[Super Joe]

By Mike Moceri, founder and CEO, MakerOS

Earlier this month during a Saturday press conference, Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York State said this:

“China is, remarkably, the repository for all of these orders – ventilators, PPE – it all comes back to China, which in the long term, we have to figure out why we wound up in this situation, where we don’t have the manufacturing capacity in this country. I understand supply chain issues, I understand the cost of manufacturing, but there’s a public health reason why we learned the hard way why we need the capacity in this country to do this.”

Many experts echo the governor’s point. The COVID-19 global pandemic is exposing how incredibly fragile the modern global supply chain is. Many companies experienced some kind of supply chain disruption due to the coronavirus, and some did not have a plan to deal with the disruption.

It’s becoming abundantly clear that heavy dependence on a single source for materials and parts is no longer sustainable, particularly if that source is overseas. The coronavirus may very well have jump-started the fourth industrial revolution, where industry becomes more reliant on modern societal components including 3D printing . . .