The project aimed to develop a managed market, using combinatorial auctions, where to acquire products made with 3D printing (additive manufacturing technologies).
This market facilitated the organization and coordination of collaborative offers among customers to receive bids from manufacturers or 3D printing service providers.
First, this market allowed customers to obtain better prices from the manufacturers. On the other hand, manufacturers could optimize their installed production capacity, and they could reduce the operating costs in each case, and depending on the technology: start-up, energy, etc.
3D printing is a set of manufacturing technologies within the so-called Industry 4.0. The market for 3D printing products was not sufficiently well developed. When a private or company was interested in obtaining a product by means of 3D printing, it should look for potential suppliers in repositories (e.g., www.3dhubs.com), select among different suppliers (e.g., www.shapeways.com, www.sculpteo.com), or resort to marketplaces (e.g., www.i.materialise.com). They could also use local 3D printing services, which did not always have the necessary technology neither were they competitive, to ask for offers.
In all cases, they should refer to the technical documentation by means that did not guarantee neither confidentiality nor intellectual property of the product to be manufactured. This limited the possibility of obtaining good prices, of making a comparison between the different offers and also limited the competitiveness and the sources of advantages for the final users of additive manufacturing technologies.
The research group has more than 15 years of experience in «auction development» and «market institutions». This is confirmed by the latest projects financed in European and national competitive calls, in which the mechanisms to build an airport slots market (European SESAR funding) and the slots on a railway line (National Plan) have been designed. Work has also been carried out on the liberalization of the electricity market, emission rights, financial markets, etc. On the other hand, It has participated in several research contracts on printing3D and industry 4.0, and also in a European project to develop services of Digital Company and Digital Supply Chain with Impression3D with the company DIMA3D S.L. (FIL3D project).
INSISOC
Grupo de Investigación Reconocido de la Universidad de Valladolid
Paseo de Belén, 11. Edificio UVainnova. Campus Miguel Delibes. 47011 Valladolid
innovacion@insisoc.uva.es
983 18 47 03
