3D Printing & Cargo: Threat or opportunity?

The cloudy crystal ball

Most predictions of the medium- to long-term impact of 3D printing on the global air cargo/logistics industry have focused on the potentially negative, disruptive impacts of the technology – predictions based on worst-case scenarios that simplify the complex dynamics of the reality of the situation.

“I see more 3D printing as offering opportunity than negative disruption,” said industry guru Terry Wohlers, who has published the 3DP-focused Wohlers Report for more than 20 years. Wohlers said that today’s manufacturing processes, and their need for air cargo to transport needed components and subassemblies, will be around in the foreseeable future.

“To replace injection molding for large-size, high-quantity manufacturing doesn’t make sense,” he said. “There are multiple steps that have to take place after making basic parts, and many of those parts have to be shipped from one place to another.”

Boeing’s “World Air Cargo Forecast” team leader, Tom Crabtree, agrees with Wohlers that 3DP offers an opportunityfilled future for air cargo and logistics

companies that prepare for it, and that the need for air cargo will not disappear due to the combined onslaught of near-shoring and 3D printing. He says he does not see 3DP/AM as a disruptive threat to the air cargo industry – at least not now.

“Air cargo exists because nobody possesses perfect information all the time,” said Crabtree. “It is an industrial tool – it transports high-value, time-critical tools, chemicals and full machines from one part of the world to the other. There is a huge European company that manufactures tooling for China – they will not use maritime [transport], they insist on air. There are machines and parts that will never fit into containers and must be transported across oceans. Airfreight is the tool that makes sure they are delivered on time.”

The greatest challenge of 3DP to the global air cargo industry may be to recognize that the rapidly evolving technology will totally change the way most things are manufactured over the coming decades and to plan and adapt as the world changes.

“We constantly work to stay abreast of changing technologies and disruptors in the marketplace,” said Dave Karp, president and CEO of Northern Aviation Services (NAS) and its subsidiary companies, Aloha Air Cargo and Northern Air Cargo. NAS customers include fishing, mining and oil companies in the most remote parts of Alaska. “As 3D printing technology continues to evolve, we will look for ways to best serve our customers.”

The fate that awaits air cargo and logistics companies whose leaders fail to recognize the challenge that 3D printing presents to their futures is probably best summed up by McKinsey’s Angus Dawson: “The worst thing would be to feel like it’s not hitting your industry and to wake up in five years and find out that, actually, the fundamentals have changed. Don’t get caught sleeping just because it’s been slow in your industry.”

Perhaps it’s time to start ordering those ThingMakers for your R&D department.

To see sidebar on the physical limitations of 3D printing, click here.

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