A new era in mass production is on the way sooner than many scholars, people in business or even the general public have thought. The ability to create products from scratch without the need for an elaborate supply chain logistical infrastructure will be coming to a neighborhood like yours or anywhere else on the planet for that matter. If you reside in a third world country, your ability to bring products to the market will not be hindered because you have the means to produce your item where you are. In this new world of production, there will be learning curves. For example, the infringement of intellectual property and copyrights will come to the forefront along with the ability to make weapons without serial numbers or background checks by government officials. This technology will affect every industry in existence today. These problems might want to be addressed as this new technology becomes more mainstream. The era we are talking about is the invention of the 3D printer.
In this blog post, we will discuss this new technology and explore the possibilities and problems facing the 3D printing industry. We will also identify only one problem, even though there are many, set business goals for the implementation of 3D printing and come up with possible solutions. In the end, you will have a better idea of what 3D printing is now and what it can become in the future.
What is 3D printing?
This will be a thumbnail view of what 3D printing is, or as it’s known in the industry as additive manufacturing. For this post, I will give only the bare basics so you can get an idea of what this technology can deliver. 3D printing is 2D printing, but layer after layer is built up to produce a 3D image. Think of it as stacking poker chips upon one another until you have a column. You are merely making something a layer at a time which enables you to create something today, which would have been impossible even ten years ago. You can “print” in basically any material you desire from plastic, nylon, or over a hundred other materials, including gold, titanium, or steel. You can simply produce anything. From prototypes, end-user products, guns, aircraft engine parts, and even human organs using a person’s cells. The possibilities of this technology are endless.
Now that we have an idea of what 3D printing is, there are many problems that the industry and governments will have to resolve with this fledgling industry. Like the MP3 industry in the 1990s with companies like Napster, and Bearshare the rules and law unfortunately come after the technology is on the market, and 3D printing is no exception. The top five problems today are as follows:
- 3D printers use large amounts of energy to produce products.
- Unhealthy air emissions from melting plastic or metal powder to create a print.
- Reliance on plastics, many of which are non-biodegradable.
- Intellectual property and trademarks
- Gun Control loopholes.
The above five problems are all significant and require debate on how to rectify the issues in the 3D printing landscape. The main point is copyright protection with concerns with 3D printing.
Copyright Enforcement
When the average person thanks of copyright protection, most consumers don’t think of it as a big deal. The feeling is that if they buy an illegal shirt with a Mickey Mouse printed on it, that no crime has been committed. In reality, that $12 knock-off shirt is a part of a loss of $250 billion in lost revenue and affects 750,000 jobs in the U.S. alone in 2018. The United States is the largest producer of intellectual property and copyrighted material. $16 billion are lost every year on revenue to owners and $3 billion in lost taxable revenue. (National crime prevention council, November 12, 2019)
To equate this problem to 3D printers and the scanning of copyrighted material and intellectual property. The cost by 2021 is estimated to be $100 billion alone, according to Janessa Rivera with Gartner. Gartner is a company that deals with information technology research and advisory committee based in the U.S… “The very factors that foster innovation, R&D pooling, and funding start-ups, coupled with shorter product life cycles, provide a fertile ground for intellectual property theft using 3D printers,” said Mr. Basiliere, from Monadnock Insights. “Already, it is possible to print many items, including toys, machine and automotive parts, and even weapons.” In this new world of 3D printing, businesses will find it more difficult to thoroughly “cash in” on their inventions, and the theft of intellectual property will decrease the benefit of their trademark licensing. This ability to forgo product development and supply chain cost will enable the counterfeiter to undercut the market in the price of a product drastically. The negative aspect of this is that the unsuspecting customers are at risk of buying poor-performing goods and even downright dangerous items in some cases.
Another example of this in the toy industry is Gentle Giant Ltd., which owns the licensing rights to toy franchises such as The Walking Dead, Harry Potter, The Hobbit, Alien, and Star Wars. This company will be a part of that $100 billion loss by 2020. Their number one concern in the next ten years is the ability for 3D printers to simply scan a figure and produce it in quantity for the black-market trade. The legislation will have to rush to catch up with the technology much in the same way it did with the movie and music industry for copyright infringement.
Goal
The issue and problems are apparent. It’s the responsibility of our legal system and foreign governments to counteract these negative forces at the heart of the 3D printing. As a standalone product, the 3D printer will change all our lives for the better in the coming years. With all its advancements and personalization that are available to many products, 3D printing will revolutionize the retail industry around the world soon. Some industry insiders believe that by 2022, seven of the ten top multi-channel retailers will be using 3D printing technology to produce some portion of the custom stock orders that will be desired by the consumers. With this, like all other industries, there are still negative consequences associated with 3D printing. Trademark infringement and intellectual property theft is that main problem that must be sorted out soon.
Using the $100 billion loss of revenue to counterfeit products in 2019, it is many business insider’s goals to reduce this projected number by 15% by the 2025 timeframe. This change is only a benchmark starting point, and additional increases will have to be made to cut down counterfeiting. This is a very aggressive change that is being looked at, but there are a few factors in the industry’s favor.
The first advantage is the 3D printers are costly for most top of the line units, but this price is dropping fast. The more affordable printers are not up to the task of producing 10,000 units of any product. Even for a single design, the quality and consistency still aren’t there for an end product. This enables the manufactures of the 3D printers to come up with countermeasures to thwart the counterfeiter before these printers are even available.
The second advantage is the government, and the industry knows of the massive loss of profit and tax revenue. Steps in the form of laws and penalties for infractions should be decided upon now and get ahead of the growing problem rather than trying to catch up like many industries in the past. Simple measures now with everyone involved will pay dividends in the future to address this problem, but knowing how government works, this can will be kicked down the road.
Closing
It is a “brave new world” that we are entering into. Technologies are being invented and used today that make storylines off the Jetsons cartoon look plausible. This is the case of 3D printing. There is also the unfortunate consequence of this new technology and the problem of stealing ideas by merely scanning products to your computer. Measures will have to be determined today to ensure an overall better marketplace in the future for the customer. In this post, I introduced the concept of 3D printing and discussed the positives and negatives associated with this new technology. Many measures will have to be made to combat this issue, but in the end, solutions can be made for the betterment of all involved that would even make Aldous Huxley proud.