3D Printing and Supply Chain Disruption: learnings from the Dutch Army and Dutch Railways

DiManEx
DiManEx blog
Published in
6 min readOct 17, 2018

Honoring a Dutch history of supply chain innovation, the Dutch Ground Forces and the country’s main railway operator, NS, have started using 3D printing to optimize the supply of spare parts. Both organizations have been experimenting with Additive Manufacturing for some time. Their recently announced cooperation with DiManEx allows them to scale their use of the technology and effectively embed it into their workflow. Let’s look at some of the factors that drove their adoption and how both organizations have approached quality control and change management.

Dutch Railways car

Solving supply hurdles

According to a recent Volkskrant article, NS purchases over 30,000 different spare parts per year to keep their trains running. Almost half of these end up in a warehouse in the village of Berkel-Enschot. The numbers sound impressive, but the work of NS’ purchasing department does not end there. “There’s always something that breaks the moment you don’t have it in stock,” says Joris van de Sande, the railway operator’s Strategic Buyer. With lead times of up to 9 months, a single missing part can bring NS’ coaches to a standstill for a very long time.

This issue compelled the organization to consider Additive Manufacturing as a possible solution. “The initial idea to use 3D printing came to me about 4 years ago,” says van de Sande. “At that time, there was a rail transport convention taking place in Europe (InnoTrans). I went there to see the latest developments in the field and encountered some interesting examples. Our management team was aware of the technology’s potential and had already identified that spare part supply and obsolescence required a strategic approach. So we set up a team to deal with obsolescence management and I took it upon myself to start a small team to experiment with 3D printing as well.”

Radio frame printed for NS

Today, NS is printing mainly non-critical, plastic parts. One example stands out. The organization uses very specific frames to hold radios in place within trains. When one of them breaks, the train can no longer run. “Getting replacements for these electronic covers is problematic,” van de Sande explains. “In some cases the electrical component (sometimes worth up to 1,000 euros) becomes unusable, but the minimum order quantities (MOQs) for these covers are prohibitive from a cost perspective. We would have to order a minimum of 100 parts, when in fact we only need 10.” 3D printing offers a good alternative, as parts can be produced on demand without creating excess stock. Lead times with 3D printing can also be brought down from months to weeks.

In Mali, the Dutch Army faces a similar puzzle. “Materials suffer in the desert climate, but we can’t afford to have a part break,” Major Tjeerd Dijkstra tells Volkskrant journalist Peter van Ammelrooy. The UN Peacekeeping Mission there is in short supply of spare parts, but getting replacements can take up to 2 weeks, assuming that everything goes as planned.

Parts printed for the Dutch Army

To shorten lead times, the Dutch Army created an AM (Additive Manufacturing) Center to fulfill the organization’s 3D printing needs. Equipped with DiManEx’s services, they started printing replacement parts for Fennek vehicles. The items were produced on different types of printers using a diverse set of materials, including aluminum, steel and plastics.

The Army’s AM Center has also been identifying opportunities to use recycled plastic for filament. Transforming plastic from bottles into raw material for 3D printing will help the army solve spare part supply challenges in an even more sustainable way. But there are many quality control considerations to take into account.

Strict quality assurance

The Dutch Army and NS have very stringent quality assurance measures. Both organizations have allocated a considerable amount of time to testing.

“Plastic parts should be fire-resistant,” says NS’ Joris van de Sande. “Parts that weigh above 100 grams have different fire prevention requirements. So we had to consider multiple specifications and quality requirements. Working with DiManEx helped us understand what we could print, based on our supply chain and technical data. This enabled us to define the criteria for a shortlist of parts. We came up with 10 parts that we could start printing as a pilot. Now, we’ve expanded that list to 50.”

At the Army, materials testing goes hand in hand with 3D printing adoption. Fourteen parts have been selected for 3D printing. DiManEx is supporting MatLogCo (The Ground Forces’ central logistics command) with engineering expertise, manufacturing and quality assurance, guiding the institution throughout the material testing process.

Taking this stepwise approach has been incredibly useful for both organizations to ensure that the proper quality requirements are fulfilled, and it’s also proven effective from a change management perspective.

The effect of adopting new technologies

Both NS and the Dutch Army are aware that the use of new technologies should be buttressed with a comprehensive change management process. Besides creating a special task force that could take ownership of 3D printing initiatives, the Ground Forces raised awareness about their Additive Manufacturing roadmap through a communication campaign. An infographic (pictured below) was created to illustrate the advantages 3D printing contributes to the supply chain, as well as an explanation of the process.

Infographic distributed by Dutch Ministry of Defence

NS also did a lot of communication internally to get ideas from the workshop floor and present 3D printing as a viable solution for several day-to-day issues. “It helps that 3D printing is something most people are interested in,” van de Sande explains. “But that’s not enough. We had to convince colleagues that the parts we print are industrial quality and not desktop material. To achieve this, we carry out internal workshops, participate in roadshows and have a public display of 3D printed parts at our office.”

“We also raise awareness about what our peers are doing in the field,” van de Sande adds. “For instance, we hosted a talk where we explained how Deutsche Bahn is using 3D printing. Our goal is to make 3D printing commonplace within NS, so investing time in education pays off. This has helped us a lot with change management.”

The outcomes of these initiatives also speak for themselves, encouraging the organizations’ teams to partake in them. By 3D printing a replacement case for their radio, NS is now able to use an item worth 1,000 euro which was previously unutilized. By producing replacement parts closer to the mission site, the Dutch Army can reduce lead times from weeks to months. In both cases, the focus has not been on the technology, but rather on the outcomes of the implementation and how supply chain teams can benefit from it. This, as Lora Cecere writes, is part and parcel to driving transformational change.

Colonel and Head of Innovation at the Dutch Army, Robert Meeuwsen, summarizes it nicely: “in order to reach other destinations, you sometimes have to choose a new route.”

This new route of supply chain disruption is exactly what NS and the Dutch Army have been pursuing. Their journey is driven largely by the same objectives. To secure the availability of parts, reduce downtime, extend service lifetime, resolve the challenge of unpredictable demand, optimize total cost of ownership and reduce the number of suppliers where possible.

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DiManEx
DiManEx blog

DiManEx is a global enterprise platform for distributed 3D manufacturing.