How 3D Printing and AI Rewire Supply Chains

Imagine saying “summon” and the exact spare part you need appears near your factory, printed within days, not weeks. That’s the promise we unpack with Bindiya Vakil of Accio 3D: agentic AI paired with modern additive manufacturing to replace bloated inventories, slow logistics, and “just in case” stockpiles with smart, on‑demand production.

We dig into how AI co‑pilots assess thousands of legacy components for printability and ROI, parsing drawings and specs to flag thin walls, overhangs, and material needs. Then we connect those parts to the right printers and materials worldwide, creating a hybrid model where in‑house capacity handles the obvious wins and specialized service bureaus take the rest. Along the way, we map the upside for aerospace, automotive, industrial equipment, and medical devices—especially low‑volume, high‑variety parts where tooling kills margins. Reverse engineering through 3D scanning brings back end‑of‑life components even when CAD is missing, while new polymers and metals expand what’s possible and let us consolidate multi‑piece assemblies into single, stronger parts.

The financial and sustainability stakes are just as big. Shipping files instead of pallets slashes lead times and carbon, cuts scrap compared to subtractive machining, and lightens carrying costs that quietly turn a ten‑dollar part into a thirty‑five‑dollar headache. We talk resilience with agility—faster response without parallel inventories—and why CFOs should test digital inventory before funding another warehouse. We also touch on IP pathways, supplier incentives to “end of technology” instead of “end of life,” and the growing policy push that helps small and midsize manufacturers stand up additive capacity.

If you’re ready to simplify, scale, and summon the parts you need where you need them, this conversation will show you the path from pilot to playbook. Subscribe, share with a teammate who lives in spreadsheets and stockrooms, and leave a review to tell us which part you’d print first.

Find out more about accio3d.ai

Transcript

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Welcome And Subscribe

Tony Hines 0:02

Chain Reaction, the number one podcast for Supply Chain Advantage Global Trade and Policy with Tony Hines. Hello, Tony Hines here. Thanks for coming along.

Why Additive Beats Subtractive

Tony Hines 0:33

We've got a great episode, it's all about 3D printing and design. It's about additive manufacturing as opposed to subtractive. Are you familiar with those terms? I'm guessing you are. But we're gonna find out a little more about the way the technology has changed and has developed to make things much easier. To print apart. And it has all kinds of benefits. No transport, no warehousing, fast, reliable on the

Introducing Accio 3D And Its Vision

Tony Hines 1:05

spot. And to help us with that, who better to turn to than Bindiya again? The former CEO and Resolve is a supply chain risk company. And Bindia has recently been setting up something called Echio 3D. And she's gonna tell us all about what they're up to and what they're doing, and how it's gonna change the world. So the Latin Accasa or Accesso was used by J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter as Accio. And the name of Bindiya's company is Accio 3D. So Accio is to summon up magic. Yeah, it's good, isn't it? And that's exactly what's happening here. When we call for that 3D printing of those hard to find parts, we're summoning up magic. And Bindia told me the tagline for the company, which is simplify, scale, summon. I like that too. Hi, Bindiya. Great to have you with us today on Chain Reaction. And we're gonna hear about your new venture, Accio 3D.

Bindiya 2:26

Hi Tony. Accio

AI Co‑Pilots For Printability And ROI

Bindiya 2:28

means to summon in Latin. The idea being when I want a part, I should be able to say the word summon and it should appear. Um and I think that's to me, 3D printing, that's what it should be all about, is it should be as easy as firing print, you know, and getting your parts. Um and getting them wherever you want them, more importantly, whenever you want them, without having to wait six weeks for parts to be on a ship and then stored in a warehouse and all over the world, and that convoluted, complex supply chain. So to me, this is powerful as a concept. I think 3D printing as a technology has come a long way. You know, it has been 30 years since this technology was invented, but it took us a long time to really make the kind of advances to be able to get ready to scale. What um I have seen 3D printing be successful in right now is there's been a lot of work done on prototypes and spare parts. Um, but the problem with doing prototypes only is that the demand goes away once you get out of prototype stage, and that that demand goes to CNC machine injection molding. And so the 3D printing industry, the people who have invested in that capacity and all of that aren't getting that steady stream of demand. So that's the fundamental big problem. And on the procurement side, we have people like me. We are non-technical procurement people who don't know a lot about 3D printing. So even if we wanted to adopt it, it seems like a big, kind of scary challenge to us. So that's the role of AI. What we are doing is bringing AI in as technical co-pilots to sit alongside our procurement and component engineering team. We are training the AI to be expert at 3D printing, all the materials that are needed for additive, um, and all the equipment and the equipment capabilities, so that when I have a thousand parts that I'm holding in inventory for long term, that are my spare parts, end-of-life, hard-to-source part where my core supplier can't support me well, I can assess those parts for printability. And the agents will analyze the dimensions, specs, materials, drawings, overhangs, thin walls, all that, and say, yep, out of your thousand parts, I found the 400 that are good candidates for printing. And I've also identified which 300 have a good ROI. And here's the 250 where you don't need extensive amounts of qualification that are good, low-hanging fruit that you can successfully 3D print fairly quickly. And to then help them find a service bureau who can print the parts for them globally.

