The Catalysts for a Circular Hardgoods Supply Chain are Additive and Other Agile Digital Manufacturing Tools

Within industry, additive manufacturing (AM) is one of an assortment of digital manufacturing tools that are circularity catalysts.

An intro to climate science: Project Drawdown has created a comprehensive climate solutions map referencing value-driven industrial opportunities.

Direct from operations (Scope 1) industry activities account for 21% of our global greenhouse gas emissions, land, and ocean pollution, with key opportunity areas being; a transition to biomaterials, alternative refrigerants, and use of technosphere waste as a resource. While Project Drawdown does not directly reference digital manufacturing or additive, improvement in the industrial space will require agile technologies that enhance product and material systems by using only stock needed for the object, where it is needed, on-demand, customizable, and available in your neighborhood. Digital manufacturing tools are increasingly able to sense and adapt to their material inputs, crucial for the variability of material reuse. Owners are also more readily able to maintain and improve tool components with the tool itself. With the formation of the Additive Manufacturer Green Trade Association (AMGTA) in November 2019, we see that AM is becoming engaged by the return on investment in better materials, more efficient hardware, design innovation, and systems thinking.

Examples of Additive and Digital Manufacturing circularity solutions:

• design and engineering for energy and assembly/disassembly efficiency of machines and products,
• Marita Sauerwein , PhD, TU Delft, has developed alternative 3D printed joinery and disassembly techniques,
• designing out waste and material reduction through engineering simulation , called lightweighting,
• Neri Oxman has defined the new field of material ecology to fuse technology and biology for ecological sustainability using AM to deliver solutions,
• Binder jet printing company, ExOne, is independently investigating a lifecycle assessment of their additive print process technology in collaboration with the AMGTA,
• post-production custom part replacement for product refurbish or enhancement, HP’s Multi Jet Fusion is “the printer that prints itself” for 140 components,
• 6k Additive is implementing metal material recovery for reuse and creating resale channels that capture more value while eliminating waste streams,
• Picnic is an example of a shift to HaaS (hardware as a service) sales models that enable broader market accessibility, extend product or part lifetime, and ensure software deliverability while driving long-term revenue stability from ongoing license and maintenance subscription models,
• Ivaldi’s company tagline, “send files, not parts” represents a business model that exists by optimizing shipping cost and emissions impact through the shortened go-to-market distance of a distributed additive supply chain,
• Amir Sasson has researched the efficiency of localized production especially in small-batch, custom, and repair part markets,
• Fablabs and citizen science Biolabs are enabling diverse and inclusive innovation globally through reduced barriers to access manufacturing tools.

One of industry’s greatest circularity challenges is product and material life cycle analysis.

This process is manual, cost and time preventative in an iterative development environment, not securely accessible while remaining open to downstream stakeholders, and does not scale for the next generation of mass-custom on-demand applications. When we do not know our supply chains or maintain buyer relationships, we forego visibility to or even disable downstream financial opportunities - and there is value on the table. Harvard Business Review found that consumers are willing to pay more for sustainably marketed goods across 90% of categories.?

Within all of manufacturing, AM is best able to deliver a fully circular hard-good product to the world by existence at innovation origin points.

By existing at the intersection of cutting-edge material science, emerging digital technologies, and product conception, additive holds the key (data and design opportunity) to complete cycle management. If we are able to track materials, assemblies, production processes, use, and maintenance throughout a product’s lifetime, we can predict next-use material integrity, market value, establish part or whole-product resale or sharing routes, and fine-tune our resource planning. Essentially, we create a digital twin or passport record of past, present, and future product life. Through practice, we can grow to build predictive models to inform better processes at the point of product and supply chain development, enable consumers to directly drive local production, and encourage course-corrective downstream adjustments, which holds sweeping implications for investment awards.

Industrial technology is ready for circular evolution.

Innovations in cloud-based inventory management and geometric algorithms mean computing is reaching a point of readiness to develop, deploy, manage, and learn with complex chaotic systems of multi-dimensional form and product lifetime data. We are still missing industry standards initiatives around data-sharing and security protocols, downstream stakeholder communications infrastructure, and collaborative incentive; stock and benefit-sharing from the implementation and success of this system. Good news - there are case studies to build on already in progress in soft goods with international buy-in.

This is not about revealing or assigning blame for the climate and supply chain infrastructure collapse dual-crisis.

This is about moving forward towards economic strength, distributed agility, and industrial infrastructure evolution. As our energy and production markets shift to satisfy hyper-local demand; this infrastructure build is an opportunity to realize circular value, with AM as a core enabling technology.?

A Circular Economy for hard goods, starting with AM, is next.

This work has been updated since print and was originally published in "Circular Economy for Dummies."

Circular Economy for Dummies was compiled by Eric Corey Freed and Kyle Ritchie, and released in April 2021 by Wiley. You can access the digital, audio, and print editions of this publication at https://circulareconomyfordummies.com/ .