Open Access

Jana Frank, Philipp Jussen, Lennard Holst

• The additive manufacturing technique of "Selective Laser Melting" (SLM) provides the basis for a fundamental paradigm shift in industrial spare part manufacturing, affecting both technological and organizational company prac-tices. To harness the full potential of SLM-technology, considering agility and customizability, decentralized additive production networks need to be estab-lished. According to the principles just in time, just in place and just enough, a global online platform, which efficiently distributes construction orders to local manufacturing hubs could empower the market participants to utilize production capacities at optimal costs and minimal efforts. This work evaluates and selects key factors and creates scenarios for the development of platform-based networks for additive, SLM-based, spare part production. For this purpose, the selected key factors (e. g. material expenses, quality and process management and platform-based business models) are projected into the future, forming the three major scenarios "New distribution of roles in the SLM value chain", "SLM-technology for high wage countries" and "Individualization instead of mass production". These scenarios not only allow estimating the potential of an online network for additive spare part production, but also enable market participants to react pur-posively and agilely to unexpected market developments, and to foster the suc-cess of a platform-based additive spare part production.