HP Innovation Journal Issue 11: Winter 2018 | Page 52

REINVENTING TRADITIONAL SUPPLY CHAINS
3D printing also helps companies become more sustainable
by enabling them to localize and simplify their supply chains.
This capability provides them with the opportunity to
expand the circular economy by reducing waste and avoiding
the impacts associated with physically inventorying and
transporting raw materials and finished goods.
For example, since companies can transmit digital files for
production locally rather than shipping physical parts and
products, 3D printing can lower the emissions related to
distribution. In fact, according to a study published in the
journal, Energy Policy, by shifting to more localized supply
chains, 3D printing could reduce as much as 525.5 million
metric tons of CO 2 e emissions by 2025, the equivalent of
taking more than 110 million passenger vehicles off the road
for a year.
Localized manufacturing also helps companies significantly
reduce lead times, enabling them to move closer to
on-demand production. This ability to better match supply
with demand will help eliminate the overprovisioning
of raw materials and reduce the waste created through
overproduction. These benefits are particularly
important when you consider the stresses that traditional
manufacturing places on our limited natural resources.
“...3D printing will enable
companies to lower costs by
creating virtual inventories rather
than physical storage...”
In addition, 3D printing will enable companies to lower
costs by creating virtual inventories rather than physical
storage areas where parts and products are housed for later
use. Digitization will also enable these same companies
to produce cost-effective short runs of one-of-a-kind
parts that can be delivered “just in time.” And additive
manufacturing will enable companies to produce spare parts
as needed to repair products—many of which could have
been manufactured years ago and are no longer available—
thereby keeping these products in use longer and supporting
a more circular economy.
TRANSFORMING ECONOMIES AND SOCIETIES
By reinventing design, production, and distribution
processes, additive manufacturing is expected to reduce
market entry barriers, expand opportunities for emerging
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HP Innovation Journal Issue 11
economies and small businesses, and accelerate adoption for
new commercial users in industries such as education
and healthcare.
One of the more exciting applications of 3D printing is in the
customization of products to meet specific customer needs
or to address social and human ills. An example of this type
of customization is the creation of customer orthotics.
While precise diagnostic customization is crucial to
correctly fitting orthotics, manual, subjective, error-prone
manufacturing has dominated the industry since the 1950s.
In September 2018, HP announced a strategic alliance with
Go 4-D, a company working to modernize the process used
to create affordable custom orthotics.
Through the alliance, Go 4-D will distribute FitStation
powered by HP throughout the North American medical
market. HP’s FitStation platform combines 3D foot scanning
with dynamic gait analysis and pressure data to create a
custom orthotics prescription based on each person’s unique
biomechanics. Based on the individual specifications,