Business Case for 3D Printing

Recently I was confronted with the opportunity which 3D printing could bring to our business and without much consideration I started progressing the business case. With so little empirical results of savings, and improvements in revenues to justify it - to others scrutinising the case they were not able to take the leap of faith that I and other designers, engineers and product managers could see as the value in additive manufacturing machines for both rapid prototyping and potentially in production.

So in spite of the obvious value technically to justify this as a business person, it may not be clear how to convince the management and accounting departments that the benefits justify the capital expenditure, and have set out some thinking which I would hope begins to demystify the opportunity and the case for capital spend.

I work in the Aerospace industry, as an engineering solutions provider, working to achieve savings on providing engineering resources, and projects which are often lower cost that in house alternatives - due to the nature of a services rather than product business carrying far less overhead. So why does a services business need to have a product development capability like 3D printing?

To address this issue of 'why do we need a 3d printing capability' was the first hurdle. It was obvious to many in conversations the Aerospace industry from GE, Rolls-Royce, Airbus and GKN in particular were concerned that Additive Layer Manufacturing in metallics would become a major contributor to savings in cost, weight and overall getting a product to market more efficiently. This being said the numbers were not stacking up for a business case as the qualification of metallic components with more structurally significant stresses have not been proven and could be a long way off.

However, working in the Rolls-Royce organisation for my stint of four years in a strategic role made my eyes light up to the opportunity. With the work in progress in the supply costing companies significant amount of the cash which is running through the business, the ability to cut the lead time from purchase to assemble and billing customers is a key advantage of ALM.

GKN have recently compared the parts cost of ALM and conventional Machining and, if the time can be reduced by as much as 87% as suggested on a simple part, then more complex parts would be even more would have larger benefits in terms of financial savings. So when all things are considered there is a case, for weight savings, cost savings, and time to market.

Rolls-Royce only last in November 2015 flew a large development engine with significant scaled ALM parts on the Airbus a380 development platform over Toulouse, France. It was also the first outing for the world’s largest 3D-printed aero engine structure. The aerofoils on the front bearing housing of the Trent XWB-97 were created using additive layer manufacturing, which the company is developing as a way to speed up design and prototyping at lower cost. Neil Mantle, Head of the Rolls-Royce Centre of Competence in Additive Layer Manufacturing, explained, “We can go from a CAD geometric design to the finished component in a month instead of a year. These are big time savings.”

Having discussed the impact of technology and improvements in Efficiency and Quality which are coming down the pipeline in 2016 I believe the 'chasm of adoption' will be crossed in the next two years.

I welcome your views on how you can adapt your business to build an additive layer manufacturing into your model today? It will have an impact in more businesses than you can imagine.