Jan van Dijke, Head of Supply Chain at Shapeways on why manufacturers should embrace digital production flexibility to tackle supply chain challenges and create a necessary safety net.
Global supply chains have always been complex. Getting millions of different goods tens of thousands of miles from point A to points B–Z is one of the wonders of the modern world. But it feels like something's shifted in the last few years. Pandemic shutdowns, the Suez Canal blockage, tariffs that appear overnight (or in the middle of the working day!) and vanish just as fast. I used to think you could plan your way through most of it. Now I'm convinced the real skill is how fast you can pivot when the next crisis lands on your desk.
And it will land. Because lately, it always does.
Adaptability comes from a mix of decent forecasting, genuine flexibility and digital infrastructure that lets you act quickly instead of spending three weeks in meetings about what to do. Additive manufacturing has become one of the most valuable tools in that mix, because it gives you options when everything else grinds to a halt.
Anticipation beats reaction (but only just)
The companies I've seen stay resilient treat forecasting as something alive, not a quarterly ritual. You try to predict what's coming, but more importantly, you stay ready to move when those predictions miss the mark. Too much inventory ties up your cash. Too little and you're scrambling to deliver while customers walk away.
Unfortunately that balance point between too much and too little never stops moving.
Traditional manufacturing wasn't designed for this much ‘wobble’. Tooling takes weeks or months, MOQs are rigid and ocean freight runs on its own schedules. Digital manufacturing can actually keep pace with market changes. When your data connects directly to production, you can go from "we need this" to "it's being made" in hours instead of quarters.
At Shapeways we've watched this play out repeatedly. Customers don't want warehouses full of just-in-case inventory. They want to act on good information, produce what they need, where they need it and when they need it. 3D printing lets them do that without betting everything on forecasts that often age like fine milk.
When policy moves faster than your freight forwarder
Crashing a ship in the Suez Canal is a very public and obvious breakdown of the system. But some of the worst disruptions don't come from the physical world at all. They come from regulators who rewrite trade rules in the middle of a normal Tuesday afternoon.
Earlier this year, the United States changed its de minimis exemption. With three weeks' notice! That rule had allowed parcels under $800 to enter the country tariff- and customs-check free. Suddenly thousands of parcels needed full documentation and brokerage arrangements. Regular shipments that had been flowing smoothly for years suddenly in disarray.
We had to scramble. I mean really scramble. We ship thousands of parcels previously covered by the de minimis exception every month to the US. With per-parcel tariffs and customs checks, costs would add up catastrophically fast. Because we have digital visibility across operations and the ability to rebuild a process in real time, our logistics team and developers were able to adapt the system to allow us to pay daily, rather than per item, charges.
It sounded minor when I describe it like that, but it saved us a huge amount in fees and — more importantly — kept shipments moving while others were still paralysed trying to figure out what just happened.
Digital infrastructure as your safety net
You can't adapt to what you can't see. Digital platforms give you transparency that traditional supply chains rarely achieve: which facility (or even machine) is making what, how workflows are performing, where delays are forming before they become catastrophes. For me, adaptability starts with having the right data at the right time. When production and logistics are both digital, you spot bottlenecks early and route around them.
That's what separates digital from just automated, I think. Automation makes existing processes faster. Digital infrastructure gives you choices when conditions change.
Manufacturing flexibility as a shock absorber
Traditional supply chains are both a marvel and a liability. Lead times from Asia have stretched and every schedule feels fragile as a result. Traditional production runs are like carbon fiber: really strong when the expected forces are coming from the expected direction, but fragile when the ‘wrong’ pressure is applied.
The cycles through traditional manufacturing — especially when parts are coming from China or going on a boat — are super long. If you miss the window, you've got a problem. And those journeys are even longer now because of the Houthi challenges and everything else happening around the Suez Canal.
3D printing becomes the release valve when the system jams. When a mould tool fails or a container ship gets delayed (again), AM can fill the gap. During past disruptions we've seen customers use it to maintain supply for specific components — short runs, spare parts, temporary replacements — until their main production flow recovers.
It's not a one-to-one replacement for injection moulding, the cost structures are quite different. But it's a bridge that buys you time. And time is often the difference between a minor delay and a complete stoppage. But, it doesn’t have to be something that’s a crutch in emergency situations.
The chicken, the egg… and scaling AM
Here's the challenge with scaling this kind of adaptability: large manufacturers want proof of capacity before they commit to AM for production parts. Service providers can't invest in that capacity without demand signals. Classic chicken-and-egg problem.
Our answer has been to build multiple routes to production. Standard parts in established materials move through instant quoting and rapid fulfilment. Complex projects or unusual requirements go through an RFQ process that activates our extended manufacturing network. When a customer brings us significant but specialised work, we can pull the right partners online almost immediately, then decide later whether to bring that capability in-house.
The trick is proving demand before committing capital. One customer with high volume can justify activating new partnerships or technologies. Several customers with small, scattered orders can't. It's gradual and data-driven. We see what the market wants, prove we can deliver through partners, then — if it makes sense — invest in doing it ourselves.
Adding layers without adding delays
Adaptability doesn't end when the part comes off the printer. Finishing, inspection, certification, packaging—these are often where delays creep in. Integrating all those steps into a unified digital workflow gives you something smoother and far more predictable.
We've been connecting these pieces so a project can include quality certificates, surface finishes and custom packaging, all within the same system. Sometimes it's as straightforward as linking capabilities that already exist in our network—vendors we work with who have expertise we can tap into for specialised requests.
The benefit is visibility and control. Customers see upfront what's included, how long it takes and where it happens. Forecasting turns into planning you can actually trust.
Aim for fewer handovers, fewer surprises and a faster recovery when something inevitably goes sideways.
Geography as a feature, not just a fact
Adaptability also has a physical side that's easy to overlook. Distributed production is an old concept that's finally having its moment. Having manufacturing presence across multiple regions lets you shift when local conditions change—new tariffs, logistics bottlenecks, regulatory shifts.
We operate in both Europe and the United States, which means we can reroute production depending on trade conditions, tariffs, even energy prices. Sometimes it's about cost, sometimes about speed. Either way, having multiple doors open beats waiting for one to unlock.
More manufacturers are exploring similar multi-region strategies now. That structure is strategic, not redundant. Geography becomes something you can use, not just something you have to work around.
Take tariffs—and right now there are many to take. India recently faced 50%-plus duties on imports to the US. Overnight, sourcing jewellery components from Indian manufacturers—something we'd done for years—stopped making economic sense. We had to look at rerouting production, potentially to UK-based AM manufacturers who benefit from better trade terms.
These aren't hypotheticals or scenarios we game out in strategy meetings. They're Tuesday-afternoon phone calls where you're trying to figure out if your entire product line still works economically.
Building adaptability as a system
All of this points to the same thing: adaptability isn't accidental. It's a system you build on purpose. Forecasting, digital visibility, distributed production and integrated services are all parts of the same network. When one part flexes, the others hold.
Additive manufacturing fits into that system because it gives you physical agility to match digital decision-making. It's how you act on changing information without ripping up your entire production plan. Whether you're replacing a batch lost in transit or producing components under a new tariff regime, it shortens the gap between problem and solution.
In a few years — and probably not that many — we'll stop treating supply-chain disruption as exceptional. Volatility is the baseline now because the world is changing in ways we can’t predict. The companies that spot problems early and have the ability to move first will keep going. The rest will still be tweaking their spreadsheets.
