engleski

Additive manufacturing in compliance with lean manufacturing

Additive manufacturing is used in multiple industries since its conceptual developments in the early 1980s to the present. The purpose of additive manufacturing is to further aid the manufacturing industry by decreasing the need to develop many specialized assembly lines, which are expensive to maintain and require economies of scale to be financially viable. The idea of lean manufacturing in shipbuilding is being applied in shipyards around the world. The implementation of additive manufacturing well configures into a shipyard economy by complying with the lean principles of one-piece flow and just in time. This paper will analyze where additive manufacturing could be applied to further aid a shipbuilding environment to become leaner. The hypothesis of the authors is that through the implementation of additive manufacturing there will be a significant reduction in the number of assembly lines as well as the number of suppliers that a shipyard depends upon, thereby also reducing the lead time and delivering a vessel with fewer man-hours and a shorter duration time. This translates to lower overhead costs as well as increased profits for the shipyard.

additive manufacturing; lean manufacturing; one-piece flow; just in time

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