24/7 production: how Something Added is industrializing 3D with Bonx

About Something Added

Something Added is an industrial company specialized in additive manufacturing applied to performance footwear.

Something Added designs and produces 3D-printed shoe soles, working directly with brands and designers.

From the outset, Romain and Maxime started with a clear observation: the real challenge of additive manufacturing is not design, but industrialization.

The value of additive does not stop at prototyping; it lies in the ability to turn it into a reliable, continuous, and reproducible production tool.

To address this challenge, they took over an additive manufacturing plant in Barcelona and structured it as a demonstrator of a 1,000 m² autonomous production unit, designed from the ground up to:

• produce continuously,
• operate with a lean team,
• be data-driven in order to minimize human decision-making,
• and be replicated across other sites.

The production system relies on HP’s 3D printing technologies, integrated as a core component of the factory, at the heart of its daily operations.

Context: when industrialization becomes the real challenge

Very quickly, Something Added ran into an operational reality.

Each printing cycle involves:

• the receipt and analysis of 3D files,
• manual checks,
• operator decisions to launch print jobs,
• repetitive physical actions on the machines.

These actions are acceptable in R&D. But as soon as the objective becomes continuous production, they turn into a structural bottleneck.

Additive manufacturing also introduces a specific constraint:

• production is not done pair by pair,
• one print corresponds to a block of powder containing a batch of midsoles,
• multiple orders must be aggregated to optimize material usage and machine time,
• each produced part must be linked to the right customer, at the right price, with full traceability.

Each decision taken in isolation seems minor, but their accumulation directly impacts actual production capacity.

The ERP choice: turning decisions into industrial rules

Faced with these constraints, Something Added chose to structure its production system before increasing volumes.

Products and workflows evolve quickly. The selected solution therefore had to adapt without relying on heavy integrations or external interventions.

The teams evaluated specialized 3D printing software, then more general ERP systems. The former were efficient but rigid. The latter covered standard schemes but struggled to adapt to a mass production model that was still being built.

A clear line was drawn early on: any solution requiring too many manual actions, fixed workflows, or weak integration with 3D printers was ruled out.

Something Added’s priority was to automate repetitive decisions, group orders, assign jobs to machines based on clear industrial rules, and manage workload in real time, while retaining the flexibility to evolve its processes.

In this context, choosing Bonx became the natural decision.

Deployment of Bonx: modeling the reality of the factory

Once Bonx was selected, the work began on-site.

The teams traveled to Barcelona to observe the real operations of the Something Added factory, shadow the operators, and understand precisely how processes were running.

At the same time, they worked directly with the technical teams at HP to implement a native connection between the ERP and the 3D printers — a critical integration for Something Added’s industrial model.

Two months later, the ERP was live and running in production.

Before Bonx, production relied on a chain of manual steps: receiving 3D files, performing checks, grouping orders, selecting machines, and launching print jobs.

These were not just clicks. They required constant movement across the factory, back-and-forth between workstations, machines, and files, and a strong dependence on operators to move production forward.

With Bonx, operations changed.

Orders were grouped automatically, manufacturing orders were generated, and jobs were assigned to machines based on predefined rules. The teams stopped spending their time organizing production and focused on supervising execution.

Since deployment, Bonx has been used daily. Workflows have evolved, new operators — including temporary staff — have been onboarded, and the organization has adapted without rebuilding the system.

The solution has already scaled alongside Something Added’s rapid growth, including periods running at 100% capacity, with 24/7 production and tens of thousands of parts produced each month.

Next steps: automate and replicate

With production now structured and driven by industrial rules, Something Added can focus on what comes next.

The first priority is clear: deepen automation.

The goal is to further reduce human intervention wherever it still exists, especially in physical flows, in order to make the unit more robust, predictable, and easier to operate.

The second priority is replication.

The Barcelona unit was designed from the start as a standard: a compact factory, run by a lean team, managed through a centralized system. This logic makes it possible to deploy the model internationally, closer to key markets, without rebuilding the organization each time a new site opens.

In this trajectory, Bonx provides the foundation that enables the duplication of a proven industrial model, without reintroducing complexity as the company scales.