potential of 3D
printing is almost too immense
to fully grasp. However, there are
many areas in which 3D printing
is becoming synonymous with
viable opportunities to re-grade the
manufacturing playing field, as it
helps drive the digital-physical blur
that Accenture has identified as a
key disruptor of industries around
the world. 9
6

1.
Rapid prototyping and
mass customization
The traditional strength of manufacturing
is making large amounts of identical or
similar products with great speed and
efficiency. Small runs and customized
output have always been problematic. 3D
printing completely changes this paradigm.
Although not (yet) suited to high-volume
production, 3D printing will change the
economies of small-run manufacturing
because no special molds, jigs or other
tools are needed to produce a product. 3D
printers simply accept the product’s digital
file and build the product—as many or as
few as needed. This makes 3D printing an
ideal tool for reinventing the prototyping
process and taking mass customization to
a new level.
Many industries already use 3D printers
for prototyping—frequently saving time,
garnering big savings and producing better
products. Take the case of a consumer
goods company that formerly required four
days to produce a prototype for a single
location. By placing 3D printers wherever its
designers and engineers work—and linking
them with sophisticated digital networks—
the company can now create, compare,
study and work from identical physical
models. Each facility produces the same
object locally, with feedback and design
updates communicated and embedded
seamlessly across locations. The result has
been a 75 percent reduction in prototype
creation time, with the lion’s share of
attention now focused on designing
products instead of juggling prototypes
and coordinating transport.
On the mass customization side, consider
a hypothetical shopper looking for a new
door handle. Until recently, the person’s
choices were probably limited to whatever
pre-manufactured designs and shapes
were available at various retail locations.
However, by isolating the components of
a door knob to the handle and the locking
mechanism, it now is possible to mass
manufacture the locking components but
mass customize the handles. Professional
designers or knowledgeable individuals
may even upload their own designs to
the loose equivalent of an app store, with
the customer then viewing his or her
alternatives and requesting individualized
production of the chosen style wherever a
3D printer is available. The principal players
are 3D printing technology coupled with
the digital supply network, which stores,
carries and helps interpret information.
The bottom line is that 3D printers help
companies reduce the time and cost
associated with prototyping parts and
refining their design. 3D printers also make
it possible to economically create one-ofa-kind
products, thereby accommodating
specific size and configuration requests
and rounding out product lines by custommaking
hard-to-find variations of a basic
high-volume item. And as more companies
build out their digital supply networks,
the more designs can be shared across
the enterprise, with designers, suppliers,
manufacturers, logisticians, business
partners and even customers working
together to produce better products at
lower costs.
3D printers help
companies reduce the
time and cost associated
with prototyping parts
and refining their design.
7

2.
New ecosystems for accommodating
the digital nature of 3D printing
Digital technology is changing how products
are designed, made, assessed, purchased
and consumed. Most everyone recognizes
this fact. However, the implications for
strategy, quality, security, support and even
monetization are far muddier.
One of the most daunting questions is how
digital supply networks will evolve, given
digital’s ability to figuratively link designers,
suppliers, manufacturers, logisticians and
consumers. We know the potential for
disruption is enormous: Think what digital
has done for (or to) the publishing, music,
photography and telecommunications
industries. Music, for example, used to
have a physical form (a record, tape or CD).
Now, most music is translated into a digital
format and an entire digital supply chain
has emerged: from design (composition) to
recording to distribution to consumption.
Digital’s opportunities match or exceed
its disruptive potential. With more parts
cataloged digitally, an organization is better
positioned to collaborate within and outside
the enterprise. In 3D printing, for example, a
single connected platform can bring suppliers,
logistics providers and manufacturers
together to share design files, make faster
decisions, create new and potentially
better parts, and accelerate production
and delivery times. Significant new
economies are equally feasible—the result
of innovative part designs, lower shipment
volumes and costs, more productionsourcing
opportunities, and (as noted
earlier) economical mass customization.
With proper digital rights management
technology, proprietors of the new
ecosystem also can be confident their
intellectual property is protected. And once
parts are produced, advanced scanning
technologies can help ensure product
quality. Lastly, the digital supply network
can become a channel for ad-hoc, contractbased
manufacturing relationships that
help companies reduce risk and respond
rapidly to demand shifts and spikes. After
all, 3D printing makes it simpler to make
items—or the spares and components an
item requires—very close to the time when,
and location where, they are needed.
Taking full advantage of these innovations
can require a largely new “manufacturing
digital ecosystem” that supports new ways
to design and produce products, and makes
it possible to share design content so that
satellite businesses, third parties and even
customers can produce items themselves.
Within this scenario, organizations might
use 3D printing to help customers develop
ultra-tailored products. Perhaps that
customer wants to remodel a house to suit
a certain era in Spanish history: Designers
and contractors—working anywhere—could
collaborate with the customer to prototype,
perfect and ultimately “print” windows,
doors, hardware and even materials .
With more parts
cataloged digitally,
an organization
is better positioned to
collaborate within and
outside the enterprise.
8

