Measure Additive Manufacturing for Sustainable Manufacturing

Additive manufacturing technologies are still brand new in industrial production. Although It has widely been used in prototypes development, either low or very low scale production are also able to incorporate such technologies nowadays. The application of additive manufacturing in large scale has been presented as a paradigm to be overcome. Nevertheless, the application of these technologies worldwide might affect production systems dynamics in addition to organizations structures. At the same way, applying additive manufacturing technologies in medium and large scale might also create either novel businesses models or improve marketing segments that were underestimated. For that reason, the main goal of this paper is to investigate the metrics applied in additive manufacturing to identify the main advantages and disadvantages of these scenarios in a systematic study which correlate the economic, social and environmental key points which provide current manufacturing companies to identify the suitability of each additive manufacturing technology in accordance with its business goals. Therefore, the sustainable metrics for additive manufacturing processes will prove that it is really a sustainable manufacturing. Moreover, these results were results of others preliminary studies which might open a new discussion topic among manufacturing companies.