The COVID19 pandemic has placed unprecedented pressure on manufacturing / supply chain. Key industries face enormous spikes in demand, yet with borders sealed, manufacturers who are dependent on parts from global supply chain partners face unbridgeable gaps. Social distancing requirements shrink production capacity further.

An obvious idea is to enlist industries with idle capacity, but this too faces challenges. Creating new manufacturing lines, tools preparation, and automation will take unacceptably long.

3D printing can be enormously helpful. It can print suitable parts or tool, dies, jigs, fixtures, testing equipment, and more to help accelerate repurposing manufacturing lines.

But to succeed, you’ll need a vendor with a full suite of capabilities to make this work in time.

For example, imagine you are an Auto OEM trying to build ventilators. Even if ventilator manufacturers provide clear designs, each will have extremely specific requirements. Wipro can conduct an assessment to enable faster production of prototypes for use in trials. Long lead time molding tools, jigs, and fixtures can be 3D printed to get to market faster, then gradually phased out as regular tools become available. While costly at first, we can bring value engineering to reduce material, process steps, operations, etc., by combining parts.

Wipro stands ready to help end-to-end, from strategic assessment, conversion of parts to 3D printable design, right through to proving and enabling local supply chain partnerships to get the parts/tools printed.

Please connect with Ajay Sinha (US) / Kevin Creehan (US) / Raf Verheyen ( Europe) / Avinash Kamble (India) for further details.