Jabil Launches Additive Manufacturing Network

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Jabil introduced the Jabil Additive Manufacturing Network to drive greater manufacturing speed and agility while helping customers improve how they design, make and deliver products. A major milestone in Jabil’s digital transformation journey, this unique cloud network empowers customers to move manufacturing workloads to regions and into markets that make the most business sense and enable easier product personalization.

“Jabil’s digital thread fuels a growing footprint of 3D printers and additive manufacturing capabilities to benefit customers through localized production, consolidated supply chains, reduced costs and faster time-to-market,” said John Dulchinos, vice president of digital manufacturing, Jabil. “Our new Jabil Additive Manufacturing Network is the connective tissue that scales globally to integrate every printer, facility and work order across our enterprise and crystalize our vision of truly distributed manufacturing.”

Over the past year, Jabil has increased its 3D printing capacity steadily with more than 100 3D printers now in operation at facilities in the United States, China, Hungary, Mexico, Singapore and Spain. A variety of 3D printing machines have been installed for high-speed sintering, fused filament fabrication, polymer and metal laser sintering and other processes, to address emerging customer needs in the footwear, industrial machines, transportation, aerospace and healthcare industries. Jabil’s distributed manufacturing strategy is anchored by this growing ecosystem of 3D printers, which includes a dozen production-ready HP Jet Fusion 4200 3D printers, following the recent installation of six HP Jet Fusion 4210 printers at Jabil’s Singapore facility.

“Working with Jabil has allowed us to fully leverage distributed manufacturing and create new efficiencies in our production process across far-flung locations,” said Stephen Nigro, HP’s president of 3D Printing. “Together, Jabil’s Additive Manufacturing Network and our Multi Jet Fusion printers have helped optimize the high-volume production of functional parts for our own 3D printers, and shown how traditional supply chains are being upended and reinvented for the digital manufacturing age.”

Distributed Manufacturing Boosts Business Agility

Jabil currently unites product designers in Silicon Valley with Singapore-based manufacturing teams to accelerate the distributed manufacturing of products developed using HP Multi Jet Fusion technology, including parts for HP’s 3D printers. More than 140 parts for HP’s Jet Fusion 300/500 printers are being produced by Jabil using its world-class combination of Multi Jet Fusion technology, the Jabil Additive Manufacturing Network along with its proven manufacturing rigor and stringent quality control.

Empowering Customers to Achieve Significant Cost/Time Savings

Jabil has enhanced its end-to-end process control capabilities while applying Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM) methods to deliver steady increases in part/assembly consolidation, manufacturability, reliability and quality of 3D-printed parts. The speed and scope with which Jabil can manage the complexity of small manufacturing lot sizes empowers customers to achieve significant economies of scale and accelerated time-to-market. With its Additive Manufacturing Network, Jabil now seamlessly can integrate digital additive production processes into diverse manufacturing applications to produce functional parts at a fraction of the cost and time required by traditional manufacturing.

Scaling Additive Manufacturing with Proven Rigor

Built from the ground up as an end-to-end framework for additive manufacturing, Jabil’s network provides full traceability of manufacturing rigor to address the complexity of scaling 3D printing across a distributed network. Moreover, the platform integrates seamlessly with Jabil’s Intelligent Digital Supply Chain (IDSC) to align materials, printers and customer orders with supply chain demands.

At its Singapore facility, Jabil leveraged proven engineering and manufacturing experience to ensure HP Jet Fusion process compliance in distributed ISO9001 facilities. The use of Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) tools, as well as process control documentation, enables Jabil to scale its use of additive manufacturing technologies rapidly. This ability to integrate end-to-end digital threads will speed adoption of distributed manufacturing while improving management of entire product lifecycles, from ideation to end-of-life.

About Jabil

Jabil is a product solutions company providing comprehensive design, manufacturing, supply chain and product management services. Operating from over 100 facilities in 29 countries, Jabil delivers innovative, integrated and tailored solutions to customers across a broad range of industries. For more information, click here.