I have previously spoken about the hockey stick of new technology adoption and the need to see personal benefit before it gets adopted. An article in Engineering.com about a chocolate shop in my soon-to-be-home town of Rotterdam that turned to 3D printing as a way to fix their machinery is exactly the kind of thing I mean.
According to the piece, The Chocolate Factory ran into some difficulties with the frequency and cost of a metal part for their packing line. It was expensive, wore out frequently and needed replacement a few times a year, and supply was short. So they explored 3D printing. Naysayers were skeptical that a metal part could be replaced with a 3D printed plastic part and still work. Turns out, they were wrong. Not only did the part function as required, but costs were reduced by 60% on the part, downtime has been reduced from a month to a week (only because they chose to use a specialist in Israel, rather than buy the equipment; an on-site printer would have the part available in hours) and its opened up a conversation about other uses. In this instance, The Chocolate Factory worked with a local Dutch 3D viz and printing company, Visual First, who in turn worked with a large specialist additive manufacturing company, Stratasys, to develop the right material solution and print the part.
Three things stand out for me about this story:
- Bold business owners turning conventional wisdom on its head and being prepared to test out new technologies. Without this courage, uptake is unnecessarily slow, and the benefits of new technology will take longer to be felt.
- A partnership model proving itself in Visual First‘s ability to solve a local problem via its global network. This is a brilliant example of bringing the outside in, using alliances, and the way in which global supply can be made to feel local to the end customer. I do not think global sourcing has had its day but I do think that we will see a shift back to wanting to feel like you can talk to someone locally. Being able to give that feeling to a customer as a supplier, whilst still having a network that punches out beyond your own perimeter is, for me, a powerful combination.
- See the benefit, use more tech. This is exactly the kind of experience we need to be reading more about. Whilst large brands like Adidas are making big splashes in additive manufacturing ponds, I love that a small chocolate factory has found this kind of innovation of such cost and time benefit.
This is a hope story for me. High on factual benefit, low on hype. More please, Mr Wright!