Integrated product-process design: Material and manufacturing process selection for additive manufacturing using multi-criteria decision making

Abstract

Market dynamics of today are constantly evolving in the presence of emerging technologies such as Additive Manufacturing (AM). Drivers such as mass customization strategies, high part-complexity needs, shorter prod- uct development cycles, a large pool of materials to choose from, abundant manufacturing processes, diverse streams of applications (e.g. aerospace, motor vehicles, and health care) and high cost incurred due to manufac- turability of the part have made it essential to choose the right compromise of materials, manufacturing processes and associated machines in early stages of design considering the Design for Additive Manufacturing guidelines. There exists a complex relationship between AM products and their process data. However, the literature to-date shows very less studies targeting this integration. As several criteria, material attributes and process function- ality requirements are involved for decision making in the industries, this paper introduces a generic decision methodology, based on multi-criteria decision-making tools, that will not only provide a set of compromised AM materials, processes and machines but will also act as a guideline for designers to achieve a strong foothold in the AM industry by providing practical solutions containing design oriented and feasible material-machine com- binations from a current database of 38 renowned AM vendors in the world. An industrial case study, related to aerospace, has also been tested in detail via the proposed methodology.