Manufacturing for the next frontier: Can distributed, digital manufacturing create more resilient, adaptive, and market-viable supply chains?
As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, Kenya, like many other countries around the world, has faced unprecedented disruption and ‘shock’ to its international supply chains. Developing countries are particularly vulnerable to such shocks because they seldom have sufficient manufacturing capabilities to meet their needs.
Many government and non-government institutions struggle to get hold of the products they need. 40% of medical equipment in hospitals in low- and middle- income countries is non-functional, and rural Kenyal health facilities only tend to have about 23% of the equipment they require in stock.
Last-mile supply chain cost is a primary barrier. Replacement parts are often impossible to procure and, without a way to produce what is needed locally, institutions and local communities will continue to be poorly served by traditional international supply chains. There is a need, therefore, to localise manufacturing — and doing it using distributed digital processes can supplement supply chains for healthcare and ultimately provide critical parts and equipment solutions for a much wider range of local businesses currently limited by similar issues.
Traditional manufacturing is capital intensive and, quite often, unresponsive to local needs. This challenge could potentially be addressed by introducing a wide network of agile manufacturing technologies and training. Digitally manufactured products can be brought to each locale using a reduced amount of cost, time, and labour compared to those of the typical supply chain. This could improve the quality of healthcare services in developing countries — particularly in the current Covid-19 context where high-quality personal protective equipment is urgently required in the most rural locations.
The Frontier Technologies Livestreaming (FTL) Programme has thus partnered with the digital manufacturing company Kijenzi to try and create more resilient, adaptive, and market-viable supply chains in Kenya, with initial efforts starting in the Kisumu county where Kijenzi is based. Demand for 3D printed products such as face shields and other types of personal protective equipment has accelerated under the pandemic, and so the pilot will look to test the scalability and replicability of their model.
The first sprint will test the pilot’s most critical assumptions and will focus on building the foundational blocks of a sustainable hub that can be “dropped” where needed. These replicable manufacturing hubs will be planned around a centralised resource for quality control and engineering with remote printing processes to give operators the agency to run a facility within product guidelines and standards. Such an approach should help to overcome some of the typical challenges of using 3D printing including how to locally manufacture healthcare products of a high enough quality.
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