EP 16: The Additive Program That Printed Everything Right and Still Failed

What happens when an additive manufacturing program does everything "right"—the printers are running, parts meet spec, engineers are happy—and it still gets shut down?

In this episode, we explore one of the most common reasons additive initiatives fail: they succeed technically but never demonstrate meaningful business impact. Through a real-world case study (with details anonymized), we break down how organizations can mistake activity for progress, measure the wrong metrics, and lose executive support despite delivering high-quality parts.

We discuss why business outcomes matter more than print counts, how to align engineering with financial and strategic goals, the danger of repeated technology validation across business units, and why communicating value internally is just as important as delivering technical results.

Whether you're leading an additive manufacturing program, evaluating a new technology investment, or trying to scale beyond pilot projects, this conversation will help you connect additive manufacturing to measurable business performance—and avoid becoming the next program that printed everything right and still failed.

Subscribe for more conversations on additive manufacturing, technology leadership, and building organizations that turn innovation into lasting business results.

About the Show
The Additive Advantage Podcast explores what it really takes to turn additive manufacturing into a scalable, performance-driven business capability. Hosted by Dani Mason and Shon Anderson, the show features real conversations with leaders accountable for outcomes — not hype.

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About the Hosts
Hosted by Dani Mason and Shon Anderson, industry leaders with deep experience in technology and additive manufacturing.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Sometimes when we're doing a great job, you can throw out stats like we are we printed 20,000 parts. Is that good? Is that bad? How should I think about that? And I don't just mean all their parts, good or bad. It's what metrics is engineering tracking, would those be the same metrics that would make a finance person happy? Are those the same metrics that would make sales think, wow, we should do more of this because I'm seeing the benefit? And what information do you need to gather to be able to answer it? That's the level of analysis I would go into after the we've validated and parts are coming out the other side.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Welcome to the Additive Advantage Podcast. I'm Sean Anderson, joined by my co-host Danny Mason. Together we bring decades of experience in technology and additive manufacturing to explore how organizations are moving from pilot projects to scalable performance-driven results. Let's jump right in.

SPEAKER_02 0:48

Today we want to talk through a real situation that we have seen more than one time. A company spends several hundred thousand dollars on additive equipment, and the engineering team is excited. The printers are running, parts are being produced, leadership is hearing success stories. Then a couple years later, the executive team starts asking, should we shut this program down? Let's talk about how that happened.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

What's interesting is that most people would assume there's probably a technology issue here. And I don't want to steal the thunder, but I'll let you know that's not it.

SPEAKER_02 1:26

Yes. And that's what we're going to dig into today. Uh we we have a kind of an anonymized case study, if you will, about this project done wrong and then a turnaround where it's done right. So let's dive in.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

And we didn't change the name of one company. We've changed the names of I don't know, 15 or 20 companies that we've seen work on this. And and our goal here is not to put anyone on blast about how their project went. It is to share. You know, I think when you're trying to figure out how to do something right, you need to know two things. Number one is what does it look like if it's not going well? If I'm headed down a bad path, how would I know? And then number two, what the heck do I do? Absolutely cover both.

SPEAKER_02 2:04

Great. Um, I think here's where I'd like to start with the situation. And a lot of times it's a difference between what a company thinks they're buying and what they're actually buying. One of my biggest takeaways as I've gone down this journey many, many times, is a lot of times folks think the question or what they're buying is how do we use additive? Should we speed up our prototypes instead of asking a question like, where are we losing business? And when I see it done well, they start with the latter. And, you know, I got to tell you at an engineer who admittedly grew up on the dark side in sales and me with no technical background just via osmosis. And there's a reason you need both in the room. You need engineers and you need your head of sales or go-to-market or product, because that's where you're gonna get these questions started around where are we losing business?

SPEAKER_01 2:54

You know, if I could add something to that, it would be eventually, even if, you know, we've seen companies that have done this and said, and the technical teams like, hey, we've got money in our budget, we're gonna do this, and they launch without the financial or strategic stakeholders in the room. The problem is, as Danny mentioned, kind of in the lead-in, in two years, somebody who's on the money team is gonna come asking questions if there aren't tangible results that tie to the PL. Even if you've got the money in the budget, the long run will prove you wise to involve the financial team from the get-go so that you can point to tangible business outcomes that are gonna keep that program funded after that year one chunk of your budget has been expended.

