3D Printing for Supply Chain Service Companies

The collection of advanced manufacturing technologies known as ‘3D Printing’ (3DP) or ‘Additive Manufacturing’ (AM) are increasingly gaining commercial acceptance through their ability to radically change the way products are made. Extensive research in the engineering domain has already detailed the technical challenges surrounding the adoption of these emergent technologies, highlighting their ability to readily produce complex geometries in a range of materials. By comparison, the implications of 3DP for business are far less clearly explored, with a general dearth of empirical research that exploits real-world data. Nevertheless, there is a general consensus in the business literature that 3DP can theoretically improve supplier responsiveness whilst simultaneously increasing product customization. Additionally, disintermediation of the supply chain and a localization of production may strengthen the relationship between the manufacturer and its customer, reducing the need for the transportation and warehousing. This vision for 3DP emphasises the role of manufacturers in value creation, and assumes that service companies will relinquish their roles within the supply chain. Given the top 50 Logistics Service Providers (LSPs) alone have revenues of over 250Bn USD it is unlikely they would retreat voluntarily. Instead several LSPs have started to explore other ways of maintaining their presence within the 3DP industry, and in this chapter, we explore the potential implications of 3DP on both production and supply chain service firms. We consider 3DP from both the traditional manufacturing-engineering domain (product orientated), and the supply chain domain (service orientated), and extend the existing concept of Product Service Systems (PSS) within the 3DP context. We develop a conceptual framework to encompass the unique opportunities that 3DP can bring to PSS, and through a detailed case study explore the implications that have arisen for a Global LSP that provides 3DP services. We provide a first insight into the barriers and opportunities for supply chain service firms to add 3DP capabilities to their service offering to create PSS business models, and highlight pertinent directions for further exploration.