Assessing industrial barriers of additively manufactured digital spare part implementation in the machine-building industry: a cross-organizational focus group interview study

Abstract

PurposeAlthough additive manufacturing (AM) has been demonstrated to have significant potential in improving spare part delivery operations and has been adopted to a degree in the aviation and automotive industries, its use in spare part production is still limited in other fields due to a variety of implementation barriers. The purpose of this article is to assess the significance of previously reported barriers in the context of the machine-building industry.Design/methodology/approachAdoption barriers are identified from the literature and formulated as hypotheses, which are verified with a set of focus group interviews consisting of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), AM service providers and quality inspection and insurance institutions. The results of the interviews are reported qualitatively, and the transcripts of the interviews are subjected to quantitative content analysis.FindingsThe article identifies distrust in quality, insufficient material and design knowledge among stakeholders and poor availability of design documentation on spare parts as the key barriers of adopting AM in the production of spare parts. The three key barriers are interconnected and training engineers to be proficient in design and material issues as well as producing high-quality design documentation will yield the highest increase in AM implementation in spare parts.Originality/valueThe article offers a unique approach as it investigates the subjective views of a cross-organizational group of industrial actors involved in the machine-building industry. The article contributes to the theory of digital spare parts by verifying and rejecting presented barriers of AM implementation and how they are interconnected.

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“…However, many raw material-related bottlenecks still exist [84]: difficulties in combining various materials [85], inadequate material properties [27,51,79], high prices [11,58,66], and unreliable quality between shipments due to a lack of standardization [69]. Moreover, compared to traditional manufacturing, a relatively limited amount of different material types exists [19,68,71].…”

“…Compared to AM-where one machine produces many different shapes-traditional manufacturing requires different techniques, e.g., milling, grinding, and drilling. When changing to AM, people need to gain new knowledge about AM techniques but require less knowledge about traditional techniques [67,82,84]. Jobs will change, and due to reduced physical handling, less personnel and management may be required [28,63,85].…”

“…A lack of knowledge about designing for AM is considered to be problematic [54,65,77,84]. Other relevant issues include how clients feel about AM (and whether they provide consent for AM to be used), the absence of machine operators, a potential reluctance to adapt to new work processes, insufficient management back-up, and insufficient confidence in the equipment and raw material suppliers [65,66].…”

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“…These three key barriers are interconnected. They conclude that training engineers in design and material issues, as well as in the development of high-quality design documentation, will significantly increase the implementation of AM in aftermarket parts [23].…”