Spare parts, printed on demand
Additive manufacturing and 3D printing appear on 31 recent papers, split among operations research, AI and management, and spare parts management on 2. Printing parts on demand could replace warehouses of slow-moving inventory. Which parts are worth printing, where should the printers be, and do certification rules allow it?
What prompted this
Since October 2025, 31 papers carry an additive-manufacturing, 3D-printing or spare-parts keyword (14 in operations research journals, 11 in AI, 5 in management): "additive manufacturing" on 13, "3D printing" on 11, "metal additive manufacturing" on 3, "spare parts management" on 2, "spare parts provisioning" on 1. Six were published in July–September 2026 against about 8 per quarter earlier.
Questions
- For a given fleet (aircraft, ships, rail, machinery), which share of spare parts could be printed at acceptable cost and lead time, and how much inventory would that remove?
- Where should printing capacity sit, centrally or near the fleet, given demand uncertainty and the cost of idle printers?
- How much do certification and liability rules restrict which safety-relevant parts can be printed, and how are they changing?
Data that could help
Spare parts demand and inventory records from a fleet operator, printing cost and lead time data by part type, and certification rules.
Next step
Classify the spare parts catalogue of one fleet operator by printability and compute the inventory reduction from printing the eligible slow movers.