EU Looking to 3D Printing to Help Revive Manufacturing

It seems that week-in and week-out gloomy news regarding the EU zone’s economy keeps making the front page.  However, Reuter’s has uncovered a document that underlines some of the strategies the European Commission is looking to adopt to remedy a lagging manufacturing sector.  It comes as no surprise that one of the technologies highlighted was 3D printing.

From Reuters, “The paper, which outlines the bloc’s future industrial policy, said the commission wants to raise manufacturing from 16 percent to 20 percent of EU GDP by 2020 using new techniques such as 3D printing, which builds objects using instructions from a printer.”

I’m hesitant to believe that 3D printing will end up being a savior for the EU’s manufacturing woes (and I don’t think the EU Commission believes this either), but I do think that investing in the technology and promoting its use in product innovation is key to creating a broad innovation economy… and that’s something that all economies could benefit from.

Read the full story at Reuters

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