| Abstract |
Industrial supply chains are under increasing pressure to reduce costs, ensure the continuity of services and deal with disruptions. This is particularly true when it comes to maintenance spare-parts management, where demand is intermittent, lead times can be extended, and part unavailability can result in downtime. Additive manufacturing can help with on-demand production, digital inventory and local sourcing, but it will not be economically viable in all situations.
The aim of the present master thesis is to develop a literature-derived decision-support artifact, with a conceptual model at its core, for evaluating the economic impact of additive manufacturing in industrial spare-parts supply chains. The research applies a design-oriented approach based on systematic literature review, thematic coding, comparative synthesis, and artifact development. Five evaluation dimensions are found: production economics, inventory and obsolescence, logistics and network effects, responsiveness and service, and feasibility of implementation.
The resulting artifact combines contextual screening, scenario comparison, criteria hierarchy, indicator scoring, enterprise information support and spreadsheet-based instantiation. In this thesis, the term “artifact” refers to the complete contribution, while the decision-support “model” denotes its conceptual core. It assesses the traditional supply approach against centralised, regional and in-house additive-manufacturing options. The artifact is verified for consistency and assessed using three scenarios that illustrate the use of the artifact. The findings show that regional additive manufacturing is best suited for low demand and legacy high criticality parts, and medium volume cases could enhance service without impacting overall costs.
The thesis contributes to Business Informatics by bridging managerial evaluation and organizational IT support with the explicit linking of evaluation criteria to enterprise information requirements and data sources, including planning, warehouse, maintenance, product lifecycle, design, and finance systems.
The master thesis consists of 97 pages, 16 figures, 31 tables, 3 appendices, and 45 references. |
