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Hello everyone, this is another edition of the Week-in-Review, brought to you by Authentise!
This holiday season it’s becoming clearer than ever that additive is a force for good, helping us face many of our biggest challenges. The Nepal natural disaster response is shifting gears and starting to employ AM in the reconstruction efforts. Audi is partnering with Part-Time Scientists to participate in the Google Lunar XPRIZE, bringing their AM enabled rover. This shopping season studies are also showing that our “modern” supply chains are not as efficient as we think; local, per-order production driven by AM could be the missing piece.
We’ve got a lot to cover, let’s dig in.
In Nepal, Oxfam earmarks earthquake response funds for 3-D printing
Oxfam is entering a new phase of reconstruction response in Nepal one and a half years after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake devastated much of the Himalayan country. The suite of experimental methods being tried include using repurposed plastic bottles as vital home insulation, 3-D printers to instantly create spare parts in remote rural locations and a handful of mapping mobile apps.
Read more at Devex.
Audi’s lunar rover with 3D-printed parts set to launch next year
Partnering with a space travel group called Part-Time Scientists, Audi have entered the Google Lunar XPRIZE competition. Working together since 2015, the goal is to send the co-developed rover to the moon and complete a set of required tasks. Audi have highlighted 3D printing, specifically, as a particularly helpful technique in the construction of the Lunar Quattro. In this case, the wheels of the rover were made with the aid of 3D printing, reducing down time and saving weight.
Read more at TCT.
‘Free’ Returns Aren’t Free
As those with Black Friday fatigue move to shopping online from the comfort of their homes, they’re attracted not just by deals and promises of free shipping, but also by the increasingly common safety net of free returns. But neither of these services is really free. Much has been written about how much “free” shipping actually costs retailers, and as the ability to return goods at no cost becomes an increasingly normal part of online shopping—particularly during the holidays—that service too is becoming more burdensome for merchants. “The annual retail return rate is around 8% , but can reach up to 30% for e-commerce sales, especially in categories like apparel,” Tobin Moore, the CEO of Optoro, a company that specializes in returns, said in an email.
Read more here.
We’ll be back next week for another Week-in-Review!
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