SPEAKER_02 3:39

Mm-hmm. You know, the other thing I'd add, and and these are not bad things. It's more the granular level of detail you need to move from this is a capability to to your point, Sean, is it gonna hit the PL a couple years later where I can see visible results? A lot of times I'm having conversations with customers and they need more flexibility. I want better design geometry. This is gonna help future-proof my capability. I'm gonna have faster iterations, better prototyping. Those are all good things, but they're qualitative things. And a lot of times when you bring in a capability for something qualitative with no uh intentionality around what would faster prototyping look like? Is that I can take on 20% more projects with the capability I had to outsource? Is that I can get something to market three times faster and have two more rounds of customer interactions? I'd really encourage folks when I've seen it be the turnaround, and I'll share this, you know, a real example, but don't stop at faster prototyping. Keep going until you can quantify it to a point that matters to your end customer.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

Yes. Uh couldn't have said it better. And I'm hoping you'll touch on um, you know, even if you say we want to speed up the time it takes our products to get to market, if you have, let's say, six or seven different business units or six or seven different RD teams, and each one of those decides to do their own evaluation on the technology and the production, you're gonna slow things down, not speed things up. I'm sure you're gonna touch on that in the story.

unknown 5:05

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 5:06

Yes, that's a great point. Uh let's take it, let's take both. So, one customer who we saw, you know, when they started out initially looking at 3D printing, they brought in some technology under this banner of faster prototyping. Uh what they didn't say of what by when for whom. And it went about like I'm sure many of us have experienced, where they got some things out the door. They weren't necessarily of the quality or product that would make that program want to continue or expand, and it was shut down. I'll tell you, when they re-engaged, it was a totally different conversation. Now, this company, they do a lot of traditional manufacturing. They do a lot of injection molding. That is their core purpose. And so when you look at the hedgehog principle, what am I best in the world at? You need to apply that against how would this technology help me be even better? So if most of my business is injection molding, 3D printing some new direct in product faster is not going to make you better at that. They started looking at, gosh, you know where I'm really losing business and where I'm losing customer retention and where I could increase satisfaction is I'm having to say no to customers because they can't hit a minimum order quantity that makes sense with the tools that I have. What if I use this as a way to bring them in earlier, eliminate the MOQ, help prototype tooling, and then I have locked and loaded great long-term recurring revenue with the customers I want to continue doing business with. And so that difference when we say, you know, faster prototyping versus hitting some type of profit and loss statement, that is what we're talking about. From there, they were able to align the five or six business units. It didn't matter that you were in production or engineering or product or sales or customer service. You were all under this guise of how do we go serve this type of customer better and what does that process look like? And they collaboratively work towards that end goal versus separate evaluations. The second part of what you're saying that I think is good to float up here is you may have done all of that, but I see this so many times where uh a committee or a business unit did exactly what I described. But then a different business unit wants to rinse and repeat and they think they should start from ground zero. I must go through the same validation for eight months to make sure that this is the right technology. I must make sure my process is signed off by 10 new people. And what you get is the same waste you were trying to clean up by bringing additive in. You have just replicated by revalidating ground that's been walked before. And it's easy to do because you think my part's unique. I'm not poo-pooing it, y'all. All of your parts are good. But the process, they're all special in their own way. You know, they're all favorite children, but you're you're compounding the waste you just eradicated by not applying that same lesson we're talking about when you do it again.

SPEAKER_01 7:45

Yeah. And, you know, we I use the example of if the business unit that's headquartered in Charlotte wants to get a new uh fax, copy, scan, you know, big office paper handling device, do they need to get one and print with it to make sure that the blues are just as blue? If the guys at the headquarters in Denver have said we're going to use Rico equipment or Canon or whatever brand. No, you just do it. And part of where I think this this breaks down, Danny, is when you are talking to a pure product selling company, be that a distribution uh partner of an OEM or an OEM that is purely product oriented, you're probably having a conversation about you know, resolution and or feeds and speeds, if it's filament and all these things, you know, laser wattage, whatever. What you need to have a conversation about is how do we qualify the technology? And then if the end user is smart, they're asking the OEM, so how would I know when I've exceeded the bounds of what this platform or this technology will do? And I might need to revalidate. Or if I if you know 80% of my parts look like this, but the other 20% are significantly different, are we going to be within the bounds of what you can do through software, material parameters, et cetera? Or are we talking about a different platform and those you know, instead of if if you have eight different units and you can do two validations instead of eight, because when you're trying to get new parts out faster, engineers working on validating the same technology that another business unit's engineer has already validated will only slow your product release down. And uh we we see that um again and again and again and but I'd come back to the partnership. If the partner can't explain to you how to take uh a portfolio of applications across units and do a validation process, and frankly, the partner be honest with you about what kinds of things will this not perform for? Um you don't have the right partner.

