Amazon.com is known by its bold moves and forward-thinking business sense when it comes to delivering goods to people's homes in an orderly fashion. A filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office reveals the online retailer has applied for a patent of a new mobile manufacturing technology that could change the shape of the industry.
The patent calls for 3-D printing technology on delivery trucks while an order gets shipped to the customer. Once an order is placed, Amazon.com sends printing instructions to one of its mobile manufacturing units in a truck. The product gets made precisely with numerical control machines that turn raw materials into consumer goods, toys or other items en route to someone's home or business.
Amazon.com believes this mobile manufacturing method saves time, inventory and money by eliminating the need for huge amounts of warehouse space for certain items. Once an order gets placed, if a delivery truck is already in an urban area the product may arrive within hours instead of days. Less staff time is used to handle products and more effort is placed on delivery systems.
This new patent claims the retailer will use various 3-D printing technologies, including fused deposition modeling, direct metal laser sintering and electron beam freeform fabrication. Fused deposition modeling takes a filament of plastic or metal and adds layers upon layers of raw materials until the product is complete. Direct metal laser sintering uses a laser to bind powdered bits of metal together into a desired shape. Electron beam freeform fabrication creates a molten piece of metal in a vacuum to reduce the amount of raw materials needed to make a product.
Several things have yet to be worked out, and Amazon.com is just in the design phase with this project. For example, how large do the delivery trucks have to be in order to store raw materials? Can the mobile manufacturing labs survive the jostles, bumps and scrapes of highway driving? How often do the printers have to be fixed? Amazon.com may have to have two people in the trucks at all times--one person to drive and one person to work on the printers if there are problems.
The initial idea is scintillating, especially since Amazon.com has tried to automate more and more of the delivery process. Robots retrieve heavy items in warehouses all the time. The company also tried to achieve a predictive delivery system in 2013, and it wants to have drone delivery systems in the future. Another step in the quest for faster delivery times comes with mobile manufacturing, even though this idea could take years to bear fruit.
If this system comes through, it marks another milestone for additive manufacturing. Aerospace companies, NASA and biomedical firms already test and use these manufacturing techniques to custom-make parts rather than store them. Companies like Shapeways let people order customized items that get manufactured and then shipped. Consumer goods such as razors, plastic toys, paperclips and staples could be the next big thing as Amazon.com attempts to take additive manufacturing to a new level.
Amazon.com's mobile manufacturing push can be a boon to the U.S. manufacturing industry. The industry continues to transform into one where engineers and computer technicians replace manual laborers on the factory floor or, in this case, in the delivery truck.
Photo courtesy of franky242 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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