Unpacking additive manufacturing challenges and opportunities in moving towards sustainability: an exploratory study

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dc.contributor.authorLiu, Wen
dc.contributor.authorLiu, Xielin
dc.contributor.authorLiu, Ying
dc.contributor.authorWang, Jie
dc.contributor.authorEvans, Steve
dc.contributor.authorYang, Miying
dc.date.accessioned2023-03-09T10:50:16Z
dc.date.available2023-03-09T10:50:16Z
dc.date.issued2023-02-20
dc.description.abstractThe global market for Additive Manufacturing (AM) is expected to grow, which may increase the prominence of sustainability aspects in the manufacturing process. A growing number of AM academics and practitioners have started to pay attention to the environmental and societal impacts of AM instead of only focusing on its economic aspect. Yet, AM is still not widely adopted, and the research on AM sustainability is still at the nascent stage. This paper aims to better understand AM’s sustainable adoption and seeks to address three questions: what the sustainability implications of AM are; what challenges may prevent the broad adoption of AM; and what opportunities can enable AM sustainability. The research adopts a multiple case study method to investigate six AM companies that play different roles in the AM ecosystem, including AM design, AM machine, AM material, AM service, AM education, and AM consulting. The results from these studies reveal that AM has the potential to reduce environmental and social impacts; however, it might also cause negative consequences and lead to some rebound effects. We identified 43 categories (synthesized from 199 examples) of key challenges for AM adoption and proposed 55 key solutions in moving AM towards sustainability. It is evident that AM acts as a promising digital technology for manufacturing and has the potential to pave the way for a new era of sustainable manufacturing.en_UK
dc.description.sponsorshipEngineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC): EP/I033351/1. National Natural Science Foundation of China (71932009). National Natural Science Foundation of China (72272140).en_UK
dc.identifier.citationLiu W, Liu X, Liu Y, et al., (2023) Unpacking additive manufacturing challenges and opportunities in moving towards sustainability: an exploratory study, Sustainability, Volume 15, Issue 4, February 2023, Article number 3827en_UK
dc.identifier.issn2071-1050
dc.identifier.urihttps://doi.org/10.3390/su15043827
dc.identifier.urihttps://dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk/handle/1826/19271
dc.language.isoenen_UK
dc.publisherMDPIen_UK
dc.rightsAttribution 4.0 International*
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/*
dc.subjectadditive manufacturingen_UK
dc.subjectsustainabilityen_UK
dc.subjectchallengesen_UK
dc.subjectopportunitiesen_UK
dc.subjectsolutionsen_UK
dc.subjectvalueen_UK
dc.subjecttechnology adoptionen_UK
dc.titleUnpacking additive manufacturing challenges and opportunities in moving towards sustainability: an exploratory studyen_UK
dc.typeArticleen_UK

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