3D Printing and Product Assortment Strategy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lingxiu Dong ◽  
Duo Shi ◽  
Fuqiang Zhang
Keyword(s):  
3D Printing ◽  
Production Technology ◽  
Operations Management ◽  
Numerical Study ◽  
Product Variety ◽  
Quality Level ◽  
Product Assortment ◽  
Development Capacity ◽  
Quality Distinction ◽  
Design Freedom

3D printing, as a production technology, differs from conventional technologies in three characteristics: design freedom—that is, it can handle certain product designs that conventional technologies cannot; quality distinction—that is, depending on the focal quality dimension, it can lead to a quality level superior or inferior to that of conventional technologies; and natural flexibility—that is, it is endowed with capacity flexibility without sacrificing operational efficiency. This paper investigates the joint impact of these characteristics when a firm selects conceptual designs to form its product assortment, taking into account the production-technology choices available for each design: 3D printing and two conventional technologies (dedicated and traditional flexible). Some designs can be processed by using any technology (generic), whereas others are specific to 3D printing (3D-specific). The firm selects designs to be handled by each technology and then invests accordingly in technology adoption, product development, capacity, and production. We characterize the structure of the optimal assortment based on the popularity of each design. Within the sets of generic designs and 3D-specific designs, respectively, the most popular designs should be included in the assortment; under a mild condition, the optimal assortment comprises the most popular ones among all the designs. Within the optimal assortment, 3D printing should handle the less popular generic designs than conventional technologies. We further demonstrate that the design freedom or improved quality associated with 3D printing may reduce the firm’s optimal product variety. In the absence of design freedom and quality distinction, natural flexibility by itself always enhances product variety; by contrast, traditional flexible technology may reduce product variety. Numerical study shows that 3D printing tends to be more valuable when popularities of the generic designs are distributed more evenly and when popularities of the 3D-specific designs are distributed less evenly. This paper was accepted by Vishal Gaur, operations management.

Value of High-Quality Logistics: Evidence from a Clash Between SF Express and Alibaba

2020 ◽  
Vol 66 (9) ◽  
pp. 3879-3902 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruomeng Cui ◽  
Meng Li ◽  
Qiang Li
Keyword(s):  
Operations Management ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
Product Variety ◽  
Star Products ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Long Tail ◽  
Online Retail ◽  
Delivery Service ◽  
Product Delivery ◽  
Identification Strategy

Consumers regard product delivery as an important service component that influences their shopping decisions on online retail platforms. Delivering products to customers in a timely and reliable manner enhances customer experience and companies’ profitability. In this research, we explore the extent to which customers value a high-quality delivery experience when shopping online. Our identification strategy exploits a natural experiment: a clash between SF Express and Alibaba, the largest private logistics service provider with the highest reputation in delivery quality in China and the largest online retail platform in China, respectively. The clash resulted in Alibaba unexpectedly removing SF Express as a shipping option from Alibaba’s retail platform for 42 hours in June 2017. Using a difference-in-differences design, we analyze the market performance of 129,448 representative stock-keeping units on Alibaba to quantify the economic value of a high-quality delivery service to sales, product variety, and logistics rating. We find that the removal of the high-quality delivery option from Alibaba’s retail platform reduced sales by 14.56% during the clash, increased the contribution of long-tail to total sales—sales dispersion—by 3%, but did not impact the variety and logistics rating of sold products. Furthermore, we also identify product characteristics that attenuate the value of high-quality logistics and find that the removal of SF Express is more obstructive for (1) star products as compared with long-tail products because the same star products are likely to be supplied by competing retail platforms that customers can easily switch to, (2) expensive products because customers need a reliable delivery service to protect their valuable items from damage or loss, and (3) less-discounted products because customers are more willing to sacrifice the service quality over a price markdown. This paper was accepted by Victor Martínez-de-Albéniz, operations management.

