SAMPE Journal - May/June 2016 - 94

Tobin Talks Washington

Tobin A. McGregor

Government Relations Manager
tobin@sampe.org

The Department of Defense Conducts Exercises
to Map Use of Additive Manufacturing
Technologies

Additive manufacturing-building products layer-by-layer in a process often referred to as three-dimensional (3D)
printing-has the potential to substantially impact all aspects of commerce. Presently, industry, academia, and the
scientific community are all determining how to address the challenges and benefits associated with the use and adoption
this technology. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) now looks to additive manufacturing (AM) as an enabler that can
economically provide the means and opportunity to take greater control of its acquisition, technology and logistics efforts.
In January 2016, through the leadership of America Makes and with the assistance of Deloitte Consulting, LLP, the DoD
embarked on an agency-wide Additive Manufacturing Road Mapping exercise. During the first half of 2016, the Air Force,
Army, Defense Logistics Agency, and the Navy are conducting a series of workshops whereby each develop their own
visions and implementation plan for the use of additive manufacturing. At the conclusion of these, a joint exercise will be
held in which individual Service-specific roadmaps are compared and rationalized to identify overlap and synergies and
the results of which is rolled into a DoD-wide additive manufacturing road map.

For the DoD, the primary drivers for the use of additive manufacturing are the costs and vulnerabilities associated with
the logistics and supply chains. The DoD operates eleven (11) primary logistics and acquisition management centers to
equip and sustain its global operations. The dollar value of the repair parts inventories that the centers manage approaches
$100 billion. The inventories are constantly in motion, moving from manufacturers to storage locations, to military units,
to repair facilities. This large and expensive network of personnel, facilities, and repair parts is the DoD's logistics supply
chain, and it is critical to the operational success of the U.S. military.
The Navy will be looking primarily at the technology as a solution to logistical problems that arise from operating on the
high seas as the quantity of supplies required to be carried on board could be reduced significantly if they were able to 3D
print those products on the ship. The Navy put a 3D printer on the USS Essex to experiment with the concept last year. The
printer has been used to print disposable medical supplies, small caps for an oil tank, and model planes.

Of particular interest to the Army is the utilization of AM capabilities to support maintenance and sustainment. One of the
many positive attributes of AM is that worn or damaged parts can be either repaired or replaced on demand. This capability
relaxes the requirement to forecast, obtain and store spare parts and provides a viable and cost effective solution for when
those spare parts don't even exist. Additionally, the Army's Rapid Equipment Fielding (REF) expeditionary lab for rapid
prototyping -- deployed in Afghanistan since May 2012 -- is the first to use AM "down range in the fight". The REF's lab
has already seen success in rapidly producing solutions to problems within days.

The DoD is drawing upon the America Makes Additive Manufacturing Road Map and methodology which provides a five year
plan for advancing the state-of-the-art in additive manufacturing across five areas or "swim lanes". It is hoped that this road
mapping process will not only produce detailed roadmaps for the individual DoD Services, but also lay the groundwork for
a DoD-wide strategy, and provide important input for the National AM Technology Roadmap being developed by America
Makes. The five primary additive manufacturing "swim lanes" that the DoD is focusing on are:
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Design- Driving technological advancements in new and novel non-proprietary design methods and tools (e.g.
CAD) required to enable a culture of change and break the paradigm of traditional design tools.
Material- Building the body of knowledge for benchmarking additive manufacturing property characterization
data and eliminating variability in "as-built" material properties.
Process- Advancing technologies to enable faster, more accurate, and higher detail resolution additive manufacturing
machines with larger build volumes and improved "as built" part quality.
Value Chain- Pushing toward step change improvements in end-to-end value chain cost and time to market for
AM- produced products.
AM Genome- Accelerating technological advancements that enable improvements in the time and cost required
to design, develop, and qualify new parts for additive manufacturing.

With the help from America Makes and Deloitte Consulting, the DoD hopes to have its Additive Manufacturing Road Map
completed by July 2016. This road map will likely be made available to the public through America Makes. For more
information on the America Makes Additive Manufacturing Road Mapping initiatives, please visit https://americamakes.us/.
For questions or comments please contact Tobin at +1 202.494.5163.
94

SAMPE Journal, Volume 52, No. 3, May/June 2016

https://www.americamakes.us/

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