AVL's Reimagine Mobility Podcast

Redefining Mobility: The Additive Manufacturing Revolution w/ Fadi Abro

• AVL, North America

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Dive deep into the transformative world of additive manufacturing with Fadi Abro from Stratasys as we explore how this megatrend is reshaping the automotive industry, from prototyping to manufacturing and beyond. Learn about the challenges, opportunities, and future predictions directly from an insider. Whether you're an industry professional or just fascinated by how cars will be built in the future, this discussion will provide you with valuable insights into reimagining mobility.

 

Fadi Abro is the Global Director of Transportation at Stratasys. In this role, Fadi develops and deploys the Go-to-Market strategies for transportation industry, driving innovative manufacturing methods for use in automotive, rail, motorsports, marine and agriculture. Fadi has more than 12 years of additive manufacturing experience and leads a global cross functional team of sales and engineering experts to drive implementation of additive manufacturing applications. 

 

Fadi joined Stratasys in 2010 with a background in engineering. Prior to Stratasys, he worked for a large automotive tier 1 supplier as a sales engineer.  Fadi holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, and an MBA in Sales and Marketing.

 

Stratasys is leading the global shift to additive manufacturing with innovative 3D printing solutions for industries such as aerospace, automotive, consumer products and healthcare. Through smart and connected 3D printers, polymer materials, a software ecosystem, and parts on demand, Stratasys solutions deliver competitive advantages at every stage in the product value chain. The world’s leading organizations turn to Stratasys to transform product design, bring agility to manufacturing and supply chains, and improve patient care.

 

To learn more about Stratasys visit www.stratasys.com, the Stratasys blog, X/Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook.

