IDEA! Conference 2021, Day 2: Addressing the Elephant in the Room

The IDEA! Conference wrapped up its second and last day of in-person sessions in Cleveland on Wednesday, and talk in the exhibition hall frequently touched on the current breakdown in the supply chain and the shortage of raw materials. Several sessions focused on it, but presenters had little advice other than to establish and maintain good relations with suppliers and to be prepared for change.

The one prediction most people seemed to agree on, at least then it comes to chips and semiconductors, is that the shortage will likely last through 2022 and into 2023.

The first conference on Thursday was on “Manufacturing as a Service” (MaaS) by Aaron Lichting, VP of Xometry, a company deeply involved in the new trend. In MaaS, a firm acts as a networked middleman, connecting people and companies who want to have parts manufactured to shops with the capability and capacity to make them.

Customers at Xometry, for example, can upload a CAD file for a part, tick off what material finish and manufacturing process they want used, and how many parts they need, and the program spits out a quote they can count on. This seems like a game-changer for inventors and companies with few manufacturing resources or expertise of their own.

In the second session of the day, Jeff Christiansen, a VP at Seegrid, gave a good rundown on electric vehicles, the kind that move parts and products around factories—one more link in the automation chain. He noted that “Automation is hardly new, but it is very different from what it was 20 years ago. But the question for companies remains the same: “Are you applying it in the right place?”