According to McKinsey, 3D printing will have an impact on consumer sectors that place a premium on highly customizable products. Some of these industries include toys, jewelry and footwear. In fact, McKinsey believes that by 2025 global sales of 3D printed products in these industries alone lay somewhere between $230-550 billion per year.
While McKinsey’s report is high on 3D printing becoming a force in the production of consumer goods, their report is a bit less enthusiastic about the technologies impact on high-volume production. “Even in 2025, traditional manufacturing will almost certainly have a large cost advantage over additive manufacturing for most high volume products.” The report goes on to state, “The large majority of parts will still be manufactured more efficiently with techniques such as injection molding. 3D printing however, has the potential to create significant value be shortening setup times, eliminating tooling errors, and producing mold that can actually increase the productivity of the injection molding process.”
The main areas of improvement that McKinsey’s report identifies for 3D printing to attain a more economically disruptive status are material costs and build speeds. As companies continue to develop new methods to combat these obstacles, it’s likely that 3D printing will gain wider adoption and more economically disruptive potential.
If you’d like to read McKinsey’s full report, you can grab a copy here. It’s well worth a read this weekend.
Images Courtesy of McKinsey&Company