If you would like to be a guest on the show contact: namarketing@avl.com

Welcome everyone to Reimagine Mobility Podcast. I'm here with Fadi Abro from Stratasys this Fadi Thanks for joining me today. We're going to talk about something very interesting here as we talk about how do we see mobility going forward, how to re-imagine mobility There certainly the technology side, there's the consumer side, but very importantly also there's the manufacturing side. And you work in additive manufacturing that I would say maybe besides ADAS and electrification is a megatrend that not too many people are talking about, but really has been going on for quite a while. So please introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit what you guys are doing and then let's jump in and re-imagine mobility together here. Wonderful. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate the invites. I'll tell you a little bit about myself. First. I went to school for engineering at a local college here in Detroit, Lawrence Tech. And I didn't really go down the path of engineering, focused on engineering, you know, go into the automotive industry. Well, halfway through my schooling, I was like, I don't know that I want to be behind computer all day, every day. And started to pivot to more entrepreneurial engineering related activity, ended up more on the sales management, sales, engineering side of the world. Started with a Japanese tour, one supplier that does a lot of material handling. So if you've ever seen the automated vehicles that go through our factories or on, that's that's what I kind of started my career doing. It pivoted in 2010 or so to manufacturing, found a company that was doing that again here in Detroit and in 2010 joined a company called Sol Concepts, which was eventually bought by Stratos. So I've been at Stratasys and then they additive Ecosystem for about 13 years and a lot has changed. I'm sure we'll talk about all that lot here in the next couple minutes. But as far as what Stratasys is doing today, we're in many different sectors. So you can imagine additive like most manufacturing methods as a home and all the major verticals they call aero auto, medical, consumer products, you name it. And in auto or specifically doing is enabling the manufacturing of the vehicles. That's that's the new megatrend, as you mentioned. And I would say in some of the industry 4.0 things that are happening additive is focused more on getting vehicles out the door for many years. So as the eighties, late eighties, Stratasys, I was born in 89. We've been working with the autos on the prototype product development side of the business. So the design studios and the folks who are more focused on designing the vehicle. Right now, we're focused on the people who actually get the vehicle to the consumer. So that that is the most recent trend and that's what we're direct to there. So Fadi, where we're talking about additive manufacturing, right? I have two things in my mind. I need a spare part for my vehicle that I'm driving. The dealership doesn't have it, the local parts store doesn't have it. So I call this person who has this printing machine in their basement or in their garage, and he or she's going to print this for me. How strange, how out-of-this-world thinking, how twisted is this or what's reality? And maybe also, what is the future as we reimagine mobility? Share a little bit about that. yeah. Look, I'm never going twist it to your face, right? I think it's a good I think it's a good thought. And it's a place that most people jump to. I can make a prototype. Why can't I just make the end? Use part with that same machine that makes the prototype in? In most cases, it's a fair thought and it's an appropriate thing to think about. It becomes much more of a reality when you look at spare parts, aftermarket, low volume, bespoke vehicles. Those are places where, of course, if you're looking at them, they're low volume by nature and then they marry themselves to additives. Really? What? Well, I will say the idea of somebody doing in their garage or in their basement is probably unrealistic even in the future, because what you will you're trying to produce is an industrial part, sort of like saying, could somebody just buy an injection molding process or a stamping press and put it in the garage? Theoretically, yes, but it's probably not an ideal choice for it. What what's most like what's happening today and what's most likely to continue as a trend is that the clients are themselves or their suppliers buy this equipment, industrial level equipment, not hobby level type 3D printing stuff. They put those in the factories and those are the places where spare parts come from. So a dealer needs a 92 Corolla component. They send the data or some of the request or it comes back that's 3D printed. They either finish it to the paint spec or some third party supplier does that down the line. That's the that's the scenario that OEMs are working through today. There is a barrier. You have technical audience I want to speak to that. The big barrier is mostly around certifications, prints, the paperwork, the the standards have all been made on a different manufacturing method for that part originally. And also you're even if the material is the same, you're producing in a different way. You're extruding it or you're, yeah, you're a total cheering it or whatever it is you're making in a different way. Even if the material properties are superior to that of the production component. Without the proper certs, it's hard to just go one for one making insert. So what a lot of the companies, Toyota, GM, you name it, they're coming up with standards where they can say, okay, let me sleep, use this material in this manufacturing method, this process and additive and this material and additive coupled together are equal in 1 to 1. Therefore, spare parts or even bridge to production becomes a reality. So, you know, in the COVID era, we all deal with supply chain issues. Maybe I need to get the first 400 cars rolling and I'm waiting on parts that are made in China, Vietnam, wherever, and those parts, let's say 2 to 3 components, are going to slow down your entire build for a month. You could supplement that with additive. If you have these surge kind of thought about and figure it out in the beginning. So that that's the main challenge for the OEM today. It's not so much a material challenge, it's not so much a product problem. It's a certain well understood to the testing and validation of automotive parts very rigorously have to go through. So let me take you back maybe like ten years. There was a some sort of a military conference where the generals and sort of the visionaries there were talking about what they're looking at and this was a big topic, right? How do we get spare parts out into the into the field? Where were war is going on right in the conflict zone? Certainly, we're not going to have a a large hall with all sorts of potential spare parts there that you can just go and grab it and go out that you may have somewhere here in the U.S. on a base, for example. But you need flexibility, You need to get something done quickly and you need to fix it fast. So this was brought up and it's ever since made a lot of sense to me. It sounds like we're for sure moving there. What do you see happening over the next 5 to 10 years? Are we are we getting more material? Are we are we getting even more parts in what is possible today? Because the