Additive manufacturing has the potential to make a longstanding impact on the manufacturing world and is a core element of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Additive manufacturing signifies a new disruptive path on how we will produce parts and products. Several studies suggest this technology could foster sustainability into manufacturing systems based on its potential of optimizing material consumption, creating new shapes, customizing designs and shortening production times that, all combined, will greatly transform some of the existing business models. Although it requires reaching a certain level of design maturity to completely insert this technology in an industrial setting, additive manufacturing has the potential to favorably impact the manufacturing sector by reducing costs in production, logistics, inventories, and in the development and industrialization of a new product. The transformation of the industry and the acceleration of the adopting rate of new technologies is driving organizational strategy. Thus, through the lenses of Industry 4.0 and its technological concepts, this paper aims to contribute to the knowledge about the impacts of additive manufacturing technology on sustainable business models. This aim is accomplished through a proposed framework, as well as the models and scales that can be used to determine these impacts. The effects are assessed by taking into account the social, environmental and economic impacts of additive manufacturing on business models and for all these three dimensions a balanced scorecard structure is proposed.

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/17/7066/pdf

Impact Assessment of Additive Manufacturing on Sustainable Business Models in Industry 4.0 Context

With the recent evolution of additive manufacturing (AM), accurate cost prediction models are of increasing importance to assist decision-making during product development tasks. Estimating the cost is a challenging task in that it requires a vast amount of manufacturing knowledge that has to be synchronised with many aspects from design to production. As a result, various AM cost models have been developed. This review is performed with the aim of providing an overview of the costing models being developed and utilised associated with the additive manufacturing product development phases. For a better understanding in this field, it is required to become familiar with the various terminologies, perspectives, concepts, techniques, and approaches used in developing these models. It was observed that the contexts and views described during the development of the models were often targeted at specific applications as well as technologies and were classified in many ways. Accordingly, the paper compiles different aspects of the cost estimation classification technique and provides definitions of some of the key terminologies. The main motivation is to provide broad and in-depth reviews of the estimation models developed over the past three decades using a systematic classification approach. From the review, a visualisation of future insights into the AM cost-oriented estimation framework from the perspective of various AM users can be better understood.

Additive manufacturing cost estimation models—a classification review

A cost benefit analysis for industry 4.0 in a job shop environment using a mixed integer linear programming model

The study presented in the paper is an innovative research approach. It is the result of linking the concept of supply chain management and global changes, which at present are clearly visible on a global scale, with research methodology based on the systematic literature review, knowledge visualization and an expert method that makes use of knowledge, experience and opinions of experts in a given field. This research is about a Delphi study that was conducted in the context of the development of trends of supply chain and global changes, based on the findings of a systematic literature review. The qualitative study was conducted with 30 Delphi experts in the field of the supply chain. This progressive approach to the research topic allowed us to discover key global trends and modern supply chain development directions in the context of global changes, as well as their assessment and projection of the developmental potential of these trends.

https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/15/4414/pdf

Identification and Classification of Global Theoretical Trends and Supply Chain Development Directions

In the paper, the problem of proper resources management is considered. The problem was analysed and the results of a research on production improvement are presented, concerning specifically utilization rates of machinery and operators, as well as increase of production capacity. These aspects affect the efficiency of the whole production process. Thus, the proper resources management is an additional challenge that needs to be done by every manufacturing company. Examinations were carried-out in a company from the automotive industry, where the utilization of resources of three production lines were considered. In this case, the operators and machines utilization rates were emphasized. The optimization criteria was to increase the utilization rate of resources and reduce the time needed to produce one piece of each analysed products. The methods used to perform the improvement were, among the others, kanban and supermarket systems. The results were verified using computer simulation models designed for both present state and the state after implementing the suggested solutions.

Production Resources Utilization Improvement with the Use of Simulation Modelling

The article analyzes the newest trends in the industry and production research. Making insight in the most popular research domains and changes in the industry enabled the authors to formulate a thesis that the manufacturing world strode in the new revolution based on the Additive Manufacturing technologies. It can be stated that a particular gap exists in the field of production engineering that needs to be fulfilled by developing appropriate solutions for the factories integrating AM technologies in their workflow. The paper proves this statement by showing numbers of publications within sub-domains in scope of “individualization of production”. As a basic discouragement on the way to the new production paradigm, it was recognized a deficiency of accurate and versatile cost calculating models. The existing approaches were assessed and assigned to their best application which enabled to indicate a direction of the future research.

Additive Manufacturing Technologies Cost Calculation as a Crucial Factor in Industry 4.0

The paper presents GoShaper Platform serving as a training, recruitment and evaluation gaming tool in Production Management field. The complex composition of the game modules and functions was described altogether with the decision process, in the most elaborated Free Competition module, examining players skills in the competitive environment and challenging them with tasks such as factory locating (with consideration of suppliers placement), technology purchasing, layout planning, schedule building and production control, while competing with other manufacturers on the market. The description of the decision process complexity and its interdependencies embedded, gave overall view of algorithmic needs for Virtual Player (VP) to be integrated in the Platform. The review of the available AI solutions for serious games was included. The set of algorithms chosen and combined accordingly and innovative logic developed for VP were shown, and the entity was tested proving its potential. The VP built in gained significant advantage over real, well qualified player which proved the evolved dedicated logic with AI elements effectiveness. The possibilities of future algorithms upgrade were indicated.

Joanna Gabka

Papers

Additive Manufacturing Technologies Cost Calculation as a Crucial Factor in Industry 4.0

GoShaper as an Innovative Training and Evaluation Platform With Embedded AI Solutions