Holistic consideration of impacts through additive manufacturing on the product lifecycle

Abstract

In theory, additive production processes enable companies to flexibly react on volatile markets, produce spare parts on demand and realize individual customer requests directly. For the future, a vast growth of the application of additive manufacturing (AM) is predicted. The technology is perceived to have the potential to reform current manufacturing fundamentally. The technological aspects of additive manufacturing are mostly explained in today’s literature, whereas impacts on the product lifecycle and different approaches in implementing AM are only covered superficially. Consequently, this paper shows the impact on essential divisions of an industrial company by implementing additive production technology. Therefore, a generalized product life cycle is evaluated under consideration of AM. This shows the complexity of the implementation progress of AM in companies and the related emerging requirements, reaching from changing infrastructural demands up to necessary changes in organizational issues.