In this podcast, we explore the efforts Siemens is contributing in fighting the pandemic.  One of the things Siemens offers is its Additive Manufacturing Network.

 

Welcome to Technology Forward. Today, we are speaking with Robert Meshel, Director, Additive Manufacturing Network at Siemens. We’ll discuss what this network is, and how it is helping to battle this COVID pandemic. So, thank you for joining me today, Robert.

Robert Meshel:
Thank you for having me, Leslie.

Leslie:
First off, tell me about the Additive Manufacturing Network, what it is, and how it can help the design engineer.

Meshel:
Well, the Additive Manufacturing Network is an online order-to-delivery collaboration platform, mainly designed for the industrial additive manufacturing community. Our customers are experiencing exponential growth in the need for additively made parts. Some of these parts are being produced in house within the manufacturing facility and some of them are by leveraging an external network of suppliers, with interaction with both technical data exchange as well as commercial aspects. And our system facilitates the entire interaction, but it stays between the demands of the supplier of the additive manufacturing by leveraging the additive infection ecosystem of all the players. These are machine vendors, material vendors, software vendors, engineering and consulting. We bring all these groups together, in order to allow, facilitate and improve the set of processes between the design engineer and those that are going to produce the parts for the engineers.

Leslie:
What are you seeing as some of the biggest issues with customers and suppliers that they’re facing now and how are you addressing them?

Meshel:
When you say now, you mean specifically in the current pandemic situation or is it a more general about the market?

Leslie:
Well let’s do both if you can. Let’s start with the COVID situation and then a more general perspective.

Meshel:
Specifically for the COVID situation, we see that there is a lot of need for parts that have to be produced on demand because many of these parts are just missing by the original manufacturers. Many of these entities, whether it is a doctor, hospitals and sometimes even individuals that volunteer to provide support in this kind of situation are looking for ways to access relevant service providers. Whether these are people with capacity or organizations with capacity to do engineering work and whether these are entities that have the ability to produce these parts. And this is exactly what we’re trying to do with the Additive Manufacturing Network is basically to allow them to access into this capacity and to leverage it easily and fast.

This includes both the ability to get support to design parts and to validate them before they’re being manufactured. For instance, if you need a face mask as an example, which is now very popular among these communities, you may not have the relevant file available and you do not have the relevant engineering know-how or capacity to design this and to validate it. Here we offer it both by engineers out of Siemens, which are volunteering to do this work as well as many more entities. That’s where they were kind enough and willing to join our initiative in offering their services. Once the design is available and is validated, it can go into production. Again, here we leverage the network of suppliers and many of them are suppliers that actually offer their capacity and their knowledge.

There are resources for free or sometimes for very low cost, basically zero cost. In order to produce these into the local communities and deliver these for those who are at need. This is basically the essence of the initiative that we are doing here is really to bring closer those who have the need for these parts and those who can deliver these parts again, for the engineering work or for the production work in order to make sure that the supplies actually do take place faster to the market that is causing the need.

Leslie:
In addition to that, what resources are you providing that will help engineers who are forced to design remotely now?

Meshel:
So here, the Additive Manufacturing Network is mainly a system that allows the collaboration along these engineers, but many of them actually what they need is the CAD system. Additive Manufacturing Network today does not include these capabilities, but we do leverage many other resources which are available within Siemens. Siemens did open many of its products, including the CAD, Computer Aided Design solution for the community to be used throughout this coronavirus situation, as well as many other tools in order to allow the engineers do the work. Whether this is a design engineer, to machine engineers or manufacturing engineers. Many of these are available throughout the Siemens network as well. Siemens provides the access to its own engineers in order to do the work by Siemens.

If you have the engineering capacity to do that, you can leverage your tools coming out of Siemens. If you do not have, you can come to their network, upload your request and we’ll assign to you engineers either from Siemens or from outside of Siemens that can do this work. These engineers are using Siemens tools if they have access to that or if they sign up into a current offering or they can use their own tools that they have at their disposal. But once they do this work, we can then integrate it all into Additive Manufacturing Network in order to go to production.

Leslie:
Now you’ve already shared a couple of examples of working with the medical community. Have you seen any interesting designs or solutions that are coming out?

