3D freedom for the car business
New advancements in added substance fabricating cycles will probably help creation inside the car business just as change customary assembling and inventory network pathways.
Critical advances in added substance fabricating (AM) innovations, normally known as 3D printing, over the previous decade have changed the likely manners by which items are planned, created, made, and distributed.1 For the auto business, these advances have opened entryways for more current plans; cleaner, lighter, and more secure items; more limited lead times; and lower costs. While auto unique gear makers (OEMs) and providers principally use AM for quick prototyping, the specialized direction of AM puts forth a solid defense for its utilization in item development and high-volume direct assembling later on. New improvements in AM processes, alongside related developments in fields, for example, progressed materials, will help creation inside the auto business just as adjust customary assembling and inventory network pathways.
The job of AM in driving seriousness
Worldwide car fabricating has high hindrances to passage, particularly at the top where the four biggest OEMs represented 33% of the worldwide business income of more than $2 trillion in 2013.3 On the other hand, the $1.5 trillion sections and adornments producing area is described by high rivalry among countless more modest players.4 To make due and prevail in such a climate, organizations should zero in on explicit abilities that can prompt more prominent competitiveness.5 As creators, we accept there are two regions where AM will have the best effect on contest among automakers and possibly be a distinct advantage:
As a wellspring of item development: AM can create parts with less plan limitations that frequently compel more customary assembling processes. This adaptability is amazingly valuable while fabricating items with custom elements, making it conceivable to add further developed functionalities like incorporated electrical wiring (through empty constructions), lower weight (through grid designs), and complex calculations that are unrealistic through customary processes.6 Furthermore, new AM advances are progressively ready to create multilateral printed leaves behind individual properties like variable strength and electrical conductivity. These AM processes assume a significant part in making quicker, more secure, lighter, and more effective vehicles of things to come.
As a driver of store network change: By wiping out the requirement for new tooling and straightforwardly creating last parts, AM eliminates generally lead time, accordingly further developing business sector responsiveness. Likewise, since AM by and large uses just the material that is important to create a part, utilizing it can radically diminish scrap and drive down material utilization. Moreover, AM-made lightweight parts can bring down taking care of expenses, while on-request and on the spot creation can bring down stock expenses. At long last, AM can uphold decentralized creation at low to medium volumes. This multitude of AM capacities joined permit organizations to drive huge change inside the inventory network—including cost decreases and the further developed capacity to make items nearer to clients, lessen production network intricacy, and better serve purchaser sections and markets without the requirement for broad capital sending.
Customization and improved market responsiveness: Advances in AM technology and adoption are leading to product innovations that will transition AM from a product-design support tool to a conduit for the direct production of high-performance parts with fast turnaround. While automotive companies have conventionally used modularity and postponement to support customization, AM provides greater flexibility. An interesting segment of the auto industry that has already adopted AM is the ultra luxury segment. In this segment, where production runs are small, AM is being used to customize and manufacture parts for use in final assembly. Some ultra luxury car makers already use AM to deliver designs specialized to customer requirements. Bentley, for example, used its in-house AM capabilities to customize the dashboard in a case where manual modification would have been time consuming.26
Using AM for the rapid turnaround of application-specific parts is presently prominent in the proving ground of new auto technologies—motor sports. With lead time becoming a precious commodity, lessons learned in motor sports can be applied to mass production to reduce turnaround times—a competitive capability that will likely become increasingly critical for all automakers. One of the best motor sports examples comes from Joe Gibbs Racing, which used AM to produce a duct outlet and reduced the design and machining time from 33 to just 3 days.27
The question is how to transfer the advantages of AM from the small scale of motor sports and ultraluxury segments to mass-market vehicles. In this regard, the experience of the medical technology (medtech) industry offers important lessons. Products in this industry, such as custom insoles and dental crowns, are built for unique settings and customized to each individual’s requirements. Yet they can be produced on a large scale using AM.28 The challenge of scale can be addressed, if not immediately then in the not-too-distant future, by combining strategies from the medtech industry with scalable AM technologies that are currently under development.
