Digital manufacturing in the age of experience

Computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing (CADCAM) represented major advances in how manufacturers made their products when those two-dimensional technologies began to take hold in the 1960s.

But now the world’s manufacturers are making the next great leap by embracing full-fledged Digital Manufacturing. Essentially, everything about designing and engineering a product and creating a manufacturing process to make it can be digitised in three-dimensions (3D) and synchronised with the actual physical assets of the production system. The pay-offs for early adopters are proving enormous. Independent analyses show that production costs can be reduced by up to 15 per cent.