Analysis of additive manufacturing in an automobile service part supply chain

The traditional supply chain performance depends on the efficiency of mass production, the availability of productive low cost labor and the geometry and materials of the products. Additive manufacturing, on the other hand, bypasses all these constraints and reduces the number of stages in the supply chain by allowing local production of low volume parts of greater complexity. We develop an approach for assessing the total cost when additive manufacturing is integrated into the service-parts supply chain given a set of inputs that characterize the supply chain. Specifically, we present several simulation and optimization models to help companies decide the end-of-life strategy of low volume service parts. Through sensitivity analysis, we identify regions of parameters where additive manufacturing is preferred. Moreover, we find that service parts with high lost sales unit cost and low fixed and variable additive manufacturing costs are the most suitable for additive manufacturing.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computation for Design and Optimization Program

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2018

Author dc:creator

• Wei, Yijin,S. M.Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Stephen C. Graves.

• Computation for Design and Optimization Program.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/122308

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/122308