SPEAKER_02 10:01

Yeah, I completely agree. You know, we're talking about doing that initial validation and not repeating the same wheel. I think there's something to be said about how do I know that it will continue to perform in that same way. So I'd encourage you, don't just ask your partners, how do I know what fits in this box up front? How can I be sure it's going to fit in that box long term? And we spend a lot of time on this podcast talking about QAQC and workforce. And we do that because that's how you ensure continuity over time, not just the breadth of continuity when you're looking at applications.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

For sure. And, you know, ask the question if the parts don't conform anymore, what do we do? Yes. Right. And and your partner should have an intelligent answer for that, other than throw the machine in the trash and get another one.

SPEAKER_02 10:46

Yes. Yeah. And I I think part of that is just the way you think about risk reduction, maybe a little differently. You could say, well, I need eight validation processes because I'm going to reduce risk. And I would say, look at scoreboards simultaneously. One scoreboard may be if you're if you're technical, I'm reducing risk because I'm validating all eight parts. Do you think that's how the VP of RD is thinking about risk reduction? What about your CTO? You think that's how quality is thinking about your risk reduction? And so my framework is always don't win across the board on this scoreboard and lose everywhere on that. That's why these programs get shut down, or why they just never fail to scale at the rate they need to, you know, velocity, direction, and speed. And rarely do we get the direction wrong, but sometimes I think we get the speed wrong when we're looking at it through one lens.

SPEAKER_01 11:32

Yeah. You talk like an engineer.

SPEAKER_02 11:34

I know. Yeah, I gotta get off this show.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

Uh so maybe we take this a step further and talk a little bit about, you know, so the technology's been brought in, engineering team's doing a great job. Where do we go from there?

SPEAKER_02 11:47

Mm-hmm. I think a couple things. One is sometimes when we're doing a great job, you can throw out stats like we are we printed 20,000 parts. Is that good? Is that bad? How should I think about that? And I don't just mean all their parts, good or bad. It's what metrics is engineering tracking, would those be the same metrics that would make a finance person happy? Are those the same metrics that would make sales think, wow, we should do more of this because I'm seeing the benefit? And what information do you need to gather to be able to answer it? That's the level of analysis I would go into after the we've validated and parts are coming out the other side. What would you add to that when you think about working with companies?

SPEAKER_01 12:28

Well, I will um throw out another example that I know is real. Again, these people will remain nameless, but let's say you've brought this in-house and it's going well. You know, are you tracking what percentage of the time or what percentage of your spend is still going to outside service bureaus? I mean, hypothetically, have you ever seen that? And and what would a company do about that?

SPEAKER_02 12:48

Aaron Powell Yeah. I'm actually gonna take your question and add on to it because this it just happened to me this week, where a lot of times when they are bringing something in-house, they think, well, I am vertically integrated in this capability and I'm saving a ton of time. Let me tell you all the processes you don't think about because they're just part of operating to get the thing done. Some of it is, well, I have to outsource because I can't get this detail. Some of it, y'all, is I have to compromise my design because the technology I picked can't get it done. And now when that doesn't work, I don't know, is my design bad or did I choose the wrong technology? And so I'll get feedback that says, well, I don't really, I don't really outsource that much. Well, why? Well, because it takes three weeks to get a part pack and it's expensive. Well, what are you doing? Well, I'm prototyping internally. How's that working? Not so great because I'm I'm having to make all these sacrifices. And so when I'm saying look at technology, it's not replace outsourcing. It's you're replacing outsourcing plus design compromise, plus probably two to three FTEs worth of engineers reworking something because it didn't turn out, plus a big old question mark on the product side of if we are even headed in the right direction. I know that sounds a little apocalyptic because Nicole took away our producer, my drink, can't even drink this coffee while I'm here. But I want to describe this for you guys so you can put the whole picture together and see the system that you are trying to create to be successful.

SPEAKER_01 14:10

It's, you know, I hope that sometimes we don't make it sound so complex that you want to just throw it in a towel. Um, that's certainly not our intent. But I do think it's worth noting that when you think about human behavior and organizational performance, it's always complex. Yeah. And um, you know, almost every problem at its root is a communication problem. So I will go all the way back to the beginning of what you said. If you can understand the priorities of your organization, whether that is how do we shorten the time to acquire a new customer, how do we get products to market faster? You may not be in a growth mode. It may be how do we drive down the cost of engineering, you know, wheat, instead of, hey, we're gonna throw another 10% at RD and engineering.

