I doubt if any of these mergers happen that it will help the cost curve any time soon.
The process of integrating varying business units, finding and dealing with duplication of effort/roles on top of some hostile cultural differences between the various companies is going to take years to resolve, that will inevitably slow them down, making space for competition to move faster to meet customer needs.
Part cost comparisons to other manufacturing methods typically mean you should use another method unless you are doing a short run.
There are plenty of shorter run applications in manufacturing that do not have the same razor thin margins as mass production.
Reducing the cost of producing parts with AM should lead to a broader range of viable applications, but not necessarily mass production in the millions.
Spot on. They need to merge to stay viable for the high margin short run applications. Can’t have too many players or margins compress. I agree with you that it won’t really affect part per unit cost curves, however, staying in the game means you’re potentially one technology leap away from that changing.
I doubt if any of these mergers happen that it will help the cost curve any time soon.
The process of integrating varying business units, finding and dealing with duplication of effort/roles on top of some hostile cultural differences between the various companies is going to take years to resolve, that will inevitably slow them down, making space for competition to move faster to meet customer needs.
Part cost comparisons to other manufacturing methods typically mean you should use another method unless you are doing a short run.
There are plenty of shorter run applications in manufacturing that do not have the same razor thin margins as mass production.
Reducing the cost of producing parts with AM should lead to a broader range of viable applications, but not necessarily mass production in the millions.
Spot on. They need to merge to stay viable for the high margin short run applications. Can’t have too many players or margins compress. I agree with you that it won’t really affect part per unit cost curves, however, staying in the game means you’re potentially one technology leap away from that changing.