HANNOVER, Germany and PLANO, TX--Siemens announced today the launch of its Additive Manufacturing Network, a new online collaborative platform designed to bring on-demand design and engineering expertise, knowledge, digital tools, and production capacity for industrial 3D printing to the global manufacturing industry. First announced in concept at Hannover Messe 2017, the platform is launching with an early adopter program for designers and engineers, manufacturing service providers, 3D printing machine OEMs, material vendors and software providers.

"Additive Manufacturing (AM) will unfold its full disruptive potential if we enable direct access to highly valuable services, globally available AM systems and crucial knowledge for engineers, designers and machine operators," says Güngör Kara, chief digital officer at EOS. "Siemens' Additive Manufacturing Network can help establish these connections and make them accessible to the general market with the aim of facilitating innovative AM parts and creating high-performing AM production cells within a smart and fully digital factory."

"As innovation cycles are getting shorter and shorter, companies need to constantly reimagine their products, reinvent manufacturing and rethink business," says Jan Mrosik, CEO of the digital factory division at Siemens AG. "The Additive Manufacturing Network augments our leading Digital Enterprise portfolio, where we combine the real world with the virtual world. It offers the additive manufacturing industry a place to co-create, co-innovate and come up with completely new business models."

The network enables part buyers and manufacturing service providers to benefit from streamlined collaboration, quoting, procurement and order monitoring processes. This can facilitate the design of innovative products for additive manufacturing, replacement of physical inventories with digital inventories, as well as economical scaling up or down of 3D printing production as needed.