Retrospective investigation of flexibility and their factors in additive manufacturing systems

Abstract

Additive manufacturing (AM) systems provide extensive flexibility by enabling improved product design, customisation and part printing. There is a need to understand these flexibilities and identify the respective factors of each of them, and further identify the relative importance of these flexibilities and their associated factors. The extensive literature review has helped in identifying the significant flexibilities and their associated factors. This research categorises the AM flexibility into seven significant types. These flexibilities are found to play a significant role in implementing AM in industries for achieving enhanced performance. Ranking of these flexibilities and their factors is accomplished using analytical hierarchical process (AHP) by taking the help of experts opinion. AM provides flexibility which can be appropriately used to support different types of organisations. The limitation of the paper is that the view of experts may not always be free from bias, and the technology is evolving. Industries use these flexibilities in customisation, product design and development, reverse engineering and innovation of products.