Additive Manufacturing In Aeronautics Spare Parts Supply Chain

Additive manufacturing(AM)is a promising manufacturing technology which is finding its way into mainstream manufacturing industry.As compared to conventional manufacturing(CM)it has a number of advantages in terms of better energy efficiency,cutback in emissions,better design handling and lower set-up lead time.At the same time,the production lead time is generally slower,making this technology not suitable for the production of medium-large batches.This work is mainly focused on these aspects,hence the time difference in terms of production and set-up lead times,by evaluating the impact of AM on the aircraft spare parts supply chain,in particular on the inventory level of the so called “slow moving parts”.An aircraft supply chain is very critical because even a small shortage of spare part leads to heavy financial losses.This makes it mandatory for the aircraft companies and operators to keep large stock of all the spare parts throughout the year and thus invest a lot of money in the inventory even if the parts are not frequently needed.The peculiarity of the aircraft spare parts is that they require several months for manufacturing using conventional manufacturing processes like casting,drilling,electrical discharge machining and welding since setting up all these processes takes a non-negligible amount of time.Conversely the set-up lead time of additive manufacturing is small as compared to these conventional processes and hence this work tries to advocate this feature of additive manufacturing to demonstrate how the total inventory of spare parts held in an aircraft spare parts supply chain and costs related can be significantly reduced using this new technology.The work starts with a presentation about the spare parts and AM industrial background.This is followed by a modelling of inventory policies in AM and CM cases in order to find inventory levels and related costs.At the end a comparison between the two technologies impact is made.