Creativity and productivity in product design for additive manufacturing: Mechanisms and platform outcomes of remixing

• Date: 01 December 2019
• Published date: 01 December 2019
• Author: Christoph M. Flath,Sascha Friesike,Frédéric Thiesse,Marco Wirth
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jom.2018.10.004

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Creativity and productivity in product design for additive

manufacturing: Mechanisms and platform outcomes of remixing

Sascha Friesike

1,2

| Christoph M. Flath

3

| Marco Wirth

3

| Frédéric Thiesse

3

1

KIN Center for Digital Innovation, Vrije

Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands

2

Alexander von Humboldt Institute for

Internet and Society, Berlin, Germany

3

University of Würzburg, Germany

Correspondence

Sascha Friesike, KIN Center for Digital

Innovation, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam,

the Netherlands.

Email: sascha.friesike@vu.nl

Handling Editors: Jan Holmström, Matthias

Holweg, Benn Lawson, Frits Pil, and

Stephan Wagner

Abstract

The present study explores the phenomenon of remixing in product design for additive

manufacturing (AM). In contrast to other manufacturing techniques, AM offers unprec-

edented flexibility in adapting existing product designs to changing requirements.

However, in order to benefit from this potential, structured design procedures and tools

are indispensable. As a possible solution, online platforms for collaborative 3D model

creation are increasingly implementing features for remixing, a concept describing the

creation of new models on the foundation of existing design elements. Against this

backdrop, the objective of this research is to provide evidence for the value of remixing

as an organizational intervention for improving product design processes. To this end,

we present a mixed methods approach using data from Thingiverse, the world's largest

AM-related online community. In a first step, we investigate qualitative data from

81 individual remix-based designs to identify the underlying mechanisms of remixing.

We identify six such mechanisms that can further be grouped by the intended outcome

of the respective process (creativity-oriented: inspiration, play, learning; productivity-

oriented: speed, improvement, empowerment). In a second step, we turn to a quantita-

tive analysis of platform data, which indicates that remixing may lead to better design

process outcomes in terms of quantity and diversity of designs. Furthermore, we find

that designs created by remixing designers are significantly more often printed by com-

munity members suggesting that remixing helps ensure manufacturing compatibility

akin to continuous process improvement. Our research has several implications for

individual designers and organizations engaging with product design for AM.

KEYWORDS

additive manufacturing, CIMO logic, creativity, mixed methods, product design, productivity, remix

1|INTRODUCTION

In recent years, additive manufacturing (AM), often referred to

as “3D printing,”has attracted wide interest from academia,

practitioners, and even the mass media (Berman, 2012;

D'Aveni, 2015; Ford et al., 2016). At first glance, the fascina-

tion with the technology may be traced back to the unusual

layer-by-layer production process, which distinguishes AM

from more traditional forms of industrial manufacturing. From

a managerial point of view, though, AM stands out from

established technologies primarily due to its inherent flexibility

First published online by Elsevier BV on behalf of The Association for

Supply Chain Management, Inc.

Received: 15 May 2017 Accepted: 19 October 2018

DOI: 10.1016/j.jom.2018.10.004

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original

work is properly cited.

© 2018 The Authors. Journal of Operations Management published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of The Association for Supply Chain Management Inc.

J Oper Manag. 2019;65:735–752. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/joom 735

potential (Gardan, 2016; Thompson et al., 2016). While other

technologies impose strict technological or economic con-

straints on the production of variants (e.g., due to limitations of

the technology itself, process control, consideration of stan-

dards for a given part), AM offers an unprecedented level of

freedom in this regard (Lipson and Kurman, 2013; Gibson

et al., 2015; Gebhardt and Hötter, 2016). The flexibility is fur-

ther enhanced by negligible set-up costs, since the production

of individual variants no longer requires specific retooling, thus

making it possible to easily switch between designs. In sum,

these features give AM the appearance of a technology well

suited to customized products and small-series production

down to lot size one (Tuck et al., 2008; Reeves et al., 2011;

Banks, 2013; Bogers et al., 2016). However, the freedom

offered by AM also entails the risk of considerable inefficien-

cies in product design if there are no structured procedures and

tools in place to easily adapt solutions to new requirements.

An increasingly popular concept to address this issue is the

remixing of 3D models—a form of knowledge reuse in which

existing design elements are adapted and/or recombined into

something new (Stanko, 2016; Flath et al., 2017). In contrast to

earlier design approaches, like product modularity (Baldwin

and Clark, 2000), remixing facilitates the straightforward trans-

fer of designs from completely different application fields in

combination with extremely fine-grained modifications of the

corresponding object models. In the context of AM, remixing

thrives on software tools and online platforms where designers

share their designs in a way that allows others to remix them.

The online platform Thingiverse, for example, offers designers

the opportunity to publish and access an extensive repository of

3D models for AM (Fordyce et al., 2016; West and Kuk, 2016).

As of August 2018, the platform counts more than 2 million

community members and holds about 1.6 million individual

designs, ranging from household objects to teaching materials

(see Figure 1), which makes it the largest online community of

its kind.

The concept of knowledge reuse has repeatedly received

attention in management research (Markus, 2001; Majchrzak

et al., 2004; Haefliger et al., 2008). Existing studies that focus

on remixing mainly address its occurrence in the context of

online platforms and supporting platform features (Stanko,

2016; Flath et al., 2017; Kyriakou et al., 2017). The present

study goes one step further by taking an operations manage-

ment perspective in examining the extent to which individual

designers and organizations may benefit from remixing. To bet-

ter structure both the results from prior research and our own

analysis, we draw upon the “Context-Interventions-Mecha-

nisms-Outcomes”(CIMO) framework (Denyer et al., 2008;

Groop et al., 2017). Following the CIMO logic, we interpret

remixing as an intervention in designing digital models in the

context of AM and focus our research on the other two CIMO

elements: mechanisms and outcomes.

In more detail, our first research objective is to shed light

on the mechanisms of remixing. We interpret these as the dif-

ferent ways remixing can help improve the design process.

Secondly, we aim to investigate the extent to which measurable

evidence can be found for the expected positive outcomes of

remixing. To this end, we draw on a mixed methods approach

using qualitative data on 81 individual remix processes and

quantitative data extracted from the Thingiverse platform itself.

Our study thus makes a contribution in two regards: from a

design process perspective, we provide a nuanced understand-

ing of the mechanisms by which designers make use of rem-

ixing. Our analysis shows that remixing is a multi-faceted

concept that designers employ to be more creative (e.g., by

browsing the platform in search of inspiration) and to be more

productive (e.g.,byreusingexistingbuildingblockstospeed

up the design process). Moreover, from an organizational per-

spective, our study suggests that remixing amplifies the raw

capabilities of both the technology and the designers. Our anal-

ysis reveals significant relationships between the remix inter-

vention and many productivity- and creativity-related outcome

metrics measured on the platform-level. Based on these find-

ings, we conclude our paper by discussing implications for

both perspectives.

FIGURE 1 Examples of designs available on Thingiverse: tape gun, headphone stand, parametric door hinge, multi-color cell model

1

[Color

figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

736 FRIESIKE ET AL.