Tony Hines 5:15

That's fantastic, isn't it? I mean, this is this is a real

Onshoring And Hybrid Manufacturing Models

Tony Hines 5:18

step forward, isn't it, into a gentic AI, really, and the use of that and the application of it. I mean, it sounds great.

Bindiya 5:24

Thank you. Yes, we are very excited. This is a agent, uh, agentic AI native, um, machine learning first kind of system. So we are building with a from the ground up with agentic workflows. Um, and I'm very excited about that. Um, you know, it's very hard to kind of match this um kind of capability for a traditional company. So we are the first to market uh with a complete AgenTic AI uh and ML technology applied to this very interesting problem.

Tony Hines 5:58

Yeah, and obviously, I mean this is a step, it's almost um, shall we say, the next step on from Rezolink, isn't it really? And what you were doing back there. So it's a it's a real kind of move forward into this new AI uh ecosystem landscape, isn't it?

Bindiya 6:16

Yeah, absolutely. You know, at Rezolink, we saw um the geopolitical shifts, a lot of companies moving production um onshore uh countries wanting an in shore onshore manufacturing ecosystem, not in the US, not just in the US, everywhere. Countries are more and more, as we enter this new era of protectionism, more and more countries are saying, well, you know, I have so much dependency on China or other countries for core and critical things. How do I create an internal manufacturing ecosystem? Well, in order to do that, you're not going to be able to do that with traditional technology. You have to disrupt manufacturing itself. And to me, that is the exciting power of 3D printing because 3D printing has come a long way. You now have printers that are very capable, and the adoption is in the low hundreds of thousands, uh low millions of dollars. So a lot of small and medium-sized companies can bring up a 3D printing uh capacity and factory and get business. And that's what we're going to be helping them do.

Tony Hines 7:30

That's a really important point. I mean, it's not just for the big firms. I mean, the big firms will find it useful, but it's also for these small and medium-sized enterprises. They're going to be able to take some things that they couldn't do otherwise and generate the sort of uh scale that they need without incurring heavy investment, aren't they?

Bindiya 7:50

Exactly. And uh, as you said, you know, a lot of big companies do invest a lot in 3D printing. They some companies we have talked to have hundreds of millions of dollars in 3D printing equipment that they have purchased. But here's what's happening: the cycle of innovation is much, much faster in 3D printing right now. So newer and newer printers, particularly in metal, are coming out that are highly capable and they leave the last technology you purchase in the dust. And so this is the opportunity where, you know, um and the other part of this is that not every part can be printed on just any printer. So you need to do a matching of, hey, this part based on its finish, tensile strength, its um dimensions, the size, requires this particular printer with that material to print it. So

From Old Drawings To Scans And CAD

Bindiya 8:46

you might have everything you've invested millions of dollars building in-house, but there might be these few parts that you need to go externally for and find someone who has that specific configuration. So I think there's a hybrid model here that I see merging, Tony, where some companies definitely will use in-house capability for parts that they can afford to print themselves or that are a good match, but for the rest, they're going to go external.

Tony Hines 9:13

Yeah. Now, if I've got this right, I was thinking all those material drawings that you might have in your in your filing cabinet from years ago for some ancient part that you want to replace in a machine that's still running and clunking along after season after season, but you can't get it. Surely this is an application where it sits right in there and you're able to do that.

Bindiya 9:38

100%. So you might have a part, in fact, sometimes you might not even have a drawing. Uh you know, you might just have a sample part. And then you want to see how you can make this part. So some we will see those situations also arise. But now with the advancement in 3D scanning and CAD, a lot of times we can bring in experts who can take an old part, scan it, put a CAD together, and then uh create the files necessary for the 3D printer to do its thing.

