NIST Economic Analysis Briefs 3 

The Economic Impact of Technology Infrastructure for 

Additive Manufacturing 

Gary Anderson (gary.anderson@nist.gov) 

Technology Partnerships Office, Innovation & Industry Services 

October 2016 Key Findings 

• Conservative estimates indicate that meeting the identified technology infrastructure needs would

save additive manufacturers $4.1 billion annually. Benefits attributable to enhanced product quality,

market growth and R&D costs savings which are identified but not quantified would greatly increase

this estimate.

• Barriers to innovation increase the cost of additive manufacturing R&D, weaken private investment

incentives and foster proprietary standards that can distort the market.

• Closing select technical gaps while leaving other needs unmet would significantly limit the benefits 

to domestic manufacturers.

• Small firms are particularly disadvantaged by current gaps in the technology infrastructure. 

Introduction 

Across an array of industries from aerospace to personalized medical devices, additive manufacturing 

(AM) technologies are used to make objects and parts by joining ultrathin layers of material layer by 

layer. A recent study1 commissioned by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) finds 

AM has great “potential to enable both sustaining and disruptive innovation but is held back by 

inadequate technology infrastructure needed to support the further development and application of 

AM technologies.” Technology infrastructure2 is the broad base of public and quasi-public 

technologies and technical knowledge that support the research, development, production and 

diffusion activities of national laboratories, universities and firms alike. The unique contribution of this 

study is to identify AM technology needs closely aligned with NIST’s mission and estimate the impact 

of meeting these needs. 

After conducting nearly 60 in-depth interviews with researchers, developers, manufactures and 

other stakeholders involved with additive manufacturing, the study identified technology 

infrastructure needs - “currently unmet needs for measurement science, including metrology and 

test methods, traceable reference data, and other formal knowledge—that limit AM technology’s 

further development and adoption, and the ways in which meeting these needs could spur 

innovation and growth in US advanced manufacturing.” Meeting such needs is part of the NIST 

mission to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness. The study conservatively 

estimates that meeting these needs would save U.S. manufactures $4.1 billion annually representing 

an 18.3% reduction in the cost of goods sold. This estimate only includes manufacturing cost savings 

attributable to factors such as reduced time and cost to test and validate materials, reduced and cost 

to reach first successful build, and a lowered scrap rate. The estimate does not include harder to 

measure impacts such as research cost savings, the benefits of new improved performance 

National Institute of Standards and Technology 

Willie May, Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards 1 

and Technology and Director 
 

 

Table 1: Technology Infrastructure Gaps and Potential Benefits 

Industry Technology Infrastructure Examples of Economic Impacts 

Needs 

Standards—standards, best practices, • Improve confidence via reproducibility across 

and reference data for materials and manufacturing methods 

AM processes •	 Provide greater assurance in raw materials 

Metrology—real-time, in situ • Identify in-build defects in time to correct and 

metrology, enabled by integrated continue the build or scrap before using additional 

sensors for real-time feedback during a material 

build 

Design Allowables—design • Improve “design to manufacture” guidance for 

optimization tools and protocols for designing and printing complex parts, including 

complex builds mesh, lightweight, and sacrificial support structures 

•	 Reduce scrap rates and turnaround times and 

improve reliability and reproducibility of parts 

Modeling and Simulation—high-fidelity • Improve yields, shorter and fewer R&D cycles 

process modeling and simulation for •	 Predict anomalies at various stages of a build different materials and designs •	 Understand material-specific processes leading to 

new applications 

Surface Finishing—cost-effective • Eliminate or greatly reduce the degree of 

approaches to improve surface finishing postprocessing required to make production-quality 

of metal AM parts and standards for parts 

measuring surface finish and tolerances 

Testing Procedures—innovative • Improve efficiency and cost savings from 

mechanical testing procedures nondestructive and other test methods 

•	 Improve confidence in AM processes and materials 

to speed up adoption and validation of high-value 

printed parts in various applications 

characteristics enabled by AM, the emergence of new products and markets, or a range of additional 

societal benefits. 

Through these in-depth interviews the analysis first identified six broad areas of technical need and 

then identified the qualitative benefits of meeting these needs and estimated manufacturing cost 

savings of providing industry with the new technical capabilities. The identified needs and 

quantitative benefits of meeting those needs are summarize in Table 1 and Figure 1, respectively. 

The needs include verified reference data, robust measurements technologies, and testing methods 

as well as design, modeling and finishing technologies. The analysis draws on interviews from 

stakeholders throughout entire supply chains including AM materials developers, AM equipment 

manufacturers, industry associations, standards organizations as well as end users of AM technology 

across a variety of manufacturing sectors including aerospace, automotive, consumer products, 

biomedical device, and dental implant manufacturing sectors. 