Process Monitoring of 3D Metal Printing in Industrial Scale

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammadhossein Amini ◽  
Shing Chang
Keyword(s):  
3D Printing ◽  
Process Monitoring ◽  
Numerical Study ◽  
High Reliability ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
Main Metal ◽  
Metal Printing ◽  
Metal 3D Printing ◽  
Using Data

Metal 3D printing is one of the fastest growing additive manufacturing (AM) technologies in recent years. Despite the improvements and capabilities, reliable metal printing is still not well understood. One of the barriers of industrialization of metal AM is process monitoring and quality assurance of the printed product. These barriers are especially much highlighted in aerospace and medical device manufacturing industries where the high reliability and quality is needed. Selective Laser Melting (SLM) is one of the main metal 3D printing methods where it is known that more than 50 parameters are affecting the quality of the print. However, the current SLM printing process barely utilize a fraction of the collected data during production. Up to this point, no study to the best of our knowledge examines the correlation of factors affecting the quality of the print. After reviewing the current state of the art of process monitoring for metal AM involving SLM, we propose a method to control the process of the print in each layer and prevent the defects using data-driven techniques. A numerical study using simulated numbers is provided to demonstrate how the proposed method can be implemented.

scholarly journals Managing Appointment Booking Under Customer Choices

2019 ◽  
Vol 65 (9) ◽  
pp. 4280-4298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nan Liu ◽  
Peter M. van de Ven ◽  
Bo Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Operations Management ◽  
Optimal Policy ◽  
Interface Design ◽  
Numerical Study ◽  
Constant Factor ◽  
Customer Preference ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Demand And Capacity ◽  
Single Set

Motivated by the increasing use of online appointment booking platforms, we study how to offer appointment slots to customers to maximize the total number of slots booked. We develop two models, nonsequential offering and sequential offering, to capture different types of interactions between customers and the scheduling system. In these two models, the scheduler offers either a single set of appointment slots for the arriving customer to choose from or multiple sets in sequence, respectively. For the nonsequential model, we identify a static randomized policy, which is asymptotically optimal when the system demand and capacity increase simultaneously, and we further show that offering all available slots at all times has a constant factor of two performance guarantee. For the sequential model, we derive a closed form optimal policy for a large class of instances and develop a simple, effective heuristic for those instances without an explicit optimal policy. By comparing these two models, our study generates useful operational insights for improving the current appointment booking processes. In particular, our analysis reveals an interesting equivalence between the sequential offering model and the nonsequential offering model with perfect customer preference information. This equivalence allows us to apply sequential offering in a wide range of interactive scheduling contexts. Our extensive numerical study shows that sequential offering can significantly improve the slot fill rate (6%–8% on average and up to 18% in our testing cases) compared with nonsequential offering. Given the recent and ongoing growth of online and mobile appointment booking platforms, our research findings can be particularly useful to inform user interface design of these booking platforms. This paper was accepted by Gad Allon, operations management.

A reactor-like spinneret used in 3D printing alginate hollow fiber: a numerical study of morphological evolution

Soft Matter ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 2392-2399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Li ◽  
Y. Liu ◽  
C. Jiang ◽  
S. Li ◽  
G. Liang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
3D Printing ◽  
Hollow Fiber ◽  
Numerical Study ◽  
Morphological Evolution ◽  
Deformation Dynamics ◽  
Interfacial Deformation ◽  
Alginate Fiber

We used a reactor-like spinneret to generate a continuous hollow alginate fiber and investigated the interfacial deformation dynamics.

Thermal and Environmental Benefits of 3D Printing on Building Construction

2021 ◽  
Vol 412 ◽  
pp. 99-106
Author(s):  
A.S. Guimarães ◽  
J.M.P.Q. Delgado ◽  
S.S. Lucas
Keyword(s):  
3D Printing ◽  
Thermal Behaviour ◽  
Critical Review ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Civil Engineering ◽  
Building Construction ◽  
Environmental Benefits ◽  
Time Saving ◽  
Operational Costs ◽  
Design Freedom

The main goal of this work is the analysis of the thermal and environmental benefits of 3D printing on building construction. Present literature reports a considerable number of benefits for 3D printing, namely reduction of material use, lower operational costs and time saving. Authors also mention design freedom, higher efficiency, productivity and quality. This work presents the most important advances in 3D printing in civil engineering, specifically, a critical review of the thermal and environmental benefits of 3D printing on building construction. The limitations of construction 3D printing with focus on large-scale applications, technology costs, mix development and optimisation and thermal behaviour will be, also, defined.

