Purpose-For more than ten years, the value of additive manufacturing (AM) for after-sales service logistics has been propagated. Today, however, only few applications are observed in practice. In this paper, possible reasons for this discrepancy are discussed and a method is developed to simplify the identification of economically valuable and technologically feasible business cases. Design/methodology/approach-The approach is based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and relies on spare part information that is easily retrievable from the company databases. This has two advantages: first, the approach can be customized towards specific company characteristics, and second, a very large number of spare parts may be assessed simultaneously. A field study is discussed in order to demonstrate and validate the approach in practice. Furthermore, sensitivity analyses are performed to evaluate the robustness of the method. Findings-Results provide evidence that the method allows a valid prioritization of a large spare part assortment. Also, sensitivity analyses clarify the robustness of the approach and illustrate the flexibility of applying the method in practice. More than 1000 positive business cases of AM for after-sales service logistics have been identified based on the method. Originality/value-The developed method enables companies to rank spare parts according to their potential value when produced with AM. As a result, companies can evaluate the most promising spare parts first. This increases the effectiveness and efficiency of identifying business cases and thus may support the adoption of AM in after-sales service supply chains.

We consider the real-time scheduling of full truckload transportation orders with time windows that arrive during schedule execution. Because a fast scheduling method is required, look-ahead heuristics are traditionally used to solve these kinds of problems. As an alternative, we introduce an agent-based approach where intelligent vehicle agents schedule their own routes. They interact with job agents, who strive for minimum transportation costs, using a Vickrey auction for each incoming order. This approach offers several advantages: it is fast, requires relatively little information and facilitates easy schedule adjustments in reaction to information updates. We compare the agent-based approach to more traditional hierarchical heuristics in an extensive simulation experiment. We find that a properly designed multiagent approach performs as good as or even better than traditional methods. Particularly, the multi-agent approach yields less empty miles and a more stable service level.

Consolidation of parts is the redesign of an assembled component with fewer, but therefore more complex parts. While complex parts are often difficult to produce with conventional manufacturing (CM) technologies, the high degree of design freedom of additive manufacturing (AM) facilitates consolidation. Typically, consolidation with AM is chosen because of its functional befits such as weight reductions. Consequences for asset maintenance, however, are not that well understood. For example, the spare part management may profit from potentially shorter resupply lead times of AM, but may suffer from more expensive consolidated parts having to be stocked in anticipation of random failures. Together with a different price and failure rate of AM components, this complicates the decision whether AM should be used to consolidate a spare part. In this paper, we analyze the total costs of consolidation with AM, including logistics, manufacturing and repair costs. Our results suggest that consolidation with AM often leads to higher total costs. This finding mainly stems from loss of flexibility. For example, the repair of a component by replacing the defective sub-component only is no longer possible. Furthermore, short resupply lead times for the consolidated spare part turn out to be less beneficial than perceived and therefore relativize the benefit of consolidation with AM. Overall, these findings stress the necessity to adopt a total costs perspective when judging the effects of AM on spare parts management. Otherwise, consolidation may lead to unforeseen effects which may render its application debatable, even despite substantial functionality improvements.

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