The impact of additive manufacturing in the aircraft spare parts supply chain: supply chain operation reference (scor) model based analysis

Additive manufacturing (AM) technology has the potential to significantly improve supply chain dynamics, reduce shipping costs and shorten delivery lead times. Using AM technology, manufacturers can produce parts on demand and thus reduce the need of maintaining safety inventory. This is especially useful in the aircraft spare parts industry where currently there is a need to maintain a high level of safety inventory for high-cost long-lead time metallic parts. Therefore, more and more companies in the aerospace industry are interested in using AM technology. There are different approaches to configure the aircraft spare parts supply chain using AM technology. This paper evaluates the impact of AM in the aircraft spare parts supply chain based on the well-known supply chain operation reference model. Three supply chain scenarios are investigated; namely, conventional (as-is) supply chain, centralized AM supply chain and distributed AM supply chain. A case study is conducted based on data obtained in the literature. The result shows that the use of AM will bring various opportunities for reducing the required safety inventory of aircraft spare parts in the supply chain. A sensitivity analysis is performed and some key factors affecting the choice of AM scenarios are studied.