2 
 

 

 

 

Figure 1: Total Annual Impact, Apportioned by Technology Need (Millions of 2013 US$) 

Key Findings 

First, the analysis indicates that the benefits to meeting the identified technology infrastructure 

needs are large. The study identifies $4.1 billion in annual cost savings to end-use manufacturing 

companies should the identified scientific and technical needs be met. This number is particularly 

impressive since it does not include benefits that interviewees could not rigorously quantify such as 

R&D cost savings, transactions cost savings, benefits of new and improved products, long-term 

growth and competitiveness benefits of AM, or other societal benefits. 

The study also identifies distinct barriers to innovation, caused by market failures3

, beyond the 

public good nature of technology infrastructure. These barriers create further inefficiencies and 

magnify the role of public institutions in meeting these scientific and technical needs. The 

infrastructure gaps alongside critical uncertainties and network effects ensure that current AM 

research, development and deployment is excessively costly and accessible to a limited set of 

companies. The stakeholder interviews identify critical uncertainties that increase transactions and 

adoption costs and diminish the incentive of all parties - across entire supply chains - to invest in AM 

technology. For example, the analysis finds that end users are often unable to verify AM part quality 

and performance or even identify whether the potential issues with AM part performance and 

reliability are caused by underlying issues with AM manufacturing processes, AM equipment, or even 

the powders and other raw materials. Just as an end user cannot verify the quality of raw materials 

such as powders, they also cannot verify the quality of proprietary data and testing developed by 

powder manufacturers. The interviews provide evidence that proprietary standards create market 

distortions by conveying market power through branding and reputation. Further, the interviews 

provide evidence that companies may use the standards development process to capture market 

power. AM end users noted that “gaps in [voluntary consensus] standards may tend to favor the 

interests of AM systems manufacturers.” The end result is that AM research, development and 

deployment is excessively costly, private investment incentives are weakened and privately 

developed standards may be further distorting the market. 

A third key finding is that there are important linkages among technology infrastructure elements. 

This increases the importance of ensuring needs are met across all categories. For example, highfidelity computer modeling and simulation require advances in measurement science to populate 

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new scientific and engineering databases. Consequently, “unbalanced” investment – closing select 

technical gaps while leaving other needs unmet – “would likely fail to fully realize economic impact” 

in the domestic advanced manufacturing sector. 

Finally, the analysis indicates that small firms are particularly disadvantaged by current gaps in AM 

technology infrastructure. Small manufacturers noted that “they do not have the adequate 

resources to exhaustively test and validate part properties after fabrication and, thus, are prohibited 

from entering the transportation markets.” Similarly, small AM materials supplier reported that the 

development cycles for new materials were too long to realize a return on investment. In this 

environment, “property data for a set of common process–material pairs could accelerate the 

introduction of additively built parts into service in existing industries, as well as new industries, and 

open up additional opportunities for small suppliers and manufacturers.” 

References 

[1] Anderson G (2013) The Impact of Federally Performed R&D: Twenty Years of Economic Analysis at 

the National Institute of Standards and Technology. 2013 Technology Transfer Society 

Conference. 

[2] Link A Scott J (2011) The theory and practice of public-sector R&D economic impact analysis. 

(NIST, Gaithersburg, MD) Planning Report 11-1. 

https://www.nist.gov/sites/default/files/documents/director/planning/report11-1.pdf. 

[3] Scott, TJ, Beaulieu TJ, Rothrock GD, O’Connor AC (2016).	 Economic Analysis of Technology 

Infrastructure Needs for Advanced Manufacturing: Additive Manufacturing. (NIST, Gaithersburg, 

MD) NIST GCR 16-006. 

[4] Tassey G (2007) The Technology Imperative. (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham). 

1 See Scott et al. [3]. 2 Technology infrastructure includes infratechnologies and technology platforms. Infratechnologies are 

technical tools, such as measurement and test methods, reference materials, scientific and engineering 

databases, process models, and the technical basis for physical and functional interfaces between 

individual components of both cyber and physical systems technologies. Technology platforms are 

precompetitive proofs of concept that demonstrate the potential commercial viability of multiple new or 

improved products, processes, or services. Technology infrastructure shares many common feature with 

tangible infrastructure. Namely, it is difficult and even undesirable to exclude potential users 

implementing the technology and usage of the technology infrastructure by a particular organization does 

not does not preclude others from benefiting to much the same extent. See Anderson (2013), Link and 

Scott (2010) and Tassey (2007) for a richer discussion of the public good nature of technology 

infrastructure. 

3 A market failure is a situation where free markets do not allocate resources efficiently. In particular, the 

study finds evidence that network externalities, high technical risk, uncertainty and asymmetric 

information, and economies of scope all impact research in additive manufacturing technology 

infrastructure. The result is that markets invest too few resources in R&D. 

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