Quick Summary
• The headlines for the AM industry from 2015 and 2016 were specific in their promises. “Additive manufacturing to grow 40% annually, disrupting traditional supply chains by 2020.” “3D printing: the revolution that will change everything.” None of it landed quite the way the industry expected, and the technology has spent the years since stuck in…
Additional Context
The headlines for the AM industry from 2015 and 2016 were specific in their promises. “Additive manufacturing to grow 40% annually, disrupting traditional supply chains by 2020.” “3D printing: the revolution that will change everything.”
None of it landed quite the way the industry expected, and the technology has spent the years since stuck in what Alison Wyrick-Mendoza, Founder and Managing Director of Outlook Lab, describes as “trough of disillusionment,” from Gartner’s Hype Cycle framework. This is nowhere more visible than in aerospace additive manufacturing, where the promise of on-demand, flight-ready parts has yet to fully materialize.
Wyrick-Mendoza, a communications strategist most recently responsible for getting 60,000 employees to adopt enterprise AI, delivered her argument