{"id":28129,"date":"2018-11-12T19:21:06","date_gmt":"2018-11-13T00:21:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/winsun-print-into-the-future\/"},"modified":"2018-11-12T19:21:06","modified_gmt":"2018-11-13T00:21:06","slug":"winsun-print-into-the-future","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/winsun-print-into-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"WinSun \u2013 Print into the Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vice President and Prime Minister of UAE and Ruler of Dubai announced the \u201cDubai 3D Printing Strategy\u201d in August of this year. Part of this strategy is to achieve 25% 3D print for all new buildings starting in 2019 at 2% and graduate increase to achieve 25% by 2025. [1]<\/p>\n

This announcement brought attention to a high-tech 3D print architecture firm in China, WinSun, also known as YingChuang Building Technique (shanghai) Co. Ltd. In 2014 WinSun made the construction headline by printing ten houses in a day under $5000 per house [10]. August 2016, WinSun had completed the first 3D print government building, Office for Future, in Dubai [2][4]. Year later, March of 2017, Saudi Arabian Al Mobty Contracting Company signed $1.5Billion contract with WinSun to lease 100 3D printers and to receive future technique support as well as to access its online cloud platform. [3] As today, WinSun still holds the record of tallest printed building, 6 stories villa, with only 30% of normal construction time [12]<\/p>\n

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Figure 1 (a) Side View Office of the Future\u00a0 [2]\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Figure 1 (b) Front View Office of the Future [2]<\/figcaption><\/figure>To understand the significant of what WinSun is doing, we need to have some context of current construction industry. In the past decade, although we are able to build skyscrapers to fulfill our desire of reaching sky limit, construction industry hasn\u2019t been evolved much. It remains as one of the industries consumes considerable amount of resources and poses significant environmental stresses [5]. In a rough estimate, buildings consumed 36% of the total energy used, 30% of the raw material used, and 12% of portable water consumed in the US [5]. These data found similar in UK and other developed countries[5]. In a McKinsey market research report, labor performance on productivity has double in manufacture but in construction remains flat[7].<\/p>\n

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Exhibit 1 [7]<\/figcaption><\/figure>If this is not bad enough, the value added per hour worked is decreasing in construction while other comparable industries are increasing significantly [9]. Currently, 70% of projects are over budget and delivered late. The industry still sees about 800 deaths and thousands of injuries per year [9].<\/p>\n

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Exhibit 2 [9]<\/figcaption><\/figure>3D printing also known as Additive Manufacturing has been invented since 1983, nowadays, this knowledge is been rapidly adopted in aerospace, automotive, and medicine field [6]. So what\u2019s the value proposition of 3D print from WinSun and how can it be the paradigm shift to change the current industry dire situation while other promising technology such as BIM (building information modeling) hasn\u2019t able to do so?<\/p>\n

Reference to figure 2 below, the simplify version of 3D printing process, provides answer to the question many construction companies struggled to solve since introducing of BIM \u2013 what do we do with this model? How can we effectively translate this model to real productivity?<\/p>\n

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Figure 2: 3D Printing Process [6]<\/figcaption><\/figure>From environmental, social, or economical aspects, combine 3D printing and Cloud computing, WinSun 3D printing technology possess the ability to interrupt traditional Construction industry in many positive ways:<\/p>\n
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Figure 3: Interior [12]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n