Abstract
Additive manufacturing (AM) holds great potentials in enabling superior engineering functionality, streamlining supply chains, and reducing life cycle impacts compared to conventional manufacturing (CM). This study estimates the net changes in supply-chain lead time, life cycle primary energy consumption, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and life cycle costs (LCC) associated with AM technologies for the case of injection molding, to shed light on the environmental and economic advantages of a shift from international or onshore CM to AM in the United States. A systems modeling framework is developed, with integrations of lead-time analysis, life cycle inventory analysis, LCC model, and scenarios considering design differences, supply-chain options, productions, maintenance, and AM technological developments. AM yields a reduction potential of 3% to 5% primary energy, 4% to 7% GHG emissions, 12% to 60% lead time, and 15% to 35% cost over 1 million cycles of the injection molding production depending on the AM technology advancement in future. The economic advantages indicate the significant role of AM technology in raising global manufacturing competitiveness of local producers, while the relatively small environmental benefits highlight the necessity of considering trade-offs and balance techniques between environmental and economic performances when AM is adopted in the tooling industry. The results also help pinpoint the technological innovations in AM that could lead to broader benefits in future.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | S130-S143 |
| Journal | Journal of Industrial Ecology |
| Volume | 21 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Nov 2017 |
Funding
Argonne National Laboratory’s work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Advanced Manufacturing Office under contract DE-AC02-06CH11357. The submitted manuscript has been created by UChicago Argonne, LLC, Operator of Argonne National Laboratory (“Argonne”). Argonne, a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science laboratory, is operated under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. The U.S. government retains for itself, and others acting on its behalf, a paid-up nonexclusive, irrevocable world-wide license in said article to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute copies to the public, and perform publicly and display publicly, by or on behalf of the government.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| U.S. Department of Energy | |
| Advanced Manufacturing Office | DE-AC02-06CH11357 |
| Argonne National Laboratory | |
| Savannah River Operations Office, U.S. Department of Energy |
Keywords
- additive manufacturing
- industrial ecology
- injection molding
- life cycle assessment (LCA)
- life cycle costing (LCC)
- supply chain management
