Additive manufacturing and the influence on logistics
An interdisciplinary linking of the areas of logistics and additive manufacturing creates new potential. These can be divided into two areas.
Production or logistics planning: Additive manufacturing helps with the planning of material flows. An entire production line can be printed to scale in order to iteratively determine the optimal arrangement of warehouses and production machines.
Production: Furthermore, additive manufacturing helps to reduce inventory, optimise batch sizes and meet the requirements of customised production. The use of additive manufacturing technologies eliminates the need to store many different materials and its flexible use enables short set-up times and the production of products in batch sizes of 1.
Additive Manufacturing Logistics© https://pixabay.com/de/illustrations/drucker-3d-technologie-design-3956972/
Prerequisites for use
Know-how in the application
A certain amount of know-how is necessary for the use of additive manufacturing processes. This includes the areas of design, material selection and manufacturing.
Cost-benefit analysis
The use of additive manufacturing processes requires a restructuring of the entire manufacturing process. The chances of converting conventional manufacturing to additive manufacturing processes can be found out with a cost-benefit analysis.