Comparison of production strategies and degree of postponement when incorporating additive manufacturing to product supply chains

The best-selling products manufactured nowadays are made in long series along rigid product value chains. Product repetition and continuous/stable manufacturing is seen as a chance for achieving economies of scale. Nevertheless, these speculative strategies fail to meet special customer demands, thus reducing the effective market share of a product in a range. Additive Manufacturing technologies open promising product customization opportunities; however, to achieve it, it is necessary to delay the production operations in order to incorporate the customer’s inputs in the product materialization. The study offered in the present paper compares different possible production strategies for a product (via conventional technologies and Additive Manufacturing) and assesses the degree of postponement that it would be recommended in order to meet a certain demand distribution. The problem solving is calculated by a program containing a stochastic mathematical model which incorporates extensive information on costs and lead times for the required manufacturing operations