The Economic Impact of Additive Manufacturing Industries

Additive manufacturing, colloquially referred as 3D printing, is currently considered as an approaching mainstream adoption for highly flexible processing technology to be implemented by manufacturing industries. Moreover, additive manufacturing technology can be applied to design customized products without cost penalty and applied on any kind of plastic, metal, ceramic, concrete materials. Additionally, additive manufacturing facilitates the manufacture of complex and integrated functional designs in a single step, thereby potentially reducing the need of molds, shapes, and assembly work. Our findings show the five key principles relevant to manufacturing industries contributing to the economies of scale on incorporating to additive manufacturing technology. Furthermore, we have analyzed that once additive manufacturing technology is utilized at full capacity, no implications on increased volume on unit cost is found. In so doing, we have provided implications of additive manufacturing technology on profitable basis which provides motivation for future research. Meanwhile, it is seen that there is a demand for additive manufacturing in competitive markets as it reduces the barriers to market entry and paves a way to provide multiple markets at a single time. This ultimately result in lowering prices for the demand of consumers.