SPEAKER_00 14:56

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 14:56

Maybe you're looking at a 10% cut. How are you going to make the way you use the technology suit the strategies your company is seeking to put in place?

SPEAKER_00 15:07

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 15:08

And you know, technology in and of itself is never good or bad, assuming you bought a decent product. Um, but how you use it to your point about, hey, we made 20,000 parts, didn't we need 20,000? You know what? Again, how do you think about that? It's understanding the goals and objectives of the business.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

And um everybody on this that's listening to this podcast, if you can understand the goals and objectives of the business and demonstrate that you consistently help move the ball down the field toward them, good things are gonna happen in your career. Period.

SPEAKER_02 15:44

Yeah, I I would even say, you know, because you because it is easy to overcomplicate it because it is complicated, but it's really the difference between, you know, a printing program and a transformation program. And uh, you all are smart. You're you're smart in what you do and you understand where you're trying to go. And that should always be your guiding light. It's like, how do I make this product better? How do I make it perform in the field better? How do I reduce customer support calls, save costs, make money? That's what it is. That that's the transformation you're seeking. And you're not implementing a printing program, you're implementing waypoints on the mark towards that. And I think that's too why a lot of these companies I see be successful, 3D printing is not the end all the be-all. They know when they need to go to molding. They know when it's not a good fit, or they at least start with that question of am I even picking the right part and program to implement this in the first place.

SPEAKER_01 16:33

Yeah. And you know, you touched on something that I think is is so important is frankly, it's understanding what you need.

SPEAKER_00 16:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

Do you need a transformation program or do you need to cut the time to turn around a prototype by 50%?

SPEAKER_00 16:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:49

Because your approach would be very different. And, you know, here again, we see a lot of companies that start with the oh my gosh, if I could do 80% of my prototyping in-house and cut my lead time by 50%, that would translate into X amount of products getting out the door faster. Nothing wrong with that at all. Fantastic. But where do you go from there? And and I'll bring it back to the overall business strategy and the priorities of the organization. At some point, that performance improvement you got, well, now that's the new baseline.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

Right? So where are you going when I say where are you going from there? I don't just mean can you come up with a new strategic initiative to align yourself with. What I mean is what are you doing next year? You know, most engineers don't struggle with the concept of continuous improvement. However, you know, again, if we reduce lead times by X and we brought, you know, Y percent of the spend in-house, great. What are we doing in year two? And just saying, oh, well, we're gonna track those same metrics against that same benchmark typically does not get you funded in perpetuity.

SPEAKER_02 18:01

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I think having that conversation not only within your department, but thinking about where should I drive adoption outside either my additive center or outside engineering, so that as you continue to move into year two, three, and four, that first year benchmark may be the new first year benchmark for the engineering groups around your additive center of excellence. And that is a great way to build on a force multiplier. So I guess my point is, you know, it doesn't always have to be a huge quantum leap, but you need to think about what is my new standard and then what is my standard to ensure that the organizational change I started can continue to propagate beyond one hire who found the printer and got it to work.

SPEAKER_01 18:48

Yes. If I could add one more thing onto that, and this is again, I'm gonna I'm gonna pick on us engineers a little bit, but what's your communication plan? Who how will you help anyone know about these great results you're delivering? You better have a plan for that. Now, if the initiative was, you know, came from somewhere else, you probably got a communication plan handed to you, which was like monthly you're reporting out some metrics or quarterly or something on the on that um vein. You if that isn't how it's handed to you, and frankly, I would always encourage you to be thinking about this. Um, it's where you know engineers tend to look a little bit uh with suspicious eyes at the marketing people. Like, well, we don't do marketing. Well, you better. And internally, if you're delivering great results and nobody knows it, yes, you know, in defense of you know, the director or the VP or the EVP, who does not know the details more than likely of what you're doing, if there are no success stories coming out. Now, I'm not saying go do a snow job and only talk about what goes well, but you better be able to demonstrate hey, here's some key metrics we started to track. Here's where we were able to get in a quarter, here's where we were able to get in two quarters, here's the trajectory we're on now. And oh, by the way, we started to track these three other things. Demonstrate the value you're creating and that you're continuing to improve. Um things that are working, executives will find new ways to leverage. Things that are not working, executives will find new ways to make sure that they, you know, quit being a distraction.

