Embedding Additive Manufacturing into industrial value chains - an opportunity to fill the gaps in traditional supply chains

In times of the pandemic, global supply chains have been massively disturbed. Not only for medical equipment, medicine and other goods that can directly relief the pandemic's impact, but for all types of goods and In times of the pandemic, global supply chains have been massively disturbed. Not only for medical equipment, medicine and other goods that can directly relief the pandemic's impact, but for all types of goods and products it can be clearly seen how vulnerable today's global supply chains are when it comes to unforeseen crisis situations. For Additive Manufacturing (AM), new opportunities have opened up as follows: BL Additive Manufacturing is able to instantly and locally manufacture goods for emergency supply to fight the pandemic's impact, especially for personal protection equipment (e.g. face shields) and for hospital demands (e. g. respirator equipment from masks through splitters and valves up to entire, simple emergency respirator systems). BL Additive Manufacturing can partially step in instantly and locally when single parts of complex assembly products are missing due to interrupted global supply chains, especially from overseas, low-wage countries, where the Covid-19 pandemic has led to early or enduring production and shipment interruptions and delays. In the long run, AM has the chance to be established as an on-demand, short distance secondary sourcing option for many types of parts within complex products. Today's cost gap between expensive, locally EU-made AM parts and low-wage, low-regulation mass production far away from the location of demand, can be justified by factors like supply security, low transportation cost, no storage cost etc. This opportunity has the potential to boost AM especially in Europe, while at the same time the necessity of AM integration into complex manufacturing process chains and entire value chains becomes even more viable and urgent.