machinery equipment that you guys are producing and and supporting is getting better? Is it because the industry, the OEMs, as you just mentioned, become more interested in the bigger and lower spare parts flexibility faster or turnaround? No inventory. All of this share a little bit and tell us what do we what what can we expect over the next 5 to 10 years? Yeah, let me just comment on your government example. The two biggest segments for Stratasys today are government and automotive. So it's it's serendipitous that you speak about that about ten years ago because that's what the that's what you imagine the fleets and aging equipment that's out there when it comes to, you know, the Navy Air Force equipment that was already low volume by nature in the production process, long ago. But now there's an even lower volume when you talk about spare parts. So that is a that is a huge market for us and one where we are solving that problem today. They're able to pivot a little bit easier in terms of standards simply because they write the standard. It's not like automotive where there's deep sort of standards right. To your point about what's what's what's coming, I just have to go back a little bit before we get to what's coming. I mentioned I've been in additive for, you know, nearly 13, 14 years. What's really changed in that time has been the properties of the materials and the quality and accuracy of the equipment. So the engineering part has been solved, right? Can we get the product to be as strong as it can be? Can we get it to be as accurate as it can be? That's what that's what's changed a lot in the past ten years. What I expect in the next 5 to 10 years is going to be two things software and throughput will address throughput. First, even though we're talking about low volumes, you know, as is everyone listening understands low volume for auto could be 30,000. That's still a pretty high volume for additive. And so the focus needs to be around how do we get more out of this equipment, how do we get better uptime and throughput, get more parts per hour out of the machine? So I expect us to go there. That has improved tremendously over the past three years, but a lot less to go to keep up even with the low volume, you know, Corvettes and specialty vehicles, sort of the the traditional autos on the software side, there's a lot happening there. So software is a big enabler for every probably sub industry of automotive, as you imagine. I'm sure you've spoken to lots of folks in AI and then in software development, their US software can enable the use of additive in a couple of different ways. One is I mentioned the 94 curl up that we put the cat in some air that will just filter out all the parts that make sense for additive put them in a budget, helps the OEM decide what to do with that first step. From a spare flight perspective. So rather than an engineer individually clicking on all 30,000 units in a vehicle to figure out which ones should be printed, an additive and then on the manufacturing side, something we haven't discussed yet in delve into is you're open to it as a manufacturing element. So these are the tools, the jigs, the fixtures that help put the car together. A and generative design can be used today to help an operator make a more ergonomic tool. So if you have to assemble a door and the hinge on a vehicle, you typically use a jig or a fixture to hold it in place or check the said or, you know, look at the gaps. All that is done was tooling fixturing. That is essentially one offs. They're very expensive to make since the machinists don't want to make them because they want they're seeing C machines producing production parts and the complexity on those things done and tends to be very, very high. So you can imagine a world where software enables that, where you say, okay, this operation I want to create or this operation I want the operator to execute on. And then it draws the tool, sends it to the printer, and then that operator as a tool, but helps the manufacturer when. Interesting. So when I listen to these two things pop in my head, right. One tremendous opportunity for society maybe as a whole, as we talking about sustainability, we need less molds, we need less jigs, We need a whole lot less of this because we can get all just to this one, quote unquote, universal machine or printer, if I may call this on the other side. I'll look at this. I'm listening to listen to to this opportunity. Right. And I say, what about all these companies and shops that produce these jigs, right. That now essentially Stratasys and orders in the industry could essentially eliminate? I mean, at the end of the day, maybe good for the environment, good for maybe capital employed as it relates to value of good for the OEM because he has to pay less tooling costs. But your sub is a is this all true and B, do you get pushback from some of the suppliers that do this that say, hey, it's nowhere near as good from a quality perspective as ours, it's not competitive enough, etc., etc.. Can you share a little bit on that area? Not an unfounded fear and a fear that we hear every now and then, like with any new technology or any enablement tool? I was in, I was in the HGV world, as I mentioned earlier, it could you can imagine how the forklift drivers felt about an automated vehicle taking things from point A to point B by itself. Well, look, at the end of the day, what we're trying to do with the additive is enable those suppliers. So why why are you machining your jig out of aluminum when you should be printing it in polymer? That's carbon reinforced, that's stiffer, less weight that are ergonomics. and by the way, it's cheaper and faster. So I don't necessarily want to do that work. That's not the that's not the role of Stratasys. It's the role Stratasys to make equipment that enables these folks to say, I'm going to bring in this new technology and be able to support my core business. If my core business is making fixtures, if my core business is, you know, producing robotic end of ARM tools for a company that's doing a lot of automation, if my role is to make truck fixtures or I'm involved in the amount, I can bring in this equipment and enable my production process again, just the same way you would when you buy a power drill, you don't throw away all of your other tools that are tools, controls, who what. When we hear you mention it before, right? Industry 4.0 Mary sit here for for this right And we oftentimes listen to or we read about for example Tesla and how advanced their manufacturing is. They're always looking for the next thing on how they can squeeze out even additional efficiency or I'd reduce cost, increase efficiency, throughput, all those. I think what we're talking here is very much probably fits exactly into this share a little bit what are currently the limitation. I know you talked about the material, right. A big cost today. Certainly is the frames for cars, right? A big cost is when we talk, for example, one of the megatrends we touched earlier upon electrification, the battery enclosure. Right. Is has to be of materi. All that is from a thermal management is able to handle the heat and the heating and the cooling. And in both cases and I don't see additive manufacturing there yet but again, I'm not the expert you are. So can you put a little bit of light on on that space? Yes, I will admit that we've had about 30 years an additive to hone and and fine tuning the Polymer Solutions. So all the plastic