The AMGTA has released an independent report establishing how additive manufacturing should be evaluated, communicated, and deployed across part, system, and enterprise levels.
Additive Manufacturing in Resource-Efficient Manufacturing Systems is said to provide a structural argument for evaluating AM where its most significant advantages in resource efficiency, supply chain resilience, and capital allocation 'actually materialise.'
It draws on six years of sustained observation across both sides of the AM ecosystem — technology developers and manufacturing users — producing findings that neither side could reach from its own position. The AMGTA says it is designed for use in investor presentations, policy discussions, procurement conversations, and organisational decision-making.
The report was presented to and discussed with AMGTA's global membership at the 2026 Annual Member Summit, held April 13 in Boston, alongside the companion Strategy 2030 document.
Standard cost comparisons of additive manufacturing against conventional manufacturing capture the same direct production costs on both sides while systematically excluding costs that conventional manufacturing embeds as invisible background — tooling capital committed before demand is known, inventory carrying costs, minimum order quantity waste, and obsolescence write-offs. The result is a structural bias that makes AM appear more expensive than a complete evaluation would show, AMGTA suggests.
The report identifies this as a framing and measurement problem, not a technology problem, and provides the evaluative structure organisations need to conduct complete comparisons across all three levels at which AM creates value.
“The technology is proven. But the current adoption curve doesn’t reflect it and one major reason is that the industry has been evaluating AM against a standard that was never designed to capture what AM actually changes,” said Sherri Monroe, Executive Director of AMGTA. “This report is the result of six years of watching that gap play out across industries, applications, and geographies. It is the argument the industry has needed and that only an organisation with no commercial interest could make.”
“When I founded AMGTA, the goal was to create something the industry didn’t have: an independent, non-commercial voice that could make the case for AM’s value in the rooms where the real decisions get made,” said Brian Neff, Chair of the AMGTA Board of Directors. “This report is that voice. It makes the argument we’ve been building toward - complete, rigorous, and designed to hold up under scrutiny from finance, procurement, and policy. This is what six years of membership made possible.”
The report is available at www.AMGTA.org. The companion Strategy 2030 document - What We Do and Why Membership Matters - is available to AMGTA members.
