Würth’s Digital Inventory Software Moves from MVP to Market at AMUG

At 2024’s Additive Manufacturing Users Group (AMUG) Conference in Chicago, Würth Additive Group (WAG) unveiled its Digital Inventory Services (DIS) software platform, aiming to productize a streamlined ability to adopt and deploy AM in a secure, distributed network. Building on that momentum, at AMUG 2025, attendees witnessed WAG’s vision for DIS go from minimum viable product (MVP) to an officially released, first edition software platform, giving everyone in the global AM customer base the opportunity to streamline their operations from end to end via a division of one of the world’s most experienced and respected industrial conglomerates.

In a conference room at the Chicago Hilton, WAG’s CEO, AJ Strandquist, and the product manager for DIS, Victor Kurtz, stood surrounded by racks of safety equipment, operational 3D printers, and DIS’s signature IoT edge devices explaining how DIS has gone from beta-testing to a full launch over the course of the last year. According to Kurtz, the initial rollout at AMUG 2024 was pivotal to that trajectory:

“We had over forty signups to a wait-list for DIS at last year’s conference, and we took a call with every single one of of those prospective users, which really helped us dial in on the value proposition,” Kurtz said. “So even if our message this year surrounding the full-launch is similar to what it was last year when we launched the MVP, we’ve now figured out a bunch of the missing puzzle pieces that allow us, to a significant extent, to be able to respond to what the market is demanding ahead of time.”

As Strandquist pointed out, most of that critical feedback from users of the pilot platform related to how different kinds of enterprises simply have different sets of needs when it comes to adopting and using AM to implement distributed manufacturing capabilities:

“There’s a stark contrast between large enterprises that need role-based access control, single sign-on, all those big corporate things, and somebody who is running a Shopify store, for instance, who’s trying to sell, say, Dungeons and Dragons figurines,” the CEO told me. “For big companies, we have to make the case for how we can help them keep selling what they’re selling now without disrupting their existing distribution processes, and demonstrate how we can actually enhance those processes with a digital paper-trail, diversified suppliers, etc.

“For the operations run by one or a handful of people engaged in e-commerce, we have to explain how history shows that customers generally prefer to purchase products in a real market vs. a black or grey market situation. And we can give them the same process control for their applications that we deliver for giant multinationals.”

Aside from the fact that WAG is already embedded into the supply chain of the world’s largest supplier of fasteners (not to mention myriad other general industrial goods), WAG has illustrated its competencies for handling the business of major brands with the help of one of its earliest pilot users, wind giant Vestas. The latter’s lead specialist for AM and advanced concepts, Jeremy Haight, was on-site at AMUG, assisting WAG with the launch.

And, while DIS is machine-agnostic, WAG also has a tight partnership with Raise3D — which just released its first SLS printer at RAPID + TCT 2025 — a crucial co-sign from one of the world’s most prominent AM hardware brands. At AMUG, WAG helped Raise3D promote the DF2+ DLP printer, its other new launch, and the first 3D printer to be fully integrated with DIS.

Last September, AM Research, 3DPrint.com’s sister brand, released a white paper co-produced with WAG, “Always in Stock: Streamlining Inventory Management with Additive Manufacturing,” which can be downloaded here. The paper explored how companies could rethink their supply chains using digital tools like AM to cut down on overseas sourcing, reduce risks, and make inventory management easier. That was barely more than six months ago, making it a bit jarring to realize how much the world has changed since the white paper was released — not just in terms of WAG’s own progress but in the broader global supply chain context.

One thing that is certainly not different, though, is that WAG has a solid rationale for why now is the time for digital inventory. Indeed, virtually every major geopolitical event that has transpired since last September reinforces the idea that the moment has arrived for industrializing the quality and scale of AM-enabled distributed manufacturing, an objective that can’t succeed without digital inventory software.

In fact, I don’t think it’s too much to say that the validity of all the AM industry excitement connected to reshoring’s center-stage role in the current global media discourse will hinge on the success of products like DIS. With that in mind, there is one subtle aspect to DIS that I took away from its official launch, which I think captures exactly what the AM industry needs right now, to capitalize on what’s animating the prevailing business environment.

At the center of WAG’s conference room base-of-operations at AMUG, there was a table piled with modest white index-card-sized placards that summed up everything DIS is selling. Divided into four levels, from “LEVEL ZERO – DIS ACCESS” to “LEVEL THREE – DIS ENTERPRISE,” all the services WAG offers are instantly graspable by any potential customer, and in a way that enables all such potential customers to immediately figure out which group they fall into.

It may sound too obvious, but this is precisely the sort of obviousness — and ease-of-use — that the AM industry has lacked, and it is the sort of adhesive that can congeal a fragmented assortment of loosely-related companies, technologies, and services into a coherent, thriving industry. Ultimately, this is how the concepts of reworking a supply chain, or starting a manufacturing enterprise, get packaged into a single product. That is how AM grows past being merely a bunch of interesting use cases.