The federal government, for instance, uses on-site 3-D printing to manufacture many things, because 3-D printers allow for a shrunken production cycle, smaller batches of items at an affordable cost, and a quick turnaround on production. If an FBI engineer needs to redesign a bracket that holds a flashlight on a boat, he doesn’t need to order a part and wait for it to arrive – he can hop on the computer and print the part himself that day.
3-D printers can use an increasing number of materials to build objects – plastics, metals, alloys and even human flesh – and though they're not 100 percent reliable, at the enterprise level, the printers are reliable enough for organizations like the FBI to trust with the manufacture of critical components.
Despite a lack of perfect technology, there is a business case for 3-D printing in state and local government, said Gartner Research Director Pete Basiliere, “both as a user of the 3-D printing technology and a recipient of 3-D printing output.”
For instance, it’s common for a city or municipality building a bridge or a structure to also commission a 3-D model of the project to help people visualize what is being proposed. The use of a 3-D printer allows agencies to accomplish the same thing, but the models are far more accurate and sometimes cheaper.
As the prevalence of 3-D printers and 3-D printing bureaus has increased, it could also be practical for a municipality to require contractors to produce a 3-D model of a proposed construction project, in addition to a 2-D blueprint, Basiliere said.
“At the local level, you have so many people who are volunteers,” he said, “and they’re being asked to evaluate 2-D drawings of a proposed building project.” Though models are nothing new, 3-D printing makes model production more accessible.
State and local government could also benefit from on-site part manufacturing just as the federal government does, Basiliere said, noting that the capability of producing a part the same day it’s needed improves productivity. “That kind of qualitative benefit is tremendous," he said, "because now that designer or engineer can stay on task, not have to put it aside, go on to something else and come back to it."
Though the benefits are many, Basiliere said there are also limitations to adaptation. The person operating the printer, for instance, needs to know how to use it. It’s one thing to design a piece of jewelry, but it requires the skill of an engineer to design a car part or even a simple door handle.
But the technology holds plenty of untapped potential for state and local government IT managers, Basiliere said.
“What’s the business case? Part of the decision on that is trying it,” he said. “If all you do is write a report about it and make a judgment based on that – that’s the wrong way to go.”
An agency not ready to buy an enterprise-level printer can start by ordering parts from a local 3-D printing bureau or buying a relatively inexpensive printer to see what the technology can do. A practical 3-D printer can be had for a few thousand dollars, and a respectable enterprise-class printer can be found for less than $40,000. The only way to see the benefits of 3-D printing, he said, is for government workers to get their hands dirty.
3-D printing is going to change a lot of fields, including government, but those using the technology will need do a lot more than just use it to make models, said Rob White, chief innovation officer of Davis, Calif. Sure, they can make models like architects do now, he said, that will be more accurate and detailed, and take less time, "But that’s not that revolutionary; in my mind, that’s not very innovative," he added. "Innovation is where you literally turn a technology revolution. You do something that isn’t the norm of something.”
The real value in 3-D printing, he said, would be to find a way to use the technology to completely rethink and rearrange the way a government process is done -- not a find a new way to do an old thing.
A good example of non-innovation is the self-checkout line in the grocery store. The self-checkout line doesn’t reinvent checking out of a store, it just makes the customer the checker. The process has been changed slightly, but there’s no innovation. Innovation is what online banking did to the banking industry – it completely changed the way banking worked. This is the type of value that people should be looking for in 3-D printing, White said.
“3-D printing is literally going to change the way that we see medicine, service delivery, commercial products -- and we’re just starting,” White said. Someone innovative just needs to figure out how to do it.
Image courtesy of Shutterstock
