This paper explores ways in which rapid prototyping technologies are evolving into rapid manufacturing technologies. These technologies will bring about an age of fixture-less manufacturing, mass customization, and increasingly distributed manufacturing in the coming years. The layer-based fabrication techniques are fundamentally different from conventional fabrication techniques, and they will significantly affect all phases of product development from initial design through final disposal. The paper describes ways in which rapid manufacturing will affect industrial and manufacturing engineers, and it provides example applications of mass customization.