Airbus and its 3D printing subsidiary, APWorks, are continually making inroads into the additive manufacturing (AM) industry, launching numerous products and services in the space and showing off in-house AM capabilities. Now, APWorks has found itself yet another powerful ally in 3D printing, German multinational software company SAP, which recently partnered with UPS to power a network of 3D printers across 60 UPS stores in the United States.
Heeding the coming future of distributed manufacturing, SAP has extended its SAP HANA Cloud Platform to manage and network industrial 3D printing providers for customers. Using SAP’s supply chain solutions, companies like APWorks and UPS will be able to connect multiple service providers in order to perform manufacturing closer to the point of delivery, thus reducing the cost, delivery time and CO2 emissions associated with shipping.
APWorks will be leveraging supply chain services akin to those implemented with UPS to operate its own 3D printing service network, which is meant to connect 3D printing experts with end users. SAP’s supply chain management software will enable APWorks to manage 3D printing orders from production to delivery, as APWorks produces end components and spare parts on demand.
Specifically, the Airbus subsidiary will work with SAP to digitize and simplify the approval of production parts, which include the screening and validating of 3D-printed components, as well as the expediting and standardization of part certification.
The partnership will also enable APWorks to be able to design or redesign components and systems for 3D printing. By taking advantage of SAP Product Lifecycle Costing, APWorks will be able to incorporate price evaluation so that customers can determine the cost of printing parts as compared to traditional manufacturing.
Joachim Zettler, CEO of APWorks, elaborated on the ability to produce parts closer to their end destination, saying, "The ability to 3D print all the possible components of an A350 aircraft could reduce the weight of it by nearly a ton. On-demand 3D printing cloud service from SAP can help us to develop our vision for distributed, on-demand production of aerospace components and still meet the high quality standards necessary to make the aircraft fly."
Torsten Welte, global head of Aerospace and Defense Industry, SAP, added, "Innovation in on-demand 3D printing is now revolutionizing traditional manufacturing. In the next few years, 3D printing will be widely adopted across manufacturing industries. The aerospace and defense market will transform digitally to strive to achieve near-zero unplanned downtime on commercial flights as well as support high production turnaround at a lower cost. What makes 3D printing most attractive in aerospace is the removal of many costs associated with traditional manufacturing like stocking inventory. Users are enabled to print the parts they need, as needed."
Both Zettler and Welte are right to assume that this is the direction where manufacturing is heading. A future in which manufacturers rely not on centralized facilities to produce parts but on localized and distributed hubs for 3D printing goods on demand will ultimately save companies costs associated with shipment and warehousing.
What may be more interesting to those already familiar with distributed manufacturing is that huge companies such as Airbus and SAP are beginning to take the concept more seriously. 3D Hubs laid out such a 3D printer network beginning in 2014, mostly with hobby-level 3D printers, and has shifted toward industrial technology more recently. Numerous other start-ups have emerged and then fallen off the grid in attempting to do the same thing.
UPS has been exploring distributed manufacturing for some time, but now that it is joined by APWorks, it seems that the idea may slowly blossom into an industrial standard—one that is dominated by enormous businesses and not just start-ups.