Tony Hines 10:12

I mean, that's fantastic, isn't it? And I mean, you mentioned that these printers now, they print, you know, people think of a printer and

Materials, Metal Printing, And Design Freedom

Tony Hines 10:19

they think, well, it's just gonna fire out ink, but they don't fire out ink. They find fire out, you know, metal and stuff, don't they, to create the metal parts. So you can't.

Bindiya 10:31

And even in polymer, yeah, so there's definitely a lot of technology and um uh in the advancement on the polymer side. In fact, certain polymers have harder tensile strength, or you know, uh they're not as brittle. In fact, some are even stronger than certain metals. So I think there's a lot that has been done to bring the material on the advancements on the material science front, on advanced materials that are very robust. And on the printing side, you know, you see lots of different technologies where the finish and the polish and all of that can be, you know, you can achieve very, very uh minute results in the minute details, all the way to metal 3D printing, where you know, every year we're doing more um, you know, more and better in terms of the complexity of the printed parts. In fact, what we have have seen with some examples is you can in traditional technology there's a certain amount of limitation as to you know how you can manufacture because it's subtractive. Um so sometimes you have to take one part that you might need and break it up into three shapes and then manufacture each shape as a separate part. But 3D printing doesn't

No Ships, No Warehouses, Just Parts

Bindiya 11:48

have those limitations. You could actually make a part that is a single part and not have that you know breakdown of all that data and complexity, and then have multiple suppliers and logistics and transportation for those.

Tony Hines 12:03

You've got additive manufacturing on the spot, I think, is is is what we're doing.

Bindiya 12:08

And on the spot. Yes. Yeah. So the vision, right, is no ships with no warehouses, no inventory. I mean, I know it's a it's it's a long-term vision, but that's our goal is wherever possible, we should not be holding. And and let me give you a sense for how much inventory companies are holding. In the uh aerospace industry, we see um inventories in excess of $10 billion, Boeing, $17 billion, GE aerospace. And this is just raw material inventory. I'm not even talking whip or you know, uh finished goods. Caterpillar, six and a half, GM, six and a half, Ford, three or four billion in raw material inventory. So my point is these are massive. Just close your eyes for a second and imagine six billion dollars worth of inventory, how many warehouses, how many, you know, warehouse automation, workers, uh, you know, ships and things that you're going to need to ship transport all of this around, that's the complexity. So you could be thinking, oh, this part is a $10 part, but when you layer in all these added costs of actually taking this part, holding it, shipping it over the all over the world, that $10 part is more like $35 for you. So even if a printed part costs $17 or $18, or even let's say $20, but you could fire off a print and print five parts in Malaysia and 10 parts in Germany on demand and get them within four or five days of your need right to your factory. Come on, like it's so worth it.

Tony Hines 13:46

It's a no-brainer. It is, and it keeps those just-in-time supply chains cracking along, doesn't it? I mean, that's the important thing. You can keep things flowing in this in the chain. Whereas you can't do that if you've got to wait for ages and you've got those ships and those overheads cranking up and those dollars going into the sky. So it's a great solution.

Bindiya 14:07

Thank you. Yeah, we believe so, yes.

Tony Hines 14:11

And and how is it going with the I mean, you've done this before, you know, you're not new to this in the in that sense. You've cranked up these companies before, and you've driven big companies in a s in a sense that uh I mean, you've started again. You're an entrepreneur starting again. You're like a serial entrepreneur, I think, aren't you?

Bindiya 14:32

At this point, yes. Um it starts with the first adopter who then helped joins this journey, becomes, you know, kind of that that ecosystem of early adopters, early thinkers and doers. Really, I give all of the credit to them. As entrepreneurs, you can come to people with an idea, build a product. Um, and it's usually a minimum viable product that as a concept that we show to early adopters, but then they take it and give it shape and form and a direction. And you know, they're the ones who'd give us feedback on exactly how this can add more value. So I really credit them. Not the entrepreneur just does the initial kind of lights the

Sustainability Gains And Circular Economy

Bindiya 15:20

sets the spark, but the fire can't catch unless you fuel it with that, you know, ex uh adopter ecosystem.

Tony Hines 15:30

Okay, I've got a vision of you now rubbing the sticks to get that spark.

