A Multi-Part Production Planning System for a Distributed Network of 3D Printers under the Context of Social Manufacturing

Additive manufacturing (AM) systems are currently evolving into network-based models, where the distributed manufacturing resources from multiple enterprises are coordinated to complete product orders. The layer-by-layer approach of AM technologies gives manufacturers unprecedented freedom to create complex parts tailored to customer needs, but this comes at slow build rates. Consequently, for AM to become mainstream in the industry, challenges in production planning remain to be addressed to increase AM system productivity. This paper considers two practical problems encountered in AM systems, namely, production planning and part-to-printer assignment, and a series of heuristic algorithms are proposed to solve these problems. In particular, an approach for automatically determining part orientation, part-to-printer allocation, and nesting of multiple parts for a distributed network of fused filament fabrication three-dimensional printers is described to reduce the total production cost and time regarding the context of social manufacturing. The proposed method is implemented through a web application. The case study, using real-world parts and comparative analysis findings, indicated that the proposed method produces high-performance results.