UPS recently led a $48-million round of Series B investment in Chicago-based Fast Radius, a technology platform and manufacturing footprint enabled by additive manufacturing (3D printing) that helps customers bring new products and supply chain models to market. The Fast Radius Operating System supports customers across the product lifecycle and helps customers identify potential applications, conduct engineering and economic evaluations, accelerate new product development, and ultimately manufacture industrial-grade parts at scale with the latest additive technologies.
Additive manufacturing allows for fast model import, repair and editing, design of lightweight parts, additive manufacturing simulation and automatic packing and “is increasingly becoming the logical direction for future supply chain strategies, blurring the lines between physical and virtual warehousing for products in many industries,” said Scott Price, Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer at UPS. Fast Radius already has a production hub on-site at the UPS Worldport facility in Louisville, KY.
The Fast Radius platform helps customers identify potential applications, conduct engineering and economic evaluations, accelerate new product development, and ultimately manufacture industrial-grade parts in Fast Radius factories at scale with the latest additive technologies. It allows for rapid creation and testing of prototype parts to design supply chain equipment solutions.
“Fast Radius’ technology platform and additive manufacturing design processes are bringing the virtual warehouse vision to life for their customers, complementing UPS’ global time-definite logistics expertise,” said Price.
The funds will be used to scale up software development, application engineering, and sales teams at Fast Radius.
Late last year, the company was the only North American-based firm recognized at the World Economic Forum (“WEF”) as one of the nine companies “best implementing technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.”
Source: Fast Radius