Bindiya 15:33

Rubbing sticks. I'm gonna have to tell my team there to chop some trees. Which by the way, you know, that speaking of trees and fire, um, what's exciting to me also about this is the sustainability aspect of it because traditional technologies like CNC machining is subtractive. You're there's a ton of waste and energy inefficiency in these technologies. Um, you have material that you're basically shut cutting out of a block. Whereas in 3D printing, you're only using the filament or the material that you need for the part, but maybe some supporting structures, but that's the extent of the waste. So when you combine all of that together, your sustainability algorithm of carbon, your carbon footprint is now shrinking from not only the energy used, the inventory you've produced, that you sometimes have to scrap, the rework of some of that waste that you recapture to then make more parts out of that. All that is energy intensive. The shipping of all that around the world is highly pollutive versus 3D printing, where you take material, you to give it shape as and when you need it, when you know for sure the demand has materialized, you get it within 48 to 72 hours, and then you only use what you need. And by the way, you don't have to ship it on massive ships, you can just fire that print file digitally to a printer all of whoever you have selected to do your printing. So it just simplifies and it is so incredibly clean. And I just really just that the purpose of making that transformation and for us to be the ones kind of creating and making it easy and scalable, it just touches my heartstrings and you know makes me really excited about our mission.

Tony Hines 17:32

Well, it's fantastic. I mean, just think about the ESG scores you're gonna get from this system as opposed to the other systems where you put an all-appollution in the place. And I think the creativity, I mean, it's a difference between a sculpture, isn't it, out of a big piece of uh whatever whatever it is that you're sculpting at, to just using the resources that you actually need. And for the circular economy, that is absolutely fantastic.

Bindiya 17:58

Absolutely.

Tony Hines 17:59

So it's gonna drive that.

IP Paths And Supplier Incentives

Tony Hines 18:01

What about um are there any IPA issues when it comes to the making of these parts that you need to think about?

Bindiya 18:12

Yeah, so there are a couple of things to think about. Um, one is if it's an end-of-life part, then usually the supplier has indicated that they no longer make it. The customer still needs it, right? So the between the customer and supplier, typically they have some kind of an agreement on who who the customer's rights to the IP so that they can continue using it for their needs. Um, so we're going to initially rely on that. However, what our vision is that for the suppliers themselves, instead of end-of-life in it, just say I'm an I'm end-of-technology in this part so that instead of CNC machining, in future, I'll print this part for you for the next 30 years and I won't be holding inventory. And Tony, why this is powerful is because in certain industries, the onus of holding end of life inventories is actually on the supplier. So the customer does not have some of those inventories on their own books. The supplier, when they declare end of life, sign an agreement that for 15 years I will hold end of life and support you through the demand cycle. And so suppliers should have a strong incentive to partner with us and say, hey, I'm not gonna end of life this, I'll just continue supporting. You just have to approve, do whatever qualification you need to approve the printed part.

Tony Hines 19:35

I can see that's gonna be very useful in things like aerospace.

Bindiya 19:38

Absolutely. Aerospace, actually, automotive, industrial, and heavy also have because all of these have right to, you know, countries have right to repair laws. So the suppliers and the OEMs continue to have to support all their products in the field to comply with that.

Tony Hines 19:56

Yeah, I mean, I know from uh an early experience in my early career of going around sort of uh British aerospace and stuff, and I had a look, and there was a guy in the near to close to the storeroom where he had a small part in the drawer, and he said, I keep that just in case. It was his just in case inventory piece. And I'm thinking,

Adoption, Evangelizing, And Human‑AI Workflow

Tony Hines 20:16

how crazy is this?

Bindiya 20:18

And and by the way, he will have lost it when he actually needs it, do you know? Because he won't remember where it's stored. So how many times has that happened?

Tony Hines 20:28

How many times? I you we know we know from experience. Um, how do you think about sort of building understanding of what you're actually doing in the communities where this is going to be really important? Because sometimes it's very difficult to get the message to some people that this is going to be really useful for you, you know. You can tell them and tell them, but actually they need to participate in it somehow, don't they?

