Product configurators for additively manufactured products: exploring their peculiar characteristics

Abstract

The capability of realizing individually customized products with complex geometries makes additive manufacturing (AM) ever more considered by companies engaged in mass customized manufacturing. In order to be exploited in the market, the AM allowed geometry freedom has to be transferred to the customers for the customer-specific customization. Notably, this is a new request posed to product configurators (PC). So, in this research we ask: How is this request being answered by pioneers who engage in this challenge? Are there other new requests that AM poses to configurators? The present paper aims at answering these exploratory questions by looking at how these issues have been considered in existing literature and by providing some examples. We hope that considerations derived from this investigation will open a discussion on this topic in the product configuration research community with the goal to identify peculiar PC capabilities needed to customize additively manufactured products using PCs.