From CCJ
Changing economy and logistics: digitized supply chain, automation in global manufacturing will reduce truck freight volume in 2020s
Long-term freight challenges loom for the trucking industry as the economy and the supply chain become more efficient, more digitized and, thus, less reliant on transport needs, said Noȅl Perry, a chief economist for FTR and Truckstop.com.
Perry, who gave a trucking economic outlook Wednesday at the annual FTR Conference in Indianapolis, said freight movement continues to drop as a share of the country’s overall economy (as measured by GDP). “The economy constantly finds ways to economize on transportation,” he says. “It’s falling and it continues to fall. And in the 2020s it’s going to fall at an even greater rate.”
Short-term, Perry forecasts the industry to grow in its own right, its share of GDP aside. Perry expects growth of 5 percent this year over last year, 3 percent in 2018 and another 2 percent in 2019.
Long-term, the picture becomes more dire. Perry sees a “substantial reduction in international movement of finished goods,” over the next decade and a half as low-cost labor in places like China and Mexico is increasingly replaced by automation. This shift in global manufacturing will cut into truck freight in the U.S., he says. Some of that freight will be replaced with domestically produced goods, but it won’t make up for the losses, he says. Currently, about 30 percent of U.S. truck freight stems from imports.
Smart supply chain people are taking transportation out of the economy
The number of inventory holding points for both online and brick-and-mortar retailers will “drop dramatically,” Perry says. He blames the drop on the trend of expedited movement of consumer products (that is, consumers wanting goods ordered online within hours, not days) and the likelihood of autonomous vehicles coming to market. “This is another way in which the smart supply chain people are taking transportation out of the economy,” he says, “by substituting high service trucking but taking ton-miles out of the economy.’
Shipment of fuels by truck to drop from 9 million loads to 3 million loads per year
Truckloads of fuel will also plunge in the coming decades, Perry forecasts. Increased fuel economy, greater reliance on alternative fuels and fuel conservation efforts will by 2030 cut the number of fuel loads by two-thirds, he says, from about 9 million a year to just 3 million. “That’s great news for the economy, but not so good news for” trucking, he says. “This is a great example of why that transportation to GDP ratio keeps going down.”
Eliminating the need to ship and store inventory: Cummins Engine, Oak Ridge National Lab make the point
From Engineering.com
One of the benefits of additive manufacturing is the potential to eliminate the need for stored inventory. From end products to replacement parts to tools, 3D printing could make it possible to print what we need, when and where we need it, with the mythical batch size of one and completely custom made with very low lead time.
In collaboration with Cummins Engines, a research team at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory is making it happen today.
Heavy-duty Cummins cylinder heads wear out after a million miles on the road. Ordinarily, these cast iron parts would have to be replaced with new castings, a costly process in terms of time, energy, and money. Instead, the team ‘scoops out’ the worn section, and uses additive techniques to deposit a high-performance alloy in its place, like a heavy-duty dental filling.
New process prints metal directly onto machined surface
Niyanth Sridharan is an ORNL Post-Doctorate Research Associate working on the project with colleagues Brian Jordan and Ryan Dehoff. Niyanth told me the details of the process:
Oak Ridge has modified DM3D’s device, adding infrared sensors to monitor temperature, and heaters to avoid cracking of the cast iron during the repair/rebuilding process.First, Cummins receives damaged cylinder heads that are out of service, with damage near the site of the fuel injector. Cummins uses conventional milling to machine out the damaged area, and sends it to ORNL.
The researchers then draw a CAD file of the machined section, and preprogram their printer using G-code, so that the filler metal can be deposited directly onto the part, without the need for any other substrate or fabrication.
The G-Code is loaded onto a DM3D direct energy deposition system, a laser powder blown machine, which uses a laser mounted on a 5-axis CNC head. The nozzle sprays a cloud of atomized metal powder right on the area which needs to be repaired and the laser melts the powder to build fully dense parts layer by layer. The advantage of this process is that it can be used to build onto existing parts making the process applicable for repair and hard facing coatings. DM3D is a small business based in Detroit, Michigan.
Next steps for engine repair with 3D printing
Cast iron is extremely difficult to repair, due to its tendency to crack. The researchers are using a high-nickel-containing alloy to avoid cracking and increase thermal efficiency of the part. The deposited alloy bonds to the existing cast iron during the additive process. Microscopic analysis of the bonds shows good adhesion, but the repaired parts have yet to be tested on the road.
Niyanth says next steps for the project include testing how strong the bonds and interfaces are. After that, the team will try out slightly different alloys proposed by Cummins. In-service testing will be the true test, putting the repair through the intense heating/cooling cycles of engine use.
This intriguing research shows the potential of 3D printing: not only replacing parts, but repairing and even upgrading existing parts.
The automotive industry would see obvious benefits from this ability. A dealership or even a third-party repair shop could print the parts needed for a repair instantly, not only eliminating the need for inventories of parts, but also reducing shipping costs and lead times of ordering replacement parts.
Instead of seeing “parts and labor” on your mechanic’s invoice, you may soon see “raw materials and labor.”
