Strategic Alignment of Additive Manufacturing

Previous chapters underlined the value of AM to industry, business and operation strategies, and manufacturing and operations. Regarding the general impacts, our survey results (illustrated in the exhibits) identify and confirm the positive impacts on time, cost, quality, environment and business flexibility performance. It is not feasible to identify a specific factor common to all circumstances, or to generalize all the factors to a specific circumstance. The chapter proposes a framework containing some of the building blocks necessary for the strategic alignment of a company’s business model with the adoption of AM. It discusses business and operations strategies for introducing additive technologies and continues with identifying contingency factors driving AM performance. These factors are categorized as organizational, operational, and products’ characteristics. The chapter ends with an economic analysis providing the detail of break-even analysis to identify economically sustainable production volumes.