Meshel:
Well there is a lot of innovation going on these days. Honestly, our system extends for the highest standards of the country’s validity and therefore if somebody comes to our system and all those same designs, we don’t have the ability to go and to look what is the design. Therefore, anything which is highly IOP related and so on. We just did not have the access.
However, we also do get some requests coming from the community for our support and therefore we do have such examples available, which we are personally involved in. Many of them are things which are quite standards these days like again, face masks or face shields and these kinds of parts but we also see a lot of need for spare parts. I think that a good example is a network of hospitals in Germany where they have these specific fittings… It’s a bottle valve that measures the airflow for the ventilator. It’s like a mechanical piece that they use that is part of this machine. On typical days we have these parts available, like a third of the parts, but these days I assume because of the niche use and because of high wear of these parts, they run out of these spare parts. It takes them a long time to get these parts by the original manufacturer and therefore they’re looking for other solutions.

In this specific case, they came to us with the part, the actual part, and we were helping them to design it and then to produce it. It really varies. There are some things which are more standard. There are things like this one, which is really more unique.

Leslie:
What would you say after we get through this crunch time that we’re all dealing with right now, what would you say is going to be the most useful aspect of the Additive Manufacturing Network for the engineer?

Meshel:
The Additive Manufacturing Network was not designed for this kind of situation, right? We see big needs in the market for both design engineers to be able to, first of all, get the data and get confident in the use or… Get the data with the latest technology in additive manufacturing, get confidence and competency in designing for additive manufacturing. And then once they are capable to do that is to access a network of suppliers and the ability to collaborate efficiently with suppliers in order to get their parts done in a timely manner. And this is exactly what the Additive Manufacturing Network provides.

Another thing is that we work with a lot of entities that do experience significant growth in the use of additive manufacturing. Many of them produce in the range of hundreds of thousands of parts a year. This requires a very sophisticated and a very demanding order management system. That is what Additive Manufacturing does. Currently, the standard supply relationship management systems are not capable to handle the amount of engineering content that needs to be exchanged between the engineers and their suppliers to support the kind of collaboration and kind of communication that is required by the engineers in order to get these jobs done. This is exactly what the Additive Manufacturing Network was designed to do.

Similarly, for the suppliers’ community, they also experienced this exponential growth. This also means that the competition is getting tougher and they want to stand out from the rest of the crowd. Meaning that they want to deliver much higher quality service and a much higher quality product. The Additive Manufacturing Network helps them to deliver this to their customers by both means. First of all, they’re able to access into much larger network of global potential buyers that may need their services and are able to promote their unique services into this community. And the second is once they do manage to win an order, how do they run through the entire process in a much more efficient way so they’re able to be way more competitive cost wise.

I think that these needs are valid in the Corona times, but they are way more valid reason after the Corona times. Specifically, now I also think that the current situation is going to even more increase the awareness and increase more the need for additive manufacturing technology. This is what I also hear from other machine vendors and other players in the market. That to their surprise they actually see a big boost in their sales. And these times I assume that many of these entities do expect to grow significantly with additive manufacturing operations after we do move out of these prices and therefore the need for such systems is going to increase.

Leslie:
Well those were the basic questions that I have. Is there anything you wish to add that I didn’t address?

Meshel:
Maybe one more thing in respect to the coronavirus. I think that this entire situation was really driven, let’s say three weeks ago. It was mainly driven by the makers community where there is an immediate need for part and the people with high innovation capacity jumped on this opportunity in order to deliver whatever was needed at that time. And it’s really stimulated a significant ecosystem of innovators to come on board and to offer their capacity here. I think that now the situation is slightly starting to change because the government is getting in and entities with very large capacity production also getting in.

Now I think that the game is changing. It’s not only about how do we find an immediate solution for issues that may emerge in specific locations. It’s really how do we support in a much more constructive way, this overall global effort that takes place in order to address the challenges of the Coronavirus. How do we bring, not 10 or 50 or 500 face masks, but how do we deliver 1 million of these to the market quickly?

The capacity that these governments are putting in funding as well as the very large manufacturing, this is what going to make the big difference I believe. And I think that here you need to have way more structure and industrial-grade systems to be able to support these overall processes. And again, this is from our perspective, this is our mental targets for the Coronavirus for the next level. So far it was really about how do we support these kinds of makers or people who are in need. I do not expect doctors to leave their current job and go to look for a face mask. I do expect vendors to be pushed by government, and that is going to be a more steady supply. And herein it to make sure that we do help the government and do help these kinds of entities that have the large manufacturing capacity to get whatever they need in order to deliver this to the market.

Leslie:
Well, thank you very much, Robert. I appreciate your time and your insights into how the additive manufacturing community can help with all of this. I appreciate it very much. Thank you.

Meshel:
Thank you very much.