3.
New angles to driving
operational excellence
The ability to create parts and products
on demand could fundamentally alter
companies’ approach to operations. In many
industries, 3D printing could drive down
the volume of finished goods shipments.
In turn, the nature and destination of
raw materials shipments might change
dramatically. Businesses will have to figure
out which products (or parts of products)
can be printed and, accordingly, what
manufacturing, assembly and shipment
options need to be reinvented. It’s not
unlikely that the entire relationship
between companies and third parties could
shift: Logistics services providers might
offer customers 3D printing services at
centralized warehouse locations connected
to their shipping facilities. So instead
of shipping a product from Cleveland to
Seattle, a manufacturer might sell the
rights to the digital model to a logistics
company, which then prints the product in
Seattle and delivers it to the customer. This
scenario is a textbook (albeit advanced)
example of postponement.
3D printing and digital supply networks
offer many ways to rethink how supply
chains support postponement. One might
be to develop a just-in-time partsreplacement
strategy. As manufacturing
equipment ages, it becomes more difficult
to maintain fully stocked warehouses of
spare parts—especially because suppliers
may not have kept all their original designs
and molds. 3D printing, enabled by DSNs,
can help alleviate the problem by letting
companies produce parts only when they
are needed, thus eliminating outages and
reducing the amount of capital that sits
unused in a warehouse.
For instance, instead of asking a supplier to
build a custom part to fix a broken machine
or disabled vehicle, a customer might
purchase the blueprint CAD diagrams for
the required part and (using a 3D printer)
build it himself. Along with speeding up
delivery and reducing costs, this could
mean that obsolete or hard-to-find parts
are suddenly available. Like using DNA to
revive an extinct species, 3D printers could
bring out-of-production parts back to life
by scanning a worn out but still-needed
dinosaur and “printing” a new one.
The obvious benefit is minimized downtime.
However, inventory-related advantages
may also be extensive because almost every
SKU has a finite shelf life or simply reaches
a point when storing it is no longer worth
the physical space it takes up. Operating a
facility stocked with digital printers instead
of parts—accompanied by a digital system
that receives and stores model files—could
give companies economical, fingertip access
to a huge variety of parts that are created
only as needed. Imagine a manufacturer or
logistics services provider that operates a
fleet of planes, trucks and vans. If one of
its vehicles breaks down, the capacity of
the fleet is temporarily reduced. However,
a deal with the vehicle’s manufacturer—
allowing the company to source the part’s
3D model data—could reduce the downtime
period to whatever is needed to “print” and
install the replacement part.
The first step toward building an internal
parts-postponement program is understanding
what parts might be viable candidates.
This is done by pulling data such as “cost
to manufacture” and “manufacturing lead
time” from a product lifecycle management
(PLM) system and then performing a
printability assessment. The assessment
would look at part specifications and the
ability of available printers to reproduce
those specs. Critical parameters might
include dimensions, material types, and
necessary operational pressures and
temperature thresholds. The effort will
result in an initial list of potentially
printable parts. Other opportunities could
be revealed by quantifying the advantages
3D printing has over subtractive techniques
(e.g., increased speed to delivery, lower
logistics costs, improved quality) and then
exploring the use of new materials and
designs. A good example is General Electric,
which is reengineering its jet engine fuel
injectors for 3D printing as a single
component, instead of the 20 individual
pieces that were previously assembled. 10
3D printing’s effect on WIP and finished
goods highlights a similar, operationsrelated
benefit: sustainable manufacturing.
Today, if a retailer receives an overly large
shipment of, say, vases , the retailer must
sell at a deep discount or return the vases
to the manufacturer—thus increasing
someone’s labor and transportation costs,
and exacerbating CO2 problems. However,
both outcomes are avoided if operations
have been reengineered so that vases
are printed as needed at a local shipping
facility or retail location. Mechanisms also
would exist so that raw materials could be
repurposed to other products at any time,
or used to create design variations that
are more marketable. Either way, waste is
avoided, shipment volumes are reduced and
the environment is a bit happier.
9

