**3.2 The two companies: Alpha and Beta**

Alpha manufactures heaters, saunas, steam generators**,** and steam baths. Because Alpha currently produces prefabricated products or products with ready-made settings, product customization presents a challenge. The high cost of essential product materials (e.g., aluminum) is another challenge. The purpose of this co-creation project was to explore the use of AM to reduce material costs, production time, and energy usage, to customize some products, and to attract new customers with innovative designs.

<sup>1</sup> Responding to the companies' request for anonymity, we identify the companies by the pseudonyms Alpha and Beta.

Beta supplies rubber products to industrial companies that make their machines and systems safer, quieter, and more energy efficient. Beta has a heterogeneous group of customers in the marine, mining, construction, and sports industries. The purpose of this co-creation project was to explore the use of AM to reduce lead times for customized products, to improve the efficiency of production, and to reduce tooling costs.

In both projects, the polymer-based extrusion process labeled fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printing was tested. FDM is one of the most widely accepted extrusion-based processes in the AM technologies owing to its simplified approach to fabricating parts from the CAD model. The approach, which provides customized product development based on users' needs and conditions creates a digital production line by introducing AM, based on the FabLab concept. Typical challenges encountered with the approach include difficulties in the evaluation of new business processes, new distribution channels, and new markets.
