Today was the start of the Transdisciplinary Engineering (TE2024) conference at UCL East in London, UK. I was presenting our paper:
Distributed Additive Manufacturing: A Social Change in Manufacturing
Abstract:
COVID was an unprecedented event requiring extreme responses from nations across the globe to stem the rate of infection. There was a drastic change in product demand that nations needed with many requesting Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) and Lateral Flow Devices (LFDs) in the hundreds of thousands. The change in demand coupled with lockdown measures exposed the fragility and unresponsiveness of many global supply chains resulting in nations competing with one another for supply. Supply was often delayed and/or of insufficient in quantity and it took nearly six months for supply to stabilise.
In contrast, Additive Manufacturing (AM) and the ‘Maker’ community thrived in designing and producing products to support their communities in combating COVID. Through a reflective study analysing LFD COVID test data, this paper shows that the UK’s distributed AM capacity (an estimated 170,000 AM machines in the UK distributed across homes, educational settings, offices, and industrial facilities) could have provided the nation with the devices it needed. Government funds would have supported UK AM, reduced the carbon footprint of shipping LFD tests from other nations, manufactured only what was required (25% of PPE was not used) and prevented an estimated 25 swimming pools worth of single use plastic waste. The paper discusses the Social Change and platform required to realise distributed AM as a global supply chain that can support nations in being more resilient, responsive, and sustainable.
The session was fascinating and an intersting discussion ensued on how to realise a co-ordinated AM capability in nations. Exactly what we’re investigating with BAM and my Researcher-in-Residence award! I am looking forward to following up with some of the audience members to see if we can’t solve this challenge.
