Improving effectiveness of spare parts supply by additive manufacturing as dual sourcing option
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Improving effectiveness of spare parts supply by additive manufacturing as dual sourcing option N. Knofius1 · M. C. van der Heijden1 · A. Sleptchenko2 · W. H. M. Zijm1 Received: 11 January 2019 / Accepted: 11 September 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract The low-volume spare parts business is often identified as a potential beneficiary of additive manufacturing (AM) technologies. Currently, high AM unit costs or low AM part reliabilities deem the application of AM economical inferior to conventional manufacturing (CM) methods in most cases. In this paper, we investigate the potential to overcome these deficiencies by combining AM and CM methods. For that purpose, we develop an approach that is tailored toward the unique characteristics of dual sourcing with two production methods. Opposed to the traditional dual sourcing literature, we consider the different failure behavior of parts produced by AM and CM methods. Using numerical experiments and a case study in the aviation industry, we explore under which conditions dual sourcing with AM performs best. Single sourcing with AM methods typically leads to higher purchasing and maintenance costs while single sourcing with CM methods increases backorder and holding costs. Savings of more than 30% compared to the best single sourcing option are possible even if the reliability or unit costs of a part sourced with AM are three times worse than for a CM part. In conclusion, dual sourcing methods may play an important role to exploit the benefits of AM methods while avoiding its drawbacks in the low-volume spare parts business. Keywords Inventory · Dual sourcing · Spare parts · Digital manufacturing · 3D printing
* N. Knofius [email protected] 1
Industrial Engineering and Business Information Systems (IEBIS), Faculty of Behavioural Management and Social Sciences, University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands
2
Khalifa University, Masdar Institute, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
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1 Introduction Spare parts inventories are essential to keep downtime of advanced capital goods within reasonable limits, cf. Sherbrooke (2004), and Van Houtum and Kranenburg (2015). Investments in spare parts inventories can be huge, as the assortment contains many different items, among which are many expensive parts, slow movers, and long lead time items. This situation holds in particular for parts manufactured using conventional manufacturing (CM) technologies like milling, drilling, or injection molding. Additive manufacturing (AM), also referred to as 3D printing, has increasingly matured to a point where it can be an alternative for spare parts production. The potential is exemplified by Airbus, an aircraft manufacturer, which reported that its A350 XWB aircraft contains more than 2700 printed parts (Airbus 2016). The unique process of AM in which raw materials are added layer upon layer to build complete parts at once is solely based on digital drawings. Therefore, AM leads to additional design freedom an
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