Читать книгу Intermittent Demand Forecasting - John E. Boylan - Страница 33

An alternative form of MTO, enabled by advances in additive manufacturing, is 3D Printing (3DP) an item on demand. In this case, decision‐making relates to the level of investment in 3DP machinery/technology that may ‘print’ the requested number of items upon demand. Potentially, this is very appealing in the case of spare parts and is currently being explored by various organisations seeking to cut down their inventories. For example, in 2018 the Dutch Army initiated a collaboration with the 3DP company DiManEx to examine spare part supply challenges. At the time of writing, there is no empirical evidence on the effect of 3DP on spare parts inventory management and how this compares with MTS approaches.