Bindiya 20:57

Yeah, and that's what we saw even with my previous company. We had to do a lot of evangelizing, a lot of education and awareness building. Because, like I said, you know, even when I decided I was going to start this company, it was quite intimidating. So there's all of the technologies in 3D printing, there are multiple, you know, technologies, printers, ecosystems, I'll still get muddled and confused every now and then. So to think that a procurement person just will suddenly say, Oh, yeah, we're gonna wake up and do 3D printing tomorrow is just a it's a stretch. So that's where the AI working alongside being that expert co pilot, walking the workflow through, making sure there's checks, balances, and oversight. Not only the AI, but the human AI plus the human, we are stronger together. So we don't see that the AI will take over everything, the humans and our engineering teams and everyone, but all of them working together. Can really make this happen. Because now we don't need any every one of our design or component engineers to become 3D printing experts and know exactly what all the technologies are and which machines have what capability. The AI is that repository that sits alongside them that they can query, ask questions to, that can coach them through whatever decision, give them pros and cons. So we're we're feeling like this would really kind of help people feel more comfortable as they adopt it. But to your point, it has to start with a small POC. We do a few parts, we learn what we learn, and it goes both ways. The AI learning from the human, the human

Early Adopters And Target Industries

Bindiya 22:46

benefiting from the AI.

Tony Hines 22:48

Well, that's fantastic. I mean, there's a symbiotic relationship I can see there between the two, isn't it? And that's how it should be, really. I mean, we we learn from all kinds of interactions. We can learn from the AI, and the AI learns from the human. So, how are you going about that task?

Bindiya 23:06

So, yeah, we have a few initial early adopting uh companies across automotive and uh aerospace who are very interested in looking at what we are doing, testing out the AI agents, giving us design feedback on our product. And actually, we're looking for more always because the more people we talk to, the more we ensure that their requirements that might be coming down in the next six months, eight months, one year, we are aware of them and can make sure we uh incorporate their feedback into the product. So always happy to talk to new companies across the industries that we were really initially targeting um uh aerospace defense, industrial, heavy, and auto as our four core entry-level industries. But having said that, honestly, every single company in the world has an end-of-life problem for machine and uh mechanical parts. Because you might have equipment, you're a food company, but you have equipment that needs parts and tooling, right? That tend to break down. So that's why I think whenever someone feels like, boy, I there has to be a better way, let me tell you there is, and we are your source to plugging into that uh ecosystem.

Tony Hines 24:25

Well, I can see how useful it would have been. I worked in a tin manufacturing company at one time, you know, they make tin cans for food and all kinds of stuff. And I worked closely with an engineer there who was very, very keen on keeping everything that broke down on the line so he could piece it all together again. Now he wouldn't have to do that if he had access to your printed parts because he just he'd come along to you and he'd say, Bindia, I want to get this part. Here's a here's a photograph of it, or here's what it looks like. I've got a piece in my hand, there's the other piece of it. What can you do? And you would turn that into his machine part, wouldn't you?

Bindiya 25:04

Yeah, exactly. Sometimes we um if they have um the parts, uh metadata like dimensions and material and things like that. We love it if you have a 2D drawing, if we even love it even better if you have a CAD. But if you don't, no worries, we'll take the part that you have and scan it and get it, get all that created for us.

Tony Hines 25:26

So I mean, the fantastic thing about modern life in that sense is these scanners, they're absolutely fantastic, aren't they? Because they can actually precisely measure just by looking at something. I mean, it's like medical equipment, you know, that you can scan all sorts of things in your body and tell you how big something is or what the problem is, where the brakes are, and so on. And it's the same application in a way. I would think that your company would be a great partner for a health service as well, wouldn't it?

Medical Customization And Low‑Volume Wins

Bindiya 25:56

Yeah, actually, you know, uh medical devices and healthcare have been actually, medical devices has been very early adopters of 3D printing. Companies like Stryker have made massive investments in 3D printing. What's very exciting with medical devices is you can do custom, like mass customization. For example, each person's knee has a slightly different size and shape and thing, but if you can, but you could 3D print your custom, a knee custom, your artificial knee custom for your specific size and shape and things. Like so that's the power, I think, here, which is in anything that requires extreme levels of customization, or where you, as a small and medium-sized company, might have in not have the kind of volumes where your tooling might be so expensive that if you only want a hundred pieces, that 100-piece build is going to cost you $3,000 per unit because of the tooling and setup costs. Then 3D printing is a great option for you, even if it's not end-of-life or spare parts inventory, it's your production demand. So your low volume, high variety parts where the piece price is high because of setup or tooling cost, we're a good fit for you.

Tony Hines 27:18

I mean, that's fantastic, really. What about the future vision for uh directions? Where could this, if I took you forward five years, where's all this gonna lead? Do you think generally, not just for your company, but generally in the industrial

Five‑Year Outlook And Policy Support

Tony Hines 27:35

setup?

