Authored by John F. Hornick
U.S. manufacturing output has steadily increased since the end of World War II, but manufacturing jobs peaked around 1975 and have been declining ever since. This means that U.S. manufacturers have become very efficient, making more things with fewer people. But as we lose jobs to faraway places, a big question arises: What are Americans to do for work? As I explain in my new book, 3D Printing Will Rock the World (available on Amazon or Kindle), 3D printing may be a big part of the answer to that question.
Because 3D printers can make entire parts or products with fewer machines, fewer steps, and therefore fewer people, they can eliminate the benefits of making things where labor is cheap. The implications are obvious: more manufacturing in America, but not many jobs running the machines. Ten manufacturing jobs lost in low-wage countries may create only one job in a 3D printing economy, but let’s be careful to compare apples to apples. If it takes ten people to operate the traditional machines needed to make a single part, it may take only one person to operate the 3D printer that makes that part in America. To the optimist, that is one more manufacturing job than we had without 3D printing. To the pessimist, we still need nine more jobs. But the pessimist is missing an important point: if the part is made in America by a local worker operating the 3D printer, most of the supply, support, and distribution chain will be here too.
Because chasing cheap labor is unnecessary in a 3D printed world, this technology can break the grip of centralized manufacturing. But don’t assume that huge factories will simply replace their traditional machines with 3D printers. As 3D printers become more and more capable of making almost any finished product, centralized mass production may no longer be needed and, as a business model, may become as antiquated as the dinosaur. 3D printing will pull manufacturing away from the manufacturing hubs and redistribute it, product by product, among thousands or tens of thousands of smaller factories across the globe. Many parts and products will be made regionally, close to where they will be used.
The days of thousands of unskilled American factory workers performing highly repetitive, mindless tasks along an assembly line are gone for good. The factory of the future will be inhabited mostly by 3D printers, robots, and other advanced machines, all driven by software. Some people will be needed on the factory floor to make sure everything is humming along, but the jobs they will do may not exist today.
As technology advances, there will be little place on the factory floor for unskilled workers. In fact, even today there are fewer and fewer jobs for workers without skills or a college education. Between October 2008, when the world economic crisis began, and mid-2014, the U.S. unemployment rate hovered in the 6-10 percent range. During that same time period, the unemployment rate for college-educated workers was only about 3-5 percent.
In a 3D printed world, the demand for skilled workers will increase, but we don’t know yet exactly what their jobs will be like. Some of those jobs are easy to guess. People will be needed to run the 3D printers, robots, and other machines. People will be needed at every step of the now-localized supply and distribution chain, even though their jobs will be radically different than they are today. People will be needed to build the factories, the 3D printers and other machines, and to make the materials the printers will use.
So if 3D printing factories will not employ many people and most of the jobs will be for skilled workers, how will 3D printing spark a new industrial revolution, a manufacturing renaissance, and bring jobs home? Think about the horse. When the horse was the main form of transportation, there were many horse-related jobs: saddle makers, blacksmiths, wagon makers, stable owners, feed suppliers, etc. When the automobile came along, most of those jobs were lost. But think of how many new jobs were created by the invention of the automobile. 3D printing has the same potential.
Just as the nascent automobile industry looked nothing like the horse industry, the 3D printed manufacturing renaissance will look nothing like the Industrial Revolution. Factories of the 3D printing renaissance will be cleaner, safer, and employ fewer people. They will also be smaller, regional, and distributed all over the world.
Industrial companies reliant on parts revenue are at high risk. But many products are consumer products. As time marches on, individual consumers will be more and more able to make such products themselves, or to have them made locally.
Companies that plan for such disruption of their industries may safely dodge the 3D printing freight train and hop aboard. Other companies will fail, either because they are stuck in horse thinking or because their business models are as unsustainable in a 3D printed world as camera stores and record stores are in the digital world.
3D printing will spawn businesses, products, services, and jobs that are as unimaginable today as the auto industry was at the dawn of the twentieth century. Of course my crystal ball is not perfect, but some types of 3D printing-related jobs are suggested by its strengths.
Regional manufacturing means most players will be independent fabricators. A growing number of 3D printing fabricators can be found throughout the world. Some have been 3D printing for a long time, operating as rapid-prototyping shops. Some are start-ups. New companies like iMaterialise and Shapeways are well equipped with state of the art 3D printers and ready to print parts and products at multiple locations.
3D printing fabricators are the regional and distributed manufacturers of the 3D printing age. They are the employers of the factory workers of the 3D printing–fueled manufacturing renaissance. Individually, they may not employ a large number of people, but together they will be a major source of factory jobs.
Customization is one of 3D printing’s strongest points. It is hard to imagine today how deeply customization will work its way into our everyday lives, but I suspect that in 2025 using customized 3D printed products will be as common as using mass-produced ones today. But those may be products that don’t exist today or that are very different versions of today’s products. Customizing products is a job generator.
As more and more 3D printers are sold, they will probably be networked, whether in professional networks or what I call "Friends Networks." 3D printer networks like 3DHubs, which connects users to thousands of 3D printers around the world, are already springing up.
The number of 3D printable blueprints available on the Internet is growing exponentially. They are being offered for use by a variety of startups. Some of these companies are providing libraries of existing product and part designs. Others provide software tools that enable users to create and customize designs.
3D printable digital blueprints are a company’s crown jewels. If they lose control of them, their businesses could be destroyed. Enter the security entrepreneurs. Several startups have their sights set on this problem and have created data-management, encryption, and blueprint-security companies.
Computer programmers in the 3D printing job market will be like kids in a candy shop. They will be in high demand to write, update, and manage software to meet 3D printing–related software needs for anti-counterfeiting, authenticating parts and products, customization, design, encryption, manufacturing, networking, quality control, and many other needs yet to be discovered.
Skilled 3D printing–related jobs soared 1,384 percent from 2010 to 2014 and were up 103 percent from 2013 to 2014. The three jobs most in demand were industrial and mechanical engineers and software developers. These jobs are being filled by the innovators of today. Tomorrow’s innovators are kids today. They are just starting to be initiated into the world of 3D printing, using consumer-grade machines.
We are all makers at heart. For all of human history, except the last hundred years or so, when people needed something they made it. Then came the industrial revolution and eventually we became buyers, not makers. Makers and small businesses are the key to job creation. A quarter of U.S. manufacturing companies employ fewer than five people and 60 percent of new jobs generated from 2009 to 2013 were created by small businesses. 3D printing can take us back to our maker roots, fostering technical innovation, new businesses, and jobs we never heard of.
Originally printed in The Illinois Manufacturer in Spring 2016. This article is for informational purposes, is not intended to constitute legal advice, and may be considered advertising under applicable state laws. This article is only the opinion of the authors and is not attributable to Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, LLP, or the firm's clients.
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