Smaller supply chains and greater value contribution from OEMs: As OEMs adopt the product evolution route, the eventual outcome will be twofold: smaller supply chains and OEMs’ greater value contribution. An important effect of AM may be shortening and simplifying the enormous automotive supply chains that currently operate. OEMs work with thousands of suppliers to source the different components in cars. Owing to the fact that supply chain management is a massive planning and logistics exercise, consuming time, effort, and cost, OEMs are constantly seeking ways to trim their supply chains. Ford, for example, was working with over 1,250 suppliers in 2012. In October 2013 it announced intentions to cut this number by as much as 40 percent.29 As OEMs build their innovative parts rapidly with less supplier involvement, the time and money they spend on part sourcing can be brought down.
Conventionally, OEMs outsource the manufacturing for most components. OEMs accounted for about 35 percent of total value created, while suppliers accounted for the rest in 2002. Without an external impetus, OEMs’ share is expected to fall to around 23 percent by 2015.30 With AM, OEMs may be able to buck this trend by relying on internal capabilities and stronger partnerships with system integrators (tier 0.5 suppliers) to retain, or even increase, their value creation share in R&D and production without needing to manage a bulky supply chain. A greater role for OEMs could represent a major shift in the industry, causing a ripple effect on lower-tier suppliers, who might see a smaller role and greater consolidation in the future.
The utilization of AM permits these parts to have exceptional highlights like inserted parts, latticed or empty constructions, complex calculations, and multimaterial blends, and the utilization of CNC processing guarantees uniform completion quality.52
Challenge 1: Economics of AM restricted to low-volume creation
Productivity in the auto business is driven by volume. In 2013, 86 million autos were delivered globally.53 Given the huge volumes, the low creation speed of AM is a critical obstruction to its more extensive reception for direct part fabricating. This has made rapid AM a significant space of exploration. Further developing form rates through the AM innovation of SLM has been a significant concentration lately, yet significant leap forwards have up to this point been elusive.54
Challenge 2: Manufacturing enormous parts
One of the impediments of AM’s utility in the auto business is the restricted form envelopes of current innovations. Given this limitation, bigger parts, for example, body boards that are delivered through AM actually must be connected together through cycles like welding or mechanical joining. To defeat this, minimal expense AM advances that can uphold bigger form sizes for metal parts must be created. There is now huge exploration in progress. “Enormous region added substance fabricating,” a work in progress by Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Lockheed Martin, can possibly make items with next to no limitations on size.55Another model is the mammoth stereo lithography process created by Materialize, which has a form envelope of 2,100 mm x 680 mm x 800 mm—adequately large to make the majority of the huge parts of a vehicle. It was utilized to assemble the external shell of the race vehicle “Areion,” created by Formula Group T, in only three weeks.56 However, since it very well may be utilized uniquely for building boards made of plastics, more extensive reception has been slow.
Challenge 3: Talent deficiency
The utilization of any new innovation requires individuals prepared in abilities explicit to its activity; AM is no exemption. AM-explicit abilities are important in the space of CAD configuration; AM machine making, activity, and upkeep; unrefined substance planning and the executives; investigation of getting done; and inventory network and task management.57 Currently a critical part of the essential preparing is on the job.58 With the extension of AM applications, there will be a more noteworthy requirement for formal and broad preparing and expertise advancement programs in the application and the board of AM. These projects require deliberate activity from scholastic establishments, AM specialist organizations, and end-client businesses to normalize preparing and make a steady and fit labor force.
Challenge 4: Intellectual property concerns
AM items can’t be protected however must be licensed based on clear separation. With an absence of lucidity on what meets all requirements for patent security and what doesn’t, there is plausible that fake parts will multiply. As per the statistical surveying firm Gartner, the worldwide auto secondary selling parts sub industry, alongside the toy, IT, and purchaser item ventures, could report as much as $15 billion in licensed innovation robbery because of AM in 2016