Development at the touch of a button?
DFID hosted event on 3D Printing and the future of global production
by Luisa Ernst
3D printing (3DP) has been claimed as ushering the Factories of the Future, hailed as the forerunner of a 4th industrial revolution and as a tool to redistribute value addition possibilities in favour of the developing world.
Yet, what’s the real potential of 3DP to revolutionise distributed manufacturing, supply chains and resource management? And what does it mean for industrial development in the Global South?
To explore these questions, DFID hosted a seminar with Field Ready, Techfortrade, the Royal College of Art and the Polyfloss Factory at our London headquarters.
3DP has momentous potential to produce things close to the end-user, thereby matching demand and supply in a hyper flexible way, as James Tooze from the Royal College of Art explained. As 3DP shifts the physical production closer to the point of consumption, it could also relocate some of the value addition in the production process into the local market.
But can it offer a real alternative to the worldwide production and consumption system and does the rise of the 3D printer imply an end to global value chains as we know them? While William Hoyle from TechforTrade and Abi Bush from Field Ready agreed on 3DP’s potential to become an essential complement to the current system of decentralised production networks, there was consensus that it is unlikely to fundamentally change the way we think about manufacturing. At least for the moment, the current system of mass production is unlikely to be replaced by 3D printers at significant scale.
Still, 3DP needs to be taken seriously in relation to what it may entail for the structure and governance of global supply chains, the location and quality of jobs, and the upgrading possibilities it may open or close in different localities and for different groups of actors. And the relative infancy of applying 3DP in the Global South means that now is the time to engage and enable developing countries to fully exploit this new technology. This will involve proactive efforts to engage governments, universities, private sector partners across various industries and local innovators and entrepreneurs that can drive this transformation at local level.
The discussion was followed by demo sessions with Fieldready and the Polyfloss Factory. Check out these videos to see how 3D printing and injection moulding machines work in practice and to understand the enormous economic and environmental benefits of the ‘Polyfloss’ devise which produces insulation materials.
