Determining and Validating the Spare Parts Selection Criteria for Additive Manufacturing Using Delphi Technique

Availability of spares is essential, particularly for capital-intensive businesses, to retain the cost as a competitive advantage (order winner) with high service levels. Its unavailability may result in obsolesce of the machine. Additive Manufacturing (AM) or 3D printing has become mature enough to be utilized in manufacturing functional spares. Even though there are enough case examples, there has been limited research in identifying the most suitable spare parts for AM. Thus, there is a need to develop a methodology suited to various industries without discrimination by assessing all parts together. In identifying compatible spare parts for AM, the initial step is to determine the generic criteria used across various sectors that influence the decision of part identification for AM. These criteria are clustered into Business Impact (BI) and Technical Compatibility (TC). The BI includes 30 criteria, and TC includes 21 criteria. Further, the Delphi approach is employed in determining the generic and essential criteria used across various industries. The findings result in the retention of eight BI and seven TC criteria using the consistency validity ratio (CVR) score.