SPEAKER_02 20:31

And I've been on a lot of site visits and a lot of tours, and I would say don't just market internally. The best ones I've been on, some of these turnarounds, some people that got it right, they're telling me as the partner what those metrics are and how they're tracking against them and where they need to go next. And so all of a sudden, it's not only can I get additional funding and support and organizational trust and buy-in because look at all the great work I did. But your partners are now equally yoked to that same goal too. And it's broader than a new piece of technology or a new printer. They're like, here's my stats. Can you help me improve these? How would you do that? And I love those conversations because you're able to mesh kind of this technical and business that we're talking about with the vendors to help you get there.

SPEAKER_01 21:17

Absolutely. The more people you have helping you pull in the right direction, the better. Um let's leave our listeners with some questions that they can take into that next meeting.

SPEAKER_02 21:27

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

You know, based on the topics we've touched on so far, what jumps to the top of your mind when I say that?

SPEAKER_02 21:35

I would say what business metric should move because of this investment. And to Sean's point, that doesn't have to be some pie in the sky number. It truly maybe reduce inventory by X. That's that's a great one. Or speed up prototyping why why because of new products. But you should be able to answer that before you ever ask someone to print a sample for you. That would probably be my number one thing. What business Objective or metric should move if I go do this? What about for you? What would be one of maybe the top ones you'd ask?

SPEAKER_01 22:08

You know, I think it's what would happen if this capability disappeared tomorrow?

SPEAKER_00 22:14

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 22:15

You know, would is it our spending on external prototyping goes back to this? Is it all of a sudden lead times are gonna extend and instead of getting five projects or five products launched next year, we're gonna get three? What are those implications? And then who needs to understand that? Not that you necessarily you don't want to communicate it as a threat, but you need to understand what those implications are before someone makes a decision. You know what? I think we can, I haven't heard much out of a 3D printing group in a while. I mean, yeah, I got the little turkey on my desk at Thanksgiving, but other than that, I haven't really heard a lot in a while. I wonder if we've kind of gotten everything we can get out of that and we could sort of pull the plug. Right. If people draw the wrong conclusion, don't blame them if they didn't have the information.

SPEAKER_02 23:04

Yeah, I'm I'm so glad you brought that up. You know, who, who needs to understand it and who can explain it. Sometimes where I see programs just skyrocket, we call them champions around here. They're they're champions because they can articulate it well to various stakeholders and they can't help but want to tell people. And I don't just mean the CFO or maybe your boss or or the VP of RD. They communicate it repeatedly and regularly. That does not have to be the same person that made the technology investment. So find whoever that is in your group that is a natural communicator of value and task them with that. Make that as big a part of their job as making sure all these parts come out correctly too.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

You know, I got to tie that back to one of the very first episodes we did with Todd Gagney, and he talked about when he first got into leadership, he didn't have the A-team. And based on how he was leading, he wasn't getting the A team wanting to join his team. If you want the best and brightest in your company to want to get on your team, that type of marketing that you just described is vital. If all people ever hear about a certain organization is, ugh, wow, a lot of problems over there. I don't know, missed their number again last quarter, third quarter in a row. You know, they don't talk to other people much. We kind of just slide their meal under the door. They do some things, we get parts out. You are not gonna have A-teamers fighting to get on your team. And I will tell you, as a leader, the number one predictor of your success long term is the quality of people you're able to attract from a talent standpoint. So it really does come full circle. Um, you know, another thing that I I think is you've got to ask, you touched on it earlier, but am I measuring parts or am I measuring a business outcome?

SPEAKER_00 24:51

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 24:52

Um, you know, hey, 98.6% of our parts met spec. I mean, that sounds good. Does that save me money because I had less scrap or rework or what what is that? What's the business outcome associated with that? Figure out how to how to tag that in and you know, ask that question in the meeting if you don't know the answer.

SPEAKER_02 25:14

Yeah, I think you know, that's a that's a great place to close where this lesson is that technology adoption and business transformation are not two conversations. They're not two separate tracks. They really are entwined in the places that we see additive successfully start and grow. Um, and not just within an engineering group, but with real recognizable performance at the business level too.

SPEAKER_01 25:40

Absolutely. Um, that's usually where the the failure starts, is when you get that disconnect, but also, you know, the opportunity to do this right.

SPEAKER_02 25:51

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