Page 27 - 3D Metal Printing Magazine Winter 2022

FEATURE 3D
Assure Supply and Diversify Risk in AM Material Supply Chains
The Group Purchasing Organization model, essentially supply chain as a service, can provide an answer for supply-chain management in the growing AM market.
BY MICHELLE MEYER and GREGG MACALUSO
With additive manufacturing (AM) in aerospace, defense, durable medical and industri- al sectors expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 20 percent through 2026, the need for access to high-volume print- able powders, as well as research on per- formance of emerging materials, will be at a premium for some time to come. Cur- rently, supply-chain requirements to sup- port this growth have resulted in unscaled purchases of material for common and special materials sent directly to material
Michelle Meyer is founder and chief exec- utive officer, and Gregg Macaluso is chief supply chain officer of MatterProviders, www.matterproviders.com.
OEMs. This material often is produced thousands of miles from the point of material consumption by the part man- ufacturer. Mix this reality with the chal- lenges presented by COVID-era supply- chain management, and the trajectory for continued growth in the sector proves even more challenging.
In this scenario, specific challenges for 3D-printed-part OEMs include:
• Rapidly escalating material costs
• Longer lead times, often resulting in poorly scheduled, lumpy purchases and receipt of materials that impact part-pro- duction schedules
• Poor(er) printer utilization and staff effectiveness due to not having material when needed, or having the wrong mate- rial at the wrong time
• Poor(er) material turn performance, increasing obsolescence and reducing return on working capital deployed.
Challenges for material OEMs include:
• Unscaled and low commonality in orders received, with these operations essentially working in a make-to-order environment
• Resulting shorter production runs for materials, and loss of production efficiency • Poorly coordinated/aggregated out-
bound logistics and associated costs.
A proven model for alleviating these challenges—for material producers and
their customers—already exists in other industries. Known as the Group Purchas- ing Organization (GPO) model, it can pro- vide an answer for supply-chain manage- ment in the growing AM market.
GPO, proven effective as the standard operating model for the purchase and dis- tribution of durables and consumables for multiple industries, can be applied to the emerging growth anticipated for the AM-materials supply chain. Developed GPOs have provided billions of dollars of value across those multiple industries, making an array of products available in proximity to point of use at aggregated, scaled, negotiated prices, while providing material producers with longer and aggre- gated views into the demand among con- suming customers.
Today’s GPO model has evolved from its origins in the 1970s and ’80s to a more comprehensive, supply-chain-as-a-service (SCaaS) solution. Services including mem- ber demand/supply planning; procure- ment; facilitated inbound logistics (ware- housing/transportation); independent material testing; onsite inventory man- agement; and end-of-life, closed-loop material management. The result gener- ates economic value for producers and allows improved focus and leverage of key engineering talent whose time currently is split between core development/inno-
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