Making it happen
One only has to Google “3D printing” to see
untold numbers of applications (current and
prospective) of this powerful technology. In
this context, 3D printing currently occupies
the same kind of theoretical space as
computers, smart phones and the internet
did in the latter half of the 20th century:
A base set of early applications and proof
cases and a seemingly unlimited list of
future opportunities…many of which likely
have not yet even been contemplated.
Of course, the inspiration is easy compared
to the perspiration: What ideas are actually
viable? What considerations are essential?
What initiatives most deserve scrutiny?
What level of strategic and operational
reengineering is required? This is where
in-depth expertise, diligent study and hard
work come in.
A simple yet effective thought process can
guide companies’ preliminary explorations
of 3D printing and digital supply networks.
The thought process includes four questions:
Does the technology you’re studying help
the organization become more...
Connected? Would the initiative help you
increase real-time visibility and achieve
more-seamless collaboration?
Intelligent? Is the initiative likely to result
in more actionable insights, automated
execution and accelerated innovation?
Scalable? To what degree would your
efforts help your company improve
efficiency and enhance flexibility?
Rapid? Would the initiative help make
your organization more proactive and
responsive, and increase opportunities for
postponement?
To help companies navigate this new
territory, Accenture has developed a
diagnostic tool to identify potential
parts and products that might be eligible
for 3D printing. The algorithms overlay
business value levers such as lead time
and unit cost—thus helping to construct
a business case for 3D printing. This
bottom-up analysis is a good way to begin
understanding the short- and long-term
impacts of a technology for which new
applications arise constantly, and whose
potential to enhance growth, profits and
competitive advantage seems limitless.
Roadmap for incorporating additive manufacturing into the business
Design & Plan
Architect & Analyze
Scale & Manage
Strategy
Services
Infrastructure
Identify
Use
Cases
Construct
Roadmap
Create
Vendor
List
Analyze
Part
Portfolio
Design
Ecosystem
Identify key use cases
based on business
value attained from
AM efficiencies
Build short and long
term strategies to
expand AM offerings
Create detailed
vendor list to
understand existing
printer capabilities
Analyze portfolios of
parts to determine
candidates for initial
manufacturing
Design an ecosystem
to enable users to
select digital files
and order prints
11

Contact us
Russ Rasmus
russell.rasmus@accenture.com
Accenture Strategy
Sunny Webb
sunny.m.webb@accenture.com
Accenture Technology Labs
Matthew Short
matthew.t.short@accenture.com
Accenture Technology Labs
References
1
“The Third Industrial Revolution,”
http://thethirdindustrialrevolution.com
2
“Embracing the Internet of Everything To
Capture Your Share of $14.4 Trillion,”
http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac79/docs/
innov/IoE_Economy.pdf
3
A more detailed discussion of what 3D printing
is and how it is used can be found in the
Accenture paper, “Making Sense of 3D Printing”
at http://www.accenture.com/us-en/Pages/
insight-making-business-sense-3d-printing.aspx
4
“Staples Wants to Bring 3D Printing to the
Masses,” http://www.businessweek.com/
articles/2014-04-10/staples-wants-to-bring-3-
d-printing-to-the-masses.
Amazon Launches Pilot Program Selling 3-D
Printed Products,
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/232013
5
“Oil industry joins world of 3D printing,”
http://www.calgarysun.com/2014/01/23/oilindustry-joins-world-of-3d-printing
6
“What Can 3D Printing Do? Here Are 6
Creative Examples,” http://www.forbes.com/
sites/amitchowdhry/2013/10/08/what-can-3dprinting-do-here-are-6-creative-examples/
7
“3-D Printing Spurs a Manufacturing Revolution,”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/
technology/14print.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
8
“The printed world,” http://www.economist.com/
node/18114221
9
The digital-physical blur is one of six
technology trends identified in the Accenture
Technology Vision 2014, http://www.accenture.
com/microsite/it-technology-trends-2014/
Documents/TechVision/Downloads/Accenture_
Technology_Vision_2014.pdf
10
“GE to mass-produce critical jet engine
part use 3D printing,” http://www.3ders.org/
articles/20130426-ge-to-mass-produce-criticaljet-engine-part-use-3d-printing.html
About Accenture
Accenture is a global management consulting,
technology services and outsourcing company,
with more than 293,000 people serving clients in
more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled
experience, comprehensive capabilities across all
industries and business functions, and extensive
research on the world’s most successful
companies, Accenture collaborates with clients
to help them become high-performance
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generated net revenues of US$28.6 billion for
the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2013. Its home
page is www.accenture.com.
About Accenture
Strategy
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improve agility and deliver tangible outcomes.
About Accenture
Technology Labs
Accenture Technology Labs, the dedicated
technology research and development (R&D)
organization within Accenture, has been turning
technology innovation into business results for
more than 20 years. Our R&D team explores new
and emerging technologies to create a vision
of how technology will shape the future and
invent the next wave of cutting-edge business
solutions. Working closely with Accenture’s
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Technology Labs help clients innovate to achieve
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Valley, California; Sophia Antipolis, France;
Arlington, Virginia; Beijing, China and Bangalore,
India. For more information, please visit
www.accenture.com/technologylabs.
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