The Stakeholders’ Conference: Additive Manufacturing Strategies

The additive manufacturing (AM) industry has always been one that’s prone to sudden, drastic changes, and clearly, this is as true now as ever. With that in mind, one of the most valuable assets for anyone seriously interested in the industry is first-hand insight into where AM stakeholders’ heads are at as another new year in AM history begins.

Above all, I think this is why Additive Manufacturing Strategies (AMS) stands out. More so than any other AM industry conference, AMS brings the stakeholders together. Held in New York City from February 4-6, AMS 2025 may be the event’s most stakeholder-heavy edition yet.

So, what is a stakeholder? Just more marketing consultant verbal sorcery? While it may be used that way quite often, I like the term because it emphasizes an industry’s existence as an industry, rather than merely as a loose collection of vaguely related enterprises. The term in its original definition is as simple as it is significant: “those groups without whose support the organization would cease to exist.”

Although AM is still in that chaotic emergence phase where it would be difficult to view it as possessing the homogeneity of one organization, there is nonetheless a solidifying core of actors that play an increasingly indispensable role in anchoring the industry’s development. For AM, especially in the West, any proper definition of the industry’s stakeholders must include the US federal government — an entity amply represented in the conference’s list of speakers, particularly from the singularly influential Department of Defense (DoD).

But the US government, of course, doesn’t pursue its AM mission unilaterally. It’s useless to discuss the public sector’s industrial activities in a vacuum: those activities ultimately only take place in the context of public-private partnerships, and this is where AMS truly shines. The event’s tight three-day schedule features panel after panel packed with the leaders working directly in the public-private nexus: the brightest spot in the AM industry’s current landscape, and in my opinion, nothing less than the hope for AM’s future.

That theme is most prominently on display in the afternoon of Day 1, with Panel 5: Rebuilding the Industrial Base: Government and National Clusters, and Panel 6: Bridging the Public-Private Gap. Both panels feature stakeholders from two of AM’s most influential organizations in the US public-private sphere — John Wilczynski from America Makes, and Neal Orringer from ASTRO America. But they also include key leaders from similar organizations around the world, such as Singapore’s National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Cluster (NAMIC), and the Spanish Association of AM (ADDIMAT), creating the opportunity to receive a truly unique perspective on AM’s global impact.

And, while all the other panels and keynotes don’t center around the global public-private nexus quite so explicitly, that theme is still just as well represented throughout the rest of the AMS schedule. For instance, just before Panels 5 and 6 on Day 1, Matthew Sermon, the US Navy’s Executive Director for Program Executive Office for Strategic Submarines, will be giving a keynote on the all-important maritime space.

On Day 2, Mark Benedict from the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) will be moderating a panel, The Industrialization of Additive for Aerospace, which will also include Paul Gradl from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. Later on Day 2, panels dedicated to healthcare will feature insiders working in one of the most promising areas for AM growth, on both sides of the public-private divide. Finally, on Day 3, attendees will have the rare chance to see forecasters from some of AM’s most respected consultancies unite to help everyone make sense of where the industry is headed next.

Whatever your specific area of interest then, AMS 2025 is the best place to hear from the minds that are genuinely moving the needle. If you have a stake in the AM industry, you need to be there.

Images courtesy of 3DPrint.com