Additive Manufacturing solving Spare Parts Challenges within Heavy Equipment Industry

Abstract: Background Companies which operate within heavy equipment are highly dependent on a continuous spare part stream to minimise their production downtime. The disruption of the pandemic known as Covid19 has brought the global supply chain to its knee, and countless companies have been affected by the global supply shortage. One of such industries is heavy equipment which comprises heavy-duty vehicles, large equipment, large-scale infrastructure, intricate or numerous processes with high operation cost and a unique set of challenges. Consequently, the demand for spare parts within heavy equipment can be extremely unpredictable and erratic, since the life cycle of machinery is connected to systems owned by the customers and its applications. Therefore, understanding the heavy equipment industry could allow for new innovative ways for managing spare part challenges. One of the methods for solving spare part challenges in other industries according to previous research has been the utilisation of additive manufacturing (AM).The AM technology is based on incremental layer-by-layer manufacturing compared to conventional manufacturing (CM) which mostly depend on subtractive manufacturing processes. Research questions RQ1: What are the challenges within the heavy equipment industry regarding spare part management? RQ2: How can the heavy equipment industry utilise additive manufacturing to overcome challenges surrounding spare parts management? Method The literature review comprised of the identification of spare part management challenges surrounding heavy equipment, the capabilities of AM surrounding spare parts as well as optimisation methods for existing parts with AM. Whereas the interviews consisted of two sets of interview groups (i.e., heavy equipment and AM based companies). Lastly, the experiment consisted of validating gathered data as well as identifying AMs capabilities based on a physical object (i.e., lifting bracket). Findings The findings show the existing spare part management challenges within heavy equipment are related to four dimensions namely: warehousing, cost, lead times and the environment.Whereas the findings surrounding AMs capabilities for mitigating spare part management challenges showed that, AM enable the production of low volume parts with low lead time replenishment. This could minimise overall waste within the heavy equipment industry, where central warehousing could be reduced as well as the total lead time for customers.