Profit or Growth? Dynamic Order Allocation in a Hybrid Workforce

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eryn Juan He ◽  
Joel Goh
Keyword(s):  
Operations Management ◽  
Numerical Study ◽  
Growth Dynamics ◽  
Service Organizations ◽  
Network Effect ◽  
Stochastic Dynamic ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Last Mile ◽  
Stochastic Dynamic Program ◽  
Last Mile Delivery

Modern digital technology has enabled the emergence of the hybrid workforce in service organizations, where a firm uses on-demand freelancers to augment its traditional labor supply of employees. Freelancers are typically supplied by an electronic platform. How should demand be allocated between employees and freelancers? Under what conditions is the system (comprising the firm and its platform) sustainable in the long run? We investigate these questions in the context of last-mile delivery. We develop a discrete-time, stochastic dynamic program that captures the system’s profit from serving demand and the platform’s growth dynamics. The dynamic model incorporates a service constraint for the platform and a simple version of a stochastic network effect. We find that the answers to our research questions critically depend on two key parameters: the mean and variance of the cross-network effect. We conduct a numerical study with data from a last-mile delivery firm in Vietnam to illustrate our findings. This paper was accepted by Vishal Gaur, operations management.

scholarly journals Experimental investigation of centrifugal fans for personal protection equipment – effect of used 3D printing technologies

2018 ◽  
Vol 180 ◽  
pp. 02023
Author(s):  
Václav Dvořák ◽  
Radek Votrubec ◽  
Jiří Šafka ◽  
Jan Kracík
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Investigation ◽  
3D Printing ◽  
Production Technology ◽  
Mutual Position ◽  
Minimal Effect ◽  
Personal Protection ◽  
Motor Shaft ◽  
Working Pressure ◽  
Personal Protection Equipment ◽  
Centrifugal Fans

The aim of the research is experimental investigation of centrifugal fans for a personal protection equipment. The aim of the fan is to drive the contaminated air containing harmful or irritating particles through the filters and then into the mask of workers, such as a fireman, a labourer or a lab worker. The fan is measured on the test stand, the characteristics and performances are evaluated, i.e. the dependencies of the working pressure on the flow rate. The characteristics are measured for three constant speed settings. The characteristics of the wheels produced by the different 3D printing technology are compared. It is found that the production technology has only a minimal effect, the performance of the wheels is more influenced by the position of the impeller on the motor shaft and hence by the mutual position of the impeller and the diffuser.

scholarly journals Feasibility of Calcium Sulfate Moulds Made by Inkjet 3D Printing for Rapid Casting of Aluminium Alloys

Metals ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 802 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo Rodríguez-González ◽  
Pablo Eduardo Robles Valero ◽  
Ana Isabel Fernández-Abia ◽  
María Ángeles Castro-Sastre ◽  
Joaquín Barreiro García
Keyword(s):  
3D Printing ◽  
Aluminium Alloys ◽  
Casting Process ◽  
Sand Casting ◽  
Filling Process ◽  
Critical Aspect ◽  
Dimensional Precision ◽  
Filling System ◽  
Staircase Effect ◽  
Design Freedom

In this research, a comparative analysis has been carried out between a traditional sand casting process and a modern mould obtained by additive manufacturing (AM), in the context of aluminium parts production. In this case of AM, an inkjet 3D printing (3DP) process allowed us to create a ceramic mould. A numerical simulation was carried out to study the filling and cooling rates of both parts. The design freedom typical of the 3DP technique allowed us to optimize the filling system. The results showed that in sand moulding, the speed in the gate suddenly increased when the liquid metal entered the part cavity, leading to severe turbulence due to the fountain effect. The input of air is related to the speed in the gate. Nevertheless, the results showed that when using the 3DP mould, the speed in the gate remained constant and the filling process was homogenous. With regard to the dimensional precision, while the staircase effect in the surface of the 3DP mould is the most critical aspect to control, in the sand casting mould the critical aspect is the dimensional precision of the pattern. Microstructures of the cross-section of the moulded parts showed folded shapes and air input in sand casting, which could be produced by the severe turbulence and the oxide film present in the melt during the filling process. On the other hand, the porosity found in parts produced with the 3DP mould corresponds to shrinkage; during the filling process, the remaining binder is vaporized, creating nucleation points. In this way, pores are formed by shrinkage and a mixture of shrinkage and gas entrapment. With these considerations, it can be concluded that AM shows feasibility and advantages as an alternative to the sand casting method for aluminium alloys.

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