Spare part production in remote locations through Additive Manufacturing enhanced by agile development principles

摘要

Since military systems are in use for long periods of time, it is likely that necessary spare parts are not available either because they are no longer in production, due to logistic complexity or simply because they are no longer in stock. Adding to this problematic, the possibility that the machinery is deployed in an area of operations enhances the impediments due to the existing geographical constraint. For this reason the application of Additive Manufacturing, is an attractive solution for the military to cope with the spares request when required in remote locations, with a short margin of time. This article presents a case study showing a real application of the German Federal Armed Forces. It states a way to deal with the production process of AM-spares with decentralized production, enhancing the process by the use of agile hardware development principles.