3D Printing:Helpfulness And Benefits To Selected Manufacturing Facilities’ Product Development Process

Abstract

Manufacturing industries target to shorten the time of bringing new products to the market, thus,
product development is geared towards the utilization of technology that will minimize time from product
conceptualization to production. In the advent of 3D technology for the purpose, this study assessed its
helpfulness and benefits utilizing descriptive research. The design and development of the survey
questionnaire is based on the Generic Product Development Process by Ulrich and Eppinger (2008).
Respondents were managers, supervisors and engineers from four (4) manufacturing facilities. Assessment on
the helpfulness of 3D printing revealed that the technology is very helpful for planning, concept development
and production ramp-up, while the technology is helpful for system-level, detail design and testing and
refinement stages. Assessment of the respondents of the four (4) facilities revealed that 3D printing is very
beneficial in increasing creativity of the team, more options for product differentiation, better sensory
perception of the product, reduced time from conceptualization to market availability, limitless complexity of
parts and enhanced teamwork and collaboration between members. Assessment on decreased expense during
product development, more risk factors are mitigated or removed, environment-friendly material used and
accuracy of printed parts is beneficial. Since, the technology is new and most reviews concern only with the
generation of a model, its significance to the different stages of product development was sought. It may be
suggested from the result of the study, that further inquiry be done with specific questions pertaining to each
activity of the stages of product development, to detail many of the variables or factors that affect the outcome.