South Korea’s Industrial Powerhouse Partners with Materialise to Drive Business Growth through Additive Manufacturing

Over the past several decades South Korea has positioned itself as a leading manufacturing economy. Ulsan Metropolitan City, South Korea's seventh-largest metropolis, is at the heart of this manufacturing industry, hosting some of the world's largest automobile assembly plants, shipyards and oil refineries. In order to reinforce its competitive position, the Ulsan Metropolitan City government is presenting a roadmap of growth that will focus on the convergence of digital technologies and manufacturing, leading to smarter and better connected production processes and factories.

Additive manufacturing will play a key role in this digital, data-based transformation and that is why the Ulsan Metropolitan City government is teaming up with Materialise. With almost three decades of 3D printing experience, Materialise is a pioneer and a leading provider of Additive Manufacturing software and services for the medical and industrial markets.

“With major improvements in speed, quality and materials, Additive Manufacturing is quickly positioning itself as a complementary or alternative manufacturing technology when solving specific manufacturing challenges. By delivering weight, performance and cost advantages it allows for fundamental design optimizations and functional improvements, such as lighter designs, that are impossible to create with standard manufacturing technologies.”

As part of the agreement, Materialise will help manufacturing companies in Ulsan Metropolitan City to develop applications that generate business growth by enabling significant manufacturing process optimizations. This will happen through intensive co-creation projects, where Materialise will combine its 3D printing expertise with the manufacturing company’s industry and product knowledge and manufacturing experience. During this process, both companies will look for elements in the production process that can benefit from the design optimizations and manufacturing flexibility provided by Additive Manufacturing. The results of these co-creation projects will be presented at the Ulsan 3D Printing Tech Festa on September 13-15 and will serve as a blueprint for other manufacturing companies to adopt Additive Manufacturing as a complementary manufacturing technology.

About Materialise

Materialise incorporates 27 years of 3D printing experience into a range of software solutions and 3D printing services, which together form the backbone of the 3D printing industry. Materialise’s open and flexible solutions enable players in a wide variety of industries, including healthcare, automotive, aerospace, art and design, and consumer goods, to build innovative 3D printing applications that aim to make the world a better and healthier place. Headquartered in Belgium, with branches worldwide, Materialise combines the largest group of software developers in the industry with one of the largest 3D printing facilities in the world. For additional information, please visit: www.materialise.com.