Manufacturing has operated with the same strategy for over 100 years. Design engineers conceive products, manufacturing engineers concoct production lines to produce them, logistics through freight or other means take them where they are assembled, and a finished product ships to customers.
We can continue down this path, drumming on the same methods that built the modern world generations ago — rife with supply chain struggles, siloed between competitors, at the mercy of steep hardware investments, and the fickle nature of geopolitics. Or we can dare to accept the reality of Industry 4.0 dictating that the days of this dated model are numbered and lay the foundation for a more productive and equitable future.
Oakland County, Michigan in association with Automation Alley is proud to be the vanguard of this manufacturing mindset change. Through Project DIAMOnD, we’ve distributed state-of-the-art Markforged 3D printers to small manufacturers across the county, placing the power of additive manufacturing in a distributed network of stakeholders.
Read the article in full in our Additive Manufacturing INTEGR8 Playbook here.
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