Additive manufacturing technologies and functional analysis used in product development optimization

Abstract

Market leadership is achieved only by the fastest, most productive and best value global producers that use product performance, cost, quality and reliability as assets. Product innovation is an essential factor to companies that want to be competitive, so to improve and modernise finished products or productive systems, a lot of methods, organising and rationalising techniques are used. The authors propose to approach a product’s lifecycle with technical functional analysis (FA) for better understanding of the consumers needs and eliminating unnecessary costs, taking into consideration the specific characteristics of additive manufacturing (AM) technologies. Amongst the most important advantages brought together by the two concepts are customer focus, high quality final products, energy efficiency, low material waste, production speed and time-to-market, manufacturing complex geometries, low costs etc. Merging FA with the opportunities offered by AM technologies creates a synergistic effect, enabling development of new standards of innovation, performance and sustainable competitive advantage