Additive Manufacturing Costs & Challenges Associated with Production of Spare Parts.

Additive Manufacturing as a technology could continue to see widespread commercial adoption in a myriad of industries, as an alternative solution, production methods could benefit from the added efficiency, performance and innovations in product designs overcoming traditional manufacturing constraints.This study aims to explore the costs and challenges associated with additive manufacturing encountered by companies through a process map and framework approach. The dual approach was applied to categorise the costs and challenges as a means of identifying the impacts and importances of each cost and challenge specific to a case company. This study will provide both single (within) case analysis and a cross-case analysis of the case companies.In carrying out this study, the significance of identifying whether the existing costs and challenges from additive manufacturing extant literature are present in case companies in Sweden will serve as confirmation of extant literature, conversely, also identifying costs and challenges that were not present in the case companies. The implication of this study is to provide the level of impacts and applicability of each cost and challenge as encountered by the case companies.