HP’s Monino speaks out

June 12, 2018

The OEM’s Vice President of Global Strategy and Business Management for 3D Printing has given an interview in which he discusses HP’s plans for the sector.

In the interview with CRN, Monino begins by discussing the targets for HP’s new Jet Fusion 300 and 500 models, stating that “the intent is to have a lower entry, both in terms of price point and physical requirements, in order to get closer to the designers,” and explaining the models’ advantages – “it basically enables you to design, prototype and manufacture in the same technology.”

The interview also takes in the partner recruitment the OEM is undertaking, with Monino revealing that HP is “recruiting and training channel partners as we speak,” and the levels of interest from partners, which is described as “very high. It’s a hyped industry, and everybody wants to get into it. We get a lot of calls, a lot of interest.”

In the course of the interview, Monino provides advice to IT partners regarding the 300 and 500 series and discusses the target number of partners the OEM is looking at, stating that “we don’t want to over-distribute. We want people to be successful. So we have what we call selected distribution.”

“As long as there is demand, I don’t have a limitation on the number of partners,” he adds. “I do want to protect the partners’ investments, so once they invest, I don’t want to have 10 partners in a city if there is not demand for 10.”

The interview also takes in HP’s focus on selling to engineers – something that “requires a different type of sale, which is more of a technical skills sales, more than a transactional sale” – and how the OEM’s entry into metal can expand its 3D print opportunities.

“There are a lot of things created with metal, that if you really design it properly, you can do it with plastics,” elaborates Monino. “And there are others where you will need a metal technology. We will announce our metal technology this year, later this year. It will be a separate machine. The metals market is smaller, but it’s used for final part manufacturing. Because especially for complex parts, with the metals manufacturing process, doing complex parts at a strength is tougher. So you see a lot more final parts. But if you really design properly, you can design parts that have historically done with metals, with plastics successfully, and it gives you much more flexibility.”

“We feel that if we really want to be in the manufacturing industry, and provide end-to-end coverage, metals is a key part of the portfolio,” he added. “We did not enter into plastics until we felt we had something disruptive. The same is going to apply to everything we do with metal.”

The interview closes with Monino discussing HP’s cost-parity gains with injection moulding on the Multi-Jet Fusion printers, stating that “we see ourselves pushing the break-even further and further away,” whilst acknowledging that “our strategy is to displace a lot of the injection moulding where it makes sense.”

You can read the full interview for yourself, here.

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