3D printing has brought a great change to the world of customization. With the traditional methods, mass customization was limited, and supply chains were not able to keep up with orders. This was such an inconvenience to business owners. Still, with the advancement in technology, 3D printing mass customization is now possible at a large scale production, and as a manager, you can learn a lot about .
In 3D printing, not much is needed to produce the only requirement is a digital copy.
In this context, mass customization means the production of items in large amounts that will eventually be introduced to a large market. Consumers’ tastes have been growing and have now been requesting items that they wouldn’t get from past vendors, such as customized shirts with the right sizes and customized shoes for those with large shoe sizes.3D printing satisfies customer needs.
Types Of Mass Customization
- Collaborative Customization
- Adaptive Customization
- Cosmetic Customization
- Transparent Customization
Below are some of the industries that use 3D printing for mass customization;
Customization On Sectors
- Healthcare
In hospitals, patients come in with different difficulties that need personalized services that can cater to their needs, wants, and preferences. With 3D printing in the medical field, production of prosthetics, surgical tools, and implants can now be manufactured in masses in no time.
Hospitals are changing people’s lives and making them better and easier for them through the services provided by additive manufacturing.
- Architecture
Additive manufacturing has brought about new possibilities starting from making an impact on the architectural sector. With its efficiency, 3D printing allows architects to design and develop everything ranging from buildings and cities with fine detail right down to the landscape. The fine details help architects visualize ideas realistically and vividly.
These small illustrations help save time and money, unlike the traditional ways where they had to spend hours building homes.3D printing brings expanded possibilities with designs.
- Automotives
Luxury vehicles are the ones benefiting from this, mostly with producing prototypes. Luxury car producers use 3D printing to deliver customized designs tailored to their client’s requirements. 3D printing tooling confirms it’s worth establishing processes like die casting and injection molding that are crucial in building complete cars—parts of cars like brake rotors, radar antenna, gear lever pedals, and many more parts. Now, with 3d printing, parts that companies had stopped making years ago can still be obtained.
4 . Consumer Goods Industry
Rapid prototyping in 3D printing has brought developments in product design. Products are cost-effective due to the mass production being done by additive manufacturing. With the complexities that come with customization, 3D printing has helped the good consumer industries by accelerating the development of cycles like the Arevo that introduced the first 3D printed carbon fiber bike. This bike has shown great results after being introduced to the consumer. Its sustainable and spare parts are available in plenty thanks to printing.
Why is 3D Printing Best Suited For Mass Customization?
- Mass Production
The more companies produce, the more they earn. Profits are what motivate companies, so finding cheap sources like 3D printing is an investment to them, and they can make twice as much as when they used traditional ways of production.
Mass production is creating cheap custom tooling.
- Flexible
3D printers have no limits. With large-scale production, you can customize different parts and can make changes to them when you want. Thermoplastic Elastomers are flexible filaments that are a blend of hard plastic and rubber. This material makes it flexible and exhibits greater rigidity.
- Customization
As stated above, 3D printing enables the production of personalized tools. Customer demands may differ because people have different tastes, and this can be expensive to produce and to cater to but with the help of additive printing. Customization offers a unique buying experience. This will help create a big market for your good.
- Fast and Cost-effective
Production with additive manufacturing reduces the time to market and creates cheap ways of manufacturing, thus saving time and money. The type of materials you use will also determine the machine’s speed. For better speed results, ensure you make some improvements to the software.
3D printing is making changes to how industries operate, showing them new possibilities. The traditional ways are still effective but inconvenient. Mass customization using additive manufacturing will keep growing, bringing in better profits, improved customer satisfaction, and expanding inventory.
Conclusion
Ever since 3d printing was invented, it has brought about a lot of advancements in different firms. However, it took a lot of time for individuals such as engineers to get used to it, they got to understand how work, and they were able to use it for their manufacturing firms. Shortly, 3d printing will be a major sector in different firms.