Systematic approach for cost efficient design and planning with additive manufacturing

Additive Manufacturing technologies offer a high potential for the economic use in an industrial environment. Potentials and barriers of this technology are still not widely known by the potential users. The presented work will give an overview over the economic aspects and discusses how to utilise the technology in a profitable way. The emphasis is to enable the user to perform a Cost Efficient design and planning process to fully exploit the potential of the Additive Manufacturing technologies. The end user will be enabled to estimate the profitability in an early phase of the product development as well as the implementation effort for Additive Manufacturing. Tools and methods, which are subject to be utilised in a Cost Efficient Product Development Process with an emphasis on Additive Manufacturing, are discussed. Core aspects are the selection of part candidates, the Build Time estimation in early phases of the product development process, as well as the comparison of manufacturing speed measures of different technologies and materials. Summarising the thesis discusses the developed tools with regards to their applicability in the Product Development Process. A systematic approach, which allows to achieve easy access to the AM technology and its integration in the day to day business is presented.