Bindiya 27:35

In five years, I I think a lot more countries have given um grants and funding uh available, availability for small and medium-sized companies to adapt 3D printing and uh build that ecosystem of manufacturing within their shores. So to me, that's kind of what the government can do today to help their community become self-sufficient, is create that ecosystem. And then solutions like ours bringing the demand to these small and medium-sized companies where we have matched a customer's part with the specific printer that can successfully print it with the least amount of post-processing uh effort needed so that we can make that ecosystem successful, send them steady state demand. And now we see a truly hybrid supply chain emerging where only the things that you cannot 3D print are really being, or that the volumes are so high, or you know, the piece price or the margins are so low that you can't afford to have any variation in the original part price, and you're perfectly happy to keep working with your legacy traditional supply chain. Only that stuff goes through that ecosystem. Everything else goes through and gets 3D printed. Then you have sort of found that happy optimum point where you're taking advantage of all that 3D printing has to offer. In fact, I would say in five years, I would love to see companies who are evaluating the cost of, hey, let's put up another warehouse somewhere to say, hey, I could take that $100 million and not do it. Instead, take all that inventory I was planning to put in the $100 million and seeing if I could take a couple of million to explore 3D printing and avoid having to make those massive investments. As interest rates are high, as tariffs are high, as protectionism and people's fear factor is high globally. I think this is a technology that can address everyone's needs, but also be clean, and that's the way the world needs to go.

Tony Hines 29:51

Well, it's clean, lean, low cost. It's gonna drive the future, isn't it? No doubt.

Bindiya 29:57

I love it that you said clean and lean. That that was pretty good right there.

Tony Hines 30:02

Thank you very much.

Bindiya 30:05

Clean and lean, yes.

Tony Hines 30:08

Yeah, so I mean, I think that um if if you think about these things, I mean no warehouse, having no warehouse, getting that cost out, and going to these just in time, this is just in time in practice. It's a solution for just in time without all that cost. And the thing that you said about tariffs and interest rates and I suppose cost of overheads and stuff, they all disappear in the process, don't they? I mean, you can avoid all the tariffs because you printed in the

Resilience With Agility And CFO Math

Tony Hines 30:36

place.

Bindiya 30:36

Exactly. So it's it's actually resilient and agile, if you think about it. Because usually to people, resilience is the opposite of agility. If I want to be resilient, I'm thinking complexity, two sources, but a lot of inventory. Resilience can often signal that my velocity has slowed down because now I have to have all this infrastructure to be resilient. So this is resilient with agility, which I just absolutely love because you have created now a highly agile, high velocity supply chain relying on very little inventory, but is extremely resilient because you can spin up supply at the drop off a hat simply by firing print to an ecosystem of printers located exactly nearby your demand, which I think is who would not buy into that future? Honestly, they should retire today because who shouldn't? I mean, who doesn't who says, oh no, I'm gonna stay with my billion dollar inventory and my ships, you know, while the rest of the world moves to this um high speed, high velocity, lean supply chain and and low cost but resilient supply chain.

Tony Hines 31:57

Well, I think so. I mean, you've got rid of all that just in case. You've just explained how to get rid of just in case stuff when you want to be resilient. You could be resilient in different ways. You can still keep your cost low, you can still stay lean in the process, you can do it immediately. It's a it's an immediate solution. So, I mean, it's a it's got everything. And as you say, people will not turn that down for a massive warehouse with billions of dollars or pounds in stock, whatever currency they're in. It's crazy.

Bindiya 32:25

Yeah, so I think it's um if I'm a CFO just putting myself in a CFO shoes for a moment, I'm sitting on a balance sheet where inventory is my least current current asset. Where I'm sitting on billions of dollars of or hundreds of millions of dollars of this inventory, a lot of it I end up scrapping because I ordered too much. Or, you know, I didn't, yeah, for whatever reasons, there was wasted, spoiled. There are different reasons why inventory is such a bad, bad idea in supply chain, but yet we're stuck with it. And now, too, and on top of that, it affects my PL too because of the interest payments that I have to make on all the capital I needed to buy up all that inventory. This takes out some of those costs and it makes for a better PL, a better balance sheet. So, from a CFO's perspective, I should really be telling my chief procurement officers how do we go look into this and how do we adopt it? And where do we adopt it? And what does that roadmap look like? We wouldn't obviously do 3D printing on parts that affect an engine's performance or could become a safety hazard or something. But there are plenty of low-hanging fruit that take up tons of warehouse space. There are large parts, but not maybe so expensive, but could easily uh, you know, when you take the part cost, add all the storage fees, the shipping costs, insurance, freight, moving, all of that, compared to that, the printed part might be, you know, easily justifiable from an ROI standpoint.

