However, change of that magnitude doesn’t happen all at once. In fact, it literally progresses piece by piece. In the case of manufacturing, businesses are increasingly embracing disruptive new digital technologies like 3D printing to innovate, create, and compete in an increasingly fast-moving and hyperconnected world.
The road to this epic change will be paved by billions of smaller ones. A methodic but accelerating process of reinvention that begins at a nuts-and-bolts level: specifically, with actual nuts and bolts.
Increasingly, large companies are reinventing their businesses for the all-digital future by thinking small: scrutinizing every aspect of their product lifecycles for parts that can be made faster, better, and more efficiently with 3D printing.
But it’s not just about finding new and better ways to produce existing parts, it’s about using unprecedented digital design freedom and production to create entirely new parts and processes that were previously unimaginable with traditional methods. Because when viewed at industrial scale, even the smallest of benefits can quickly compound into an enormous competitive advantage for companies on the leading edge of digital transformation.
HP is no exception when it comes to digital reinvention -- we’re one of the largest and most advanced technology companies in the world: a $50 billion global business that produces over 100 million products per year for customers in over 170 countries. And we’re digitally transforming our own design, engineering, manufacturing, and supply chain with our own 3D printing technology: Multi Jet Fusion.
We’re not just drinking our own champagne. In a first-of-its-kind program, HP’s manufacturing, design, and product engineering experts are collaborating across functions to continuously scrutinize every part of every product we make for opportunities to leverage the competitive advantages of 3D manufacturing. We are already seeing immediate returns such as reducing production time and cost, speeding time to market, accelerating innovation, improving product performance, and reducing environmental impact.
And the more we look, the more potential benefits we find across all of HP’s business units: Printing, Personal Systems, and 3D Printing itself. For example, there are over 140 Multi Jet Fusion-printed parts in just one product alone: HP’s Jet Fusion 300/500 series full-color 3D printers, which essentially makes it the printer that prints itself.
The benefits of 3D printing to the environment are just as important to us as the benefits to HP’s bottom-line. In one of our printer lines, we were able to lower the cost of producing a key part by 50% and reduce our carbon footprint by 95 percent by leveraging digital design and manufacturing.
When measured against traditional manufacturing, 3D printing reduces energy consumption, carbon footprint, and waste. And in the future it can reduce vehicle emissions by enabling distributed manufacturing, lower electricity consumption by reducing physical warehousing, and create products that are more lightweight, energy-efficient and recyclable.
We’re constantly asking ourselves how we can improve our business, and how we can do it in the most innovative, efficient, and environmentally-conscious way. To us, those ideas are fundamentally interconnected, and 3D printing helps us turn it from company credo to measurable competitive advantage.
It’s just one reason why 3D printing is part of a manufacturing evolution that’s driving a digital industrial revolution around the world, and at the heart of our own business.
Stephen Nigro is the President of 3D Printing at HP Inc., and Stuart Pann is the Chief Supply Chain Officer at HP Inc.