Challenges of additive manufacturing in production systems

Abstract

Additive Manufacturing (AM) has become indispensable in the context of digitalization and Industry 4.0 and is said to be a mega trend of the 21st century. The technology offers immense opportunities to revolutionize the production of parts and components in all industries. Despite of the outstanding technical possibilities, the industry-wide adaptation rate is low. The current approach of looking at AM from a mostly technological view is a major reason for this. The challenge is to efficiently integrate 3D printing and other additive processes into existing manufacturing processes and systems. AM must be perceived as a multidimensional topic and viewed from different perspectives, two of which are the AM technology and the planning and management of production systems. These two perspectives have to be addressed simultaneously and cross-linked. In order to use AM to tackle some of the most challenging problems in modern manufacturing systems like increasing variant diversity, shorter product lifecycles, the demand for digitized processes and cyber-physical systems, it is necessary to develop interdisciplinary approaches and solutions, because none of the disciplines can reach the necessary performance and cost-efficiency alone.