Forbes Asia — December 2017

78 | FORBES ASIA DECEMBER 2017

looking motorcycle. Nearby sits the Blade, a

sleek silver sports car that calls to mind vehicles

in the sci-fi film Minority Report. Czinger built

both with a patented approach to manufactur-

ing that relies heavily on new digital technolo-

gies like 3-D metal printing. They’re less expen-

sive than traditional manufacturing methods

and better for the environment, and they could

prove as disruptive to the transportation indus-

try as electric vehicles and self-driving cars.

The Blade and Dagger are prototypes, but

Czinger has teamed up with France’s Groupe

PSA, which makes Peugeot and Citroën vehicles,

to work on a number of development projects

over the next few years. And his mini-factory

will be making batches of other test vehicles—

van-like shuttles—for customers Czinger won’t

yet name. Investors like Hong Kong billionaire

Li Ka-shing’s Horizon Ventures and Altran Tech-

nologies, a French high-tech engineering consul-

tancy that works in the automotive sector, along

N

obody has to remind Kevin

Czing er what the Rust Belt was

like during the heyday of Amer-

ican manufacturing. The pun-

gent smells, the dark soot spewing

from smokestacks and his summer job shoveling

coke at a steel plant are all seared into memories

of his youth in Cleveland in the 1970s. The north-

ern Ohio city was a symbol of industrial might—

until suddenly it all crumbled.

Now the 58-year-old entrepreneur wants to

help usher in a new manufacturing era—one

that can withstand the forces that decimated his

hometown along with vast swaths of the United

States. You can get a glimpse of this new era at a

miniature auto factory, about the size of a large

grocery store, tucked inside a concrete-and-glass

office park in suburban Los Angeles. Beyond

darkened glass doors, parked in the gallery-like

lobby of the headquarters of Divergent 3D, his

five-year-old startup, is the Dagger, a sporty-

Divergent 3D CEO Kevin

Czinger is betting on a

radical transformation

of the manufacturing

sector that will change

how industrial goods

are made.

Honey, I Shrunk

the Factory

BY ALAN OHNSMAN AND JOANN MULLER

Using software and 3-D printing, Kevin Czinger wants to

miniaturize the auto plant. It’s the opposite of Elon Musk’s

plans for Tesla and every bit as radical.

TECHNOLOGY