Additive Manufacturing: Tools and Methods Supporting Early Adopters in a Focused Implementation

Abstract

Developments in Additive Manufacturing (AM) in the last decades originated a shift from prototyping toward manufacturing applications. Through a small lot-size advantage and a complexity advantage over established manufacturing technologies, AM demonstrated the capability of enabling for incremental and radical innovation in products and processes. However, despite an affirmed industrial potential, and a modest availability of success stories, AM adopters still face multiple barriers to the implementation, and the adoption rate is reduced. Evidence suggests that the value-adding capabilities of AM are today not enough understood in industry and require further investigation. The purpose of the present research is to provide adopters with tools and methods to structure the AM adoption process, to achieve more focus in the implementation, and to facilitate the direct scoping of value-adding AM applications. Three studies were conducted combining multi- and single- case study approaches to observe the adoption of AM technologies in different industrial contexts. The research proposes: 1) a new value-driven framework for the clustering of AM applications, adding a layer of assessment in the scoping of AM applications; 2) a novel methodology to assess different manufacturing strategies for high variety component families and quantitatively assess the implications of AM adoption on operational KPIs; 3) the implications in the functional domains of R&D, operations, sales and marketing of adopting AM in combination with Agile development methods for the purpose of incremental product launches of hardware. Overall the thesis identifies five managerial implications for companies in the adoption phase of AM.