Benefits of Digital Manufacturing for the Medical Industry
What used to takes weeks and days to manufacture, now only takes hours. Over the last 30 years, Additive Manufacturing has truly transformed the Medical Devices landscape with advanced industrial 3D Printing technology. Today, many parts ranging from orthopedics, prosthetics, spines, hips, hearing aids, knee caps, implants and surgery tools are produced using the Additive Manufacturing processes.
"Improve patient care with quicker turnaround"
Additive Manufacturing has the potential to transform the entire healthcare industry. Its manufacturing ability helps engineers produce patient-specific customizable solutions, and other innovative designs to meet mass market needs. Healthcare organizations, doctors and patients can produce additively produced parts on-demand. With LINK3D, Medical Device companies can access Additive Manufacturing resources on a single platform. They can place and manage orders in a collaborative environment, which helps increase the speed of product innovation while following the standards of FDA and ISO approval software requirements.
Medical Device companies can gain a competitive edge with LINK3D AM Software hen developing innovative, lightweight, high-performing and cost effective parts. Delight customers with better experiences, quicker development time, and speed-to-market.
Medical Device companies that take advantage of Additive Manufacturing workflow software will experience quicker turnarounds when producing parts for research and development, rapid prototyping, series production and aftermarket part production for industrial and commercial use. After conducting internal reports, we've found the following areas of concern to be most pertinent in the Medical Devices industry as they adopt, build and scale their Additive Manufacturing efforts:
1. On-demand distributed manufacturing
When demand for medical parts are unpredictable, healthcare centers can take advantage of on-demand manufacturing. As an example, some healthcare centers outsource to medical device companies, produce with their industrial 3D Printers, or work with certified Service Bureaus to manage their additively produced parts. LINK3D's centralized ordering system helps decrease wait time to improve patient outcome. Compared to traditional manufacturing, cost reductions throughout the value chain include: reduction in inventory costs, warehousing costs, material waste, part obsolescence, transportation, administration and more.
2. Increase speed of innovation for complex parts and tools
Producing patient-specific parts and tools tailored for an individual's anatomy is now possible with Additive Manufacturing. With tool-less production and more materials are available, healthcare organizations and Medical Device companies can develop more economical treatment plans that will produce better patient outcomes while reducing recovery time. By facilitating the communication process between the doctors and engineers - members involved in each project can come to a better solution quicker. LINK3D's collaboration suite facilitates the speed of innovation for 3D Printed parts across the entire lifecycle, from research and development, rapid prototyping and series production.
3. Leverage all additive resources across your supply network
Knowing what's available in the research and development and production additive manufacturing tool-box is important for leveraging expertise across multiple departments, facilities and certified service bureaus in a supply network. Having access to a digital library of 3D Printed parts can increase speed-to-market and product innovation. Knowing which expert was involved with specific projects and orders can provide insight for developing new solutions in a collaborative environment. Finally, being able to take advantage of proprietary algorithms to route orders to the correct internal or certified facilities that have specific certifications (e.g.: ISO 13485, FDA) can cut down lead times.
4. Know your ROI
With cost-management built-into every order processed through LINK3D, Medical Device companies and healthcare organizations can get access to costs associated per part, helping doctors manage expectations with customers regarding their financial commitments. Understand the cost of a part's bill of materials, labor cost, engineering cost, post processing cost, machine run-rate and more.