Tony Hines 34:04

Definitely. It's got ROI writ large, hasn't it, on the script of this?

Bindiya 34:09

Yeah.

Tony Hines 34:10

And I can think back to uh, I mean, you hit all the buttons with me though, because I trained as an accountant very early on in life. And so you know. So I know exactly what this is. And I remember going round, you know, warehouses and looking at it and going, my God, you know, look at this inventory and look at this. This is this is my balance sheet. Yeah. So you've got rid of all that cost. The thing on a balance sheet, you want somebody said this to me very early on no debtors, no stock, and you want your money turning over fast. This this keeps cash flow going. I mean this is a a real solution, not just to the inventory problem, but to the turnover issue, and not just profitability, it's profitability got written large on it as well. But it's also a big enabler of cash flow.

Bindiya 35:03

Absolutely. In fact, we saw, you know, uh even in my wrestling days, we saw factory fires, warehouse fires, you know, all of those were the number one cause for supply chain

Building The Team And Supplier Network

Bindiya 35:15

disruption. So you're not only now holding a warehouse stocked with inventory, but it is the biggest risk to the bad facility is that catches fire. And we have seen so many instances of this. So it's like, again, back to you know, the point of this takes care of, this is resilience with agility. It is clean, and it this is the future. I do see that if we can, the only barrier has been the lack of expertise that is readily available, that has kept up with all the technology innovations on the material science front, on the printing equipment front, who can just at the drop of a hat be adopted into a company that can say, okay, analyze a thousand parts. Now, even on that, just think about that for a moment. If I gave 10,000 parts to a human, I would need a team of humans who, assuming all of them are experts in 3D printing, to then pour over that part list and say, which of these are printable? But an AI can do that within seconds. So that's why AI combining with 3D printing and bringing this and simplifying it, allowing companies to scale. I think that's why I'm so captured by this idea and passionate about making it happen.

Tony Hines 36:45

Well, you sound really passionate. It's all you're all fired, you're all fired up on it. Forgive the pun, but you are really fired up on this one, aren't you? And it's looking great. Uh and the possibilities are endless, really. And I think also the other thing that did strike me is for these developing nations around the globe, these kinds of solutions are going to change the game for some of those people, aren't they?

Bindiya 37:10

Absolutely. In fact, we you know bypass the technology curve. Sometimes when you're, it's like, you know, we were last to adopt uh 3G networks in the US, whereas the emerging countries started 3G on their networks because they were slower to adopt and the technology evolved by then. So this is one of those things where I do feel like the emerging countries that are hungry for the world's business, they are hungry for self-sufficiency, they're they are going to uh actually in the US too. I shouldn't say that, because even in the US, the government has taken a role in extending. So there are some firms, such as I've heard of the Stifle and NAC fund, North Atlantic Fund, which has been created by the Commerce Department to extend uh funding to small and medium-sized companies to buy 3D printing equipment, because even the government recognizes that this is how the future of manufacturing in the US will evolve.

Tony Hines 38:12

Yeah, it will. And it's an exciting opportunity, I think. Tell me something about the recruitment of the personnel that will join you on this journey. What sort of people are you actually looking for on this journey?

Bindiya 38:24

Yeah, so we have several pockets of expertise. Just if you look at the workflow end-to-end, we are hiring PhDs in material science who have expertise in 3D printing.

Tony Hines 38:36

Yeah.

Bindiya 38:36

We are hiring data scientists, putting them together with those material science experts. We're hiring mechanical and component engineers who have that expertise qualifying parts and knowing which part not only can be printed, but what kind of tests would successfully qualify this part for use in uh the product. So these are kind of the three core technology experts. And then we have the technology experts like developers, engineers who build the software itself. So those are the are obviously the next in order for the product to fully come out to market.

Tony Hines 39:17

Yeah. And that's important for the scalability of the venture, isn't it? Really?

Bindiya 39:22

Tony, one more thing, my co-founder is someone who has extensive expertise building a supplier ecosystem.

