Spare Parts 3D co-innovates with SAP

SP3D’s news | 22 November 2021

 

SAP, the market leader in enterprise application software, especially well-known for its Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and data management programs, is co-innovating with companies across the world to realize value of 3D printing for manufacturing, as do many industrial companies such as Mercedes-Benz, Nikon, or GE.

The efficiency of additive manufacturing is increasing while costs are decreasing, thus this technology becomes more and more interesting as time goes on. The assets of 3D printing are manifold: free design, affordable customization, higher flexibility (produce anywhere and anytime, as no tooling has to be set), et cetera. One major asset of 3D printing is the opportunity to distribute production, thus reducing shipping and transportation costs.

At Spare Parts 3D, we rely on additive manufacturing to produce spare parts at lower cost. With 3D printing, physical inventory is reduced for the benefit of digital inventory, thus costs of warehousing are cut. Furthermore, we produce close to the customer, leveraging on a worldwide network of providers. We distribute our production to reduce transportation and delivery fees.

SAP has launched a cloud-based collaboration platform to simplify relations with on-demand 3D print service providers, including Stratasys (3D printing world leader), UPS, and Krones.

In order to simplify the management of distributed production using 3D printing, SAP creates a process integration system which aims to easily connect clients to producers, depending on their specific needs (process, material, region, scalability, prototyping service, internal and external collaboration).

The early adaptor version of this process integration system is to be launched beginning 2017, and Spare Parts 3D is part of it. We are delighted to pursue our development with business solutions provided by SAP, building together an efficient distributed manufacturing network, using 3D printing.