Current technological developments in “Additive Manufacturing” (AM) have increased
confidence in the disruptive potential of this technology. Leading organisations in
Industrial Product-Service System’s (IPS2) are increasingly investing in R&D activities to
better understand AM, its limitations and how to benefit now and in the future from its
potential. AM capability acquisition may represent a source of competitive advantage
and a means to develop new sources of income.
This PhD contributes to the current research effort on “AM applications in Defence
Support Services” (DS2) for Royal Navy’s platforms by providing significant evidence on
the benefits of deployed AM. This PhD aims at developing a framework to assess costs
and impact on availability of Additive Manufacturing applications in Support Services.
This PhD’s contribution to knowledge is represented by the “System of Interest” (SoI) of
a DS2 which defines its boundaries, links and elements, a Conceptual Framework for
Additive Manufacturing assessment into DS2, Mathematical Models for estimating the
Time and Costs of Additive Manufacturing considering the end-to-end process of
delivering and printing an AM component, a Conceptual Framework to assess the Cost,
Time and Benefits of AM and a Decision Support System for Additive Manufacturing
applications in DS2 which allows to perform static and deterministic estimations on AM
applications in the context of Defence Support Services. The main advantages of AM
applications in DS2 are to provide platforms with the ability to sustain their systems,
recover its capability after damage, solve obsolescence issues and collapse dramatically
the supply chain
