Oscar Wilde once wrote that a cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
It is not his most famous line, and in the age of the kind of banal social media post that presumably seeks to inspire by matching soundbites with random celebrities, not his most quoted. But it is among his most pertinent.
It is applicable to many people, in fact, in many walks of life and lines of work.
Most of us on the receiving end of an additive manufacturing (AM) sales spiel, for example, can come to understand quite quickly what it would cost to buy a machine, whether it’s desktop FDM or multi-laser metal. You, reading this, will probably have insight into how much it will take to run, accounting for energy consumption, personnel, depreciation, and so on. But do we understand the value it can bring?
Judging by the regularity with which we bemoan the cost, I’d argue not always.
It brings to mind that Oscar Wilde line. Of course, it would be hyperbole to say prospective AM users know the value of nothing, but the discourse in this industry is far more likely to fixate on the cost – and sometimes quite cynically too.
Most AM machines are objectively expensive to buy and expensive to run – and if the profit margins of the OEM are considered unfair, then we can judge them for it – but what we must not do is suggest, in a black and white way, that the cost is prohibiting the application of the technology. After all, an AM user is only deploying the technology to manufacture products that it will seek to make a profit on. How much profit depends partly on the margins they work at and partly on the value those products can bring to their customers.
If, when using AM, they could increase the performance of their product by, say, 20%, then they could charge more for it, earn more from it, and suddenly, the cost of the technology they’re manufacturing it with feels like less of a burden.
When you’re in the market for a car, you weigh up the cost at the point of purchase, as well as the fuel efficiency, insurance quotes and payment terms, with what you can afford. But you also factor in what that car does for you. Does it fit your three children in the back, the groceries in the boot, the bikes on the roof rack? And you’ll consider the alternative. Public transport for the school run, more of a work-out than a walk when doing the shopping, bikes left at home for the vacation.
Yet both options are open to you. It is up to you to figure out which is the most suitable to your needs. It is the same in manufacturing.
Adopting AM is as much about the price as it is about what it’s worth to you. By how much can we optimise the design to get greater performance? To what extent can we reduce the weight to fall better in line with our sustainability goals? Can we plug gaps in the supply chain to save on unavailability costs? It’s not only how much it costs, but what you save, and what you earn off the back of it.
If, when making your assessment of AM’s suitability to produce your flagship products, the sums aren’t adding up, that is fine, actually. All it means is that you have found the most economical way of doing so. If the routine of the school run without a car works for you and the family, maybe there’s no need to change.
But if you can see a path towards more fruitful and valuable applications – and hopefully your eye for those opportunities grows with experience – then it’s probably worth considering. For a lot of new users, AM is probably not going to pay itself back immediately. The low-hanging fruit applications are considered as such becasue there is a whole tree to climb.
As you climb it, you’ll likely find AM comes into its own a bit more. For spare and replacement parts, for parts where some design wizardry can take the performance to the next level, for parts that couldn’t be manufactured in any other way.
Now, the technology begins to pay you back. It might not always be a clear money in/money out calculation, but AM is not a tool to be judged on its cost. It’s a tool to be judged on its value.