Tony Hines 39:30

Okay.

Bindiya 39:31

So we will obviously build a global supplier ecosystem of printers who can, you know, print the parts on demand for our customers. And so that's a key critical expertise.

Data Science Stack For Agentic Systems

Tony Hines 39:44

Ah, right. It's absolutely brilliant pulling this together. And it's going to create a lot of opportunity, I think, for people who have those skills to join a really exciting journey and to help you develop these ideas globally. So I'm going to go. Thank you. That's fantastic.

Bindiya 40:01

Yeah, no, I think um uh between the supply chain expertise I have, the 3D printing expertise one of my team members has, the PhD in material science that I'm hiring, the data scientists and the technology, it truly is a well-rounded team, you know, that has come around the table.

Tony Hines 40:23

So tell me about the data scientists. What do you look for in the data scientists? What are they going to be actually getting their teeth into?

Bindiya 40:31

Yeah, so uh from a data science standpoint, we look for people who have built agentic AI uh native solutions. So they know how to work with LLMs and what the opportunities are, but more importantly, what the failure points are in LLMs, because we want to make sure there is no hallucination or you know, false information being shared. Or so that expertise is very critical, the boundaries and then how to extract the most out of an LLM. The second is machine learning expertise, so knowing how to train a machine learning model so that you can analyze patterns in the data and extract predictive or other uh insight out of it, then the ability to have matching, you know, capabilities, so your recommendation system type of knowledge where you like kind of like Netflix, you know. Hey, based on your recommendations, I recommend these movies. In this case, based on your specs and dimensions, you need to use this printer or that material, right? And then um uh we also need CNN, which is the ability to do more recognition of the drawing to identify any overhangs or so the computer vision skills that can read a drawing and identifying thin walls, overhangs, because certain things cannot be 3D printed. So those are some of the core skills and the neural networks to kind of take all that unstructured data that's out there and put it in a meet uh in a way that it can have uh make sense out of it.

Tony Hines 42:07

That's brilliant. Bindir, I'm gonna say thanks very much

Call For Early Pilots And Feedback

Tony Hines 42:11

at that point because I think you've actually given us a real sense of what's happening and you've given us some food for thought. Is the is there any sort of last uh I suppose spark points for people to hang on to while waiting for this exciting revolution to take place?

Bindiya 42:30

Um I will say one thing that with as with any new technology, it does require people to adopt. This is Tony the point we started with, which is we can, as entrepreneurs, we can have an idea, we can have that spark, but it needs people who believe in the full long-term vision to take a step towards it today. And it doesn't have to be a big step, it has to be a hey, let's explore this together. As you're in the industry, you have a few parts, you want to test this out, but come at it with a let's build this together, because a lot of times people look at technology and they're like looking for a way to run out the door. Whereas that's not what we need right now. We need people who know that this is not perfect, but that we will work on making it perfect together because the vision that we have painted is worth the time that we will put into building that. So I would love for

How To Reach Accio 3D And Close

Bindiya 43:28

your audience to find those people who are early adopters, who are excited about the long-term vision and who are willing and able to do something today to test this out on a few parts, give us feedback, help us with the AI so that when we actually deploy this on parts at a larger scale, the AI is at a very, very high per uh percent of accuracy.

Tony Hines 43:54

And they can find ACIO3D on the web, can't they?

Bindiya 43:59

Yes, you can read. Us at accio3d.ai. You can also reach us on LinkedIn and uh you can also reach out to me on LinkedIn personally.

Tony Hines 44:10

Bindia, that's fantastic. Thanks very much for joining us today. I'm excited to have you on this one. It's brilliant.

Bindiya 44:17

Thank you so much for having me again, Tony. It was great to do this with you.

Tony Hines 44:23

So there we have it, Accio 3D. Now you know everything about Accio 3D and the plans. And of course, if you want to reach out to Accio, well, you've got the contact details. There'll be some information in the notes too. If you're a business looking to employ some of the smart technology and supply chains that can help you print those parts that you might want for your business, go to Accio 3D and see what they can do for you. Simplify Scale Summon. That's Accio 3D. Hope you enjoyed the episode. And thanks to Bindiya Vakil, who's the founder of Accio 3D, and the previous CEO of Resilinc, which she also founded. And now we wait to see what the magic brings. I'm Tony Hines, I'm signing off, and I'll see you next time in Chain Reaction. Bye for now.