When it comes time to make parts, who is making the process selection and with what depth of information? In many cases, the decision is up to an individual or small workgroup. The process selection is often made based on high-level knowledge coupled with some real-world experience. It is rare to find a guru that knows it all, and even rarer to have a deep pool of gurus.
The outcome is that you have team members that prefer a few alternatives over all others because they understand them best and feel most comfortable. The deeper process knowledge promotes an expectancy of success. All others fuel a fear of failure or some sense of risk.
The fix for this is to know it all—having a working knowledge about all available options so that the best decision can be made. However, at the individual level, this fix is not reasonable; there is simply too much to know. Now add additive manufacturing (AM) into the mix, and the fix becomes ludicrous.
When it comes to AM and an understanding of how it compares to other alternatives, the solution is to build a support group. There is too little time and too much to discover to place this burden on individuals in the product development and manufacturing processes.
Without a support group, individuals make decisions based on limited knowledge and their preferences and comfort level, In this mode, AM often becomes a runner-up solution no matter how much value it could deliver and how competitive it is. Without a knowledge base and some experience, it can be seen to be a risky proposition.
In the last issue, I spoke of the avalanche of new AM solutions being presented. That avalanche is laid upon an already broad base of AM options. What makes investigation quite challenging is that each AM technology is different. There are no generalities that can be loosely applied to a decision-making process. AM has the diversity of all other manufacturing processes combined.
To investigate the AM possibilities and interrogate the considerations would be a full-time job. Moreover, since your team members already have full-time jobs, there is no hope of acquiring all the knowledge needed to decide if AM is the best alternative and then to select the best AM technology for the project.
For those that regularly use AM, you may counter that your team members have the knowledge and experience. However, the odds are that they have one or two go-to AM technologies and the rest are ignored. The hands-on experience creates confidence with a small slice of AM capabilities while the rest are unknown, risky options.
The knowledge gap challenge exists at the highest level when determining time, cost and quality in general terms. However, it gets even more challenging when tackling details that influence success.
Many of the “givens” expected in traditional processes, such as achievable accuracy, material properties and surface finish, are often not available. Instead, AM technologies offer “typical” values that then need to be qualified based on specific operating parameters. This is information that needs to be quantified through evaluation, not uncovered through individual investigation. Moreover, it needs to be quantified for each AM technology from each AM supplier.
Placing the education burden on the individual leaves too much to chance and creates pockets of AM users and non-users. The stronger, wiser approach is to build support groups for the individuals. These teams, which can be informal or formal, amass the needed AM information and then disseminate it, as needed, to offer guidance and suggestions. The support group becomes a resource that enables designers and engineers to make informed decisions.
A formal support group would be a dedicated team that has one goal: thorough understanding of all AM technologies, shared as needed. In essence, it would be a corporate help desk for AM. For those that lack the resources for a dedicated team, the informal support group would be the next best thing. In this structure, the individuals with AM experience band together to share what they have learned amongst themselves and throughout the company.
Collectively, the support group knows it all without placing the burden on the individuals to become gurus. This opens the door to more AM deployment through a sound understanding of when, where, why and how to use AM.
