From physical to digital supply chain

Excess inventory can be a very big frustration factor especially in small businesses. Excessive inventory incurs costs of storage space, carrying and others. Spare parts, which are to be carried by OEMs and or suppliers, for End-of-Life support for existing products, could end up with major costs. Almost all Inventories of spare parts of any business have too many parts that will be used in a very low rate. Most of these products with low turnover ratio can be made using 3D printing technology, yet 3D printing is not well utilized due to the difficulties of implementing this technology. This paper will propose a new system of photogrammetry and 3D printing to digitize the low turnover ratio products and eliminate their inventory. A three stage solution is proposed: first stage, products determination; determine products that can be converted to digital form; second stage; inventory elimination, using photogrammetry to convert products to digital form and third stage, product manufacturing; using 3D printing to make parts. A case study is presented to illustrate the procedure.