Latest By
Category:

Armor
Artificial Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work

 

Comments on 3D Printing: The End Of Global Supply Chains?
'Nanofax AG offers a technology that digitally reproduces objects, physically, at a distance.'- William Gibson, 1999. (Read the complete story)

"Here are some additional tidbits from the Manners-Bell and Lyon report:
  • “A proportion of goods which were previously produced in China or other Asia markets could be ‘near-sourced’ to North America and Europe. This would reduce shipping and air cargo volumes.”
  • “The ‘mass customization’ of products would mean that inventory levels fall, as goods are made to order. This would have the effect of reducing warehousing requirements.”
  • “As manufacturing processes are increasingly re-bundled within a single facility, tiers of component suppliers are done away with, as is the need for supplier villages, line side supply etc.”
  • “Build-to-order production strategies could fundamentally impact the manufacturer-wholesaler-retailer relationship. In the future the shopping experience could also be vastly different. In some sectors, retailers will either cease to exist or become ‘shop windows’ for manufacturers, keeping no stock of their own. Orders are fulfilled directly by the manufacturer, and delivered to the home of the consumer.”
  • “A major new sector of the logistics industry would emerge dealing with the storage and movement of the raw materials which ‘feed’ the 3D printers. As 3D printers become more affordable to the general public, the home delivery market of these materials would increase.”
  • Global and national parts warehouses as well as forward stock locations will become unnecessary. “At present billions are spent on holding stock to supply products as diverse as cars to x-ray machines. In some cases huge amount of redundancy is built into supply chains to enable parts to be dispatched in a very short timescale to get machines up and running again as fast as possible. It doesn’t take much imagination to understand the benefits for a service parts engineer of being able to download a part design from an online library, 3D print it and then fit it within a very short time window.”
"
(Bill Christensen 10/14/2012 6:12:01 PM)

Get more information on 3D Printing: The End Of Global Supply Chains?

Leave a comment:

Tediously, spammers have returned; if you have a comment, send it to bill at this site (include the story name) and I'll post it.

 

 

 

 

 

More Articles

Lunar Biorepository Proposed For Cryo-Preservation Of Earth Species
'...there was no one alive who had ever seen them. But they existed in the Life Bank.'

Tele-Driving Offers Jobs For Tele-Drivers, Not AIs
''...some bored drone pusher in a remote driving centre...'

Autonomous Robotic Dentist - Would You Say 'Ahhh'?
You might be surprised at how much more efficient this could be.

GM Scraps Cruise Origin Robotaxi With No Steering Wheel
'Ames tinkered around with something on the instrument board when he got in; and in a few moments we were off.'

Taza Aya Air-Curtain Tech Protects Turkey Workers
'I'm going to have to buy a filter-mask.'

Torobo Humanoid Robot Hammers A Nail
7-axis dual arms, 3-axis waist (pitch, pitch, yaw), 3-axis neck (yaw, pitch, roll), and 4-axis undercarriage!

Lava Tubes On Moon And Mars
'...it never was built, or anything like that; it's just a big volcanic bubble.'

CoulombFly Solar-Powered Micro Aerial Vehicle Weighs 4.1 Grams
'the monitors - almond-sized aerostats...'

Chaffeur Robot Musashi Will Drive Your Regular Car
'What would you do,' Eric asked the robot cabdriver, 'if your wife had turned to stone, your best friend were a toad, and you had lost your job?'

Space Exporers! Now, You Can Drink Your Own Urine
'those suits they wear -- call them 'stillsuits' -- that reclaim the body's own water...'

SpaceX EVA Spacesuit Tested By Polaris Dawn Crew
'Now, except for weight and heat, the same conditions prevail in this chamber as in space.'

Automatic Bot Traffic Is 38 Percent Of HTTP Requests
'there were so many worms and counterworms loose in the data-net...'

Shanghai Guidelines For Humanoid Robots
'Now, look, let's start with the three fundamental Rules of Robotics...'

Desktop TARS Robot From Interstellar
What's YOUR sarcasm setting?

Robots Can Now Have Smiling Faces With Human Skin
'I am a cybernetic organism...'

Virtual Rat Predicts Actual Rat Neural Activity
'..the synthetic intellects at the Place of Knowledge had far outstripped the minds of men.'

GoSun EV Solar Charger Drapes Onto Your Car
'...six square yards of sunpower screens.'

Rizon 4 Ironing Robot
'But after washing and drying clothes had to be smooth - free from fine lines and wrinkles ...'

Cognify - A Prison Of The Mind We've Seen Before In SF
'So I serve a hundred years in one day...'

Robot With Human Brain Organoid - 'A Thrilling Story Of Mechanistic Progress'
'A human brain snugly encased in a transparent skull-shaped receptacle.'

Home | Glossary | Invention Timeline | Category | New | Contact Us | FAQ | Advertise |
Technovelgy.com - where science meets fiction™
Copyright© Technovelgy LLC; all rights reserved.