solutions out there, whether it's from Stratasys or our competitors, are at the top tier level. It's there in the industrial space, just like anything else, right? A moped and an F-150 or two different classes of vehicle. So we're in the industrial space. Others like us and our competitors who are in the industrial space, we have had a lot of time to fine tune the polymer side of business and make that as efficient as it can be. So I have a ways to go on throughput. Still need the OEMs to help us with certifying these materials for production. Use those on the metal side, it's still a low maturity space. The technology has a niche if you're making rocket equipment, if you're making aerospace components where cost is not so much a factor because you're making one or two or it's, you know, as my counterparts in aerospace say, it's going one way, meaning it's a missile or something. It's just never coming back. It's a much better environment for additive because they are cost is not so much of that. So while metals is still in a space where it can contribute to some segments in auto, we find that most of the contributions are in motorsports sort of mirrors what what aerospace does, right? A racecar is an upside down plane. So it's it's it makes sense in that kind of high dollar, one off type of environment where metals would make sense. The technology is just not there yet to make these big sprawling planes and fixture or, you know, internal fixtures to the vehicle. So I would say for now, the traditional methods of doing that are just the right way to use. I don't see a world in even in the future, even if we can make metal machines huge this time of year, cost effectiveness stamping out Sheet Metal Chair Sure. Okay. Two more questions for you. One, if you had to give a couple of examples of where you wish the what stayed with automotive mobility in general could be aerospace as we just mean anything. Boats, trains, planes, trains, automobiles. Right. But if you if you were to highlight a little bit, what if you could convince some of the skeptics in the manufacturing space in those sectors of mobility, what would you try and highlight to them that that you feel like is still something that they're constantly maybe seen? And I'm not sure I'm used to this for the last 20 years and I showed a hacking going to change it, right? What what are some of these things? Because we all experience sea ride new technologies. People are in it for a while. They get used to something and it's hard for change, right? It's hard to change until we see them. We say, Gosh darn it, why didn't we do this two years ago when I first heard about it? Right. So what are some of these things you you wish you could have a better ability, I guess so to speak, to convince them that this is working and it is doing what you need it to do. You know, thank you for the for the great question opportunity. I mean, obviously, like this is what keeps me up at night, right? How do we get more adoption and addittive and I will say we are blessed that Stratasys, so many OEMs have put their trust in us, GM, Toyota, for Tesla, BMW, these are all big customers of our key, key customers. I have people on my team or solely assigned to those customers because of their adoption and their growth and their ability to implement technology. Where we have struggled actually is in these larger tier ones. So it's ironic that some of the tier twos have adopted it because they see it and they go, not for a couple of hundred thousand dollars. I can I don't have to buy another CNC or I can, you know, check my metal components, make sure they're not out of stacks with the easily printed check feature. But the big tier ones are sort of just a little bit stuck in limbo and are not sort of making this big jumps of those tier ones listening out there. I mean, I would encourage you to look at additive in three ways. One is the prototype side of the world. You're likely already doing this in some form, whether you're outsourcing or you're doing it on a hobby level printer. That design phase, no matter how good simulation gets, there are going to be times where we have to make a physical representation of the part that we have, then to either show to a customer or to a focus group or select commercial, you're going to have to make that part physically at some point. So the design side is number one. Number two, which is to me, the biggest low hanging fruit today. I've talked about it a lot in this in this in this interview is the fixturing and the jigs. I mean, I walk through, you name it, Lior Martin Real value. You walk through these companies in their production floors and it's all machined fixtures that cost, you know, let's just say on average 3000 to $10000 fixture. We're seeing the OEMs are telling us those, right? We're not making it up. OEM is GM for and Toyota comes to us and says, Hey, we put these in our plants and we're saving about 90% per fixture. So 90%. So that's you go from 3000 to 300 and you're able to do that by just simply adopting this technology. To me, again, very low hanging fruit. We don't talk about it a lot because it's not as sexy. Right? The the fixturing of the vehicle is not as sexy as the actual parts going on. The car. And then the third way is this pre-production spare parts way that is going to require collaboration of tier ones. Eventually, you know, the OEMs may give us a standard and say, yes, this can be used for spare parts. We still have to go to that OEM or that tier one was like that part to begin with and work with them on that. So those are kind of the three categories I want them for everyone to think about isn't already floating out at us. That's good. Very enlightening, very interesting. All right. Last question. Not related to Stratasys or to Technology, but what's going to be the next car are you going to buy and why you, man, it's a great question. I'll tell you, I'll probably answer this longer than you need, but I love cars, so I am a big muscle car guy for a long time. You know, I sort of made a compromise. I got a charger right before I got married, before I bought my wife's wedding ring. And we tried to get my charge flex. So it's that oscillation over yours. And I. I loved that car for a long time. Then we had kids, see some of them up here in the pictures. We're kids. So I had to opt for a U-turn for now. But my next car, assuming when the kids are old that older, there's going to be some muscle car. I would say if I had a blank check, like a 69 Chevelle, probably it would be the dream car. Something I can read, you know, refashion on the inside with some matter of meeting. And that would probably be the dream the drink are realistically next car appear to be an easy SUV is my guess okay I just want to say I mean muscle it sounds like muscle for you is is internal combustion engine not necessarily like a Tesla plaid if I want to quote one of your customers products here so interested interest Detroit raised, it's hard for me to think of muscle as heavy, although I'm sure it's not. I don't see a race like I guarantee you my wife's nice car will be an easy car because she knows you just goes to work and comes home. Right? You know, it's like a 30 minute drive round trip. So it's like, why? Why? Why not make an investment? Yeah, very good. Thank so much. Very insightful, very educational for me. I know this will be very educational. Interesting to hear among all our listeners and viewers. So thank you so much for your time.