On the Applicability of Agile Development Methods to Design for Additive Manufacturing

Abstract

Due to increasing global competition, the demand for more individualization and constantly changing requirements, the importance of time to market and a high degree of flexibility in product development is increasing. New manufacturing technologies as well as improved methodical approaches in product development can be used for this purpose. The additive manufacturing industry has developed strongly in recent years and the possibilities of using this technology for final components are constantly increasing. At the same time, there are many efforts that contribute to identifying and implementing the potential of this manufacturing technology during product development. Other approaches, such as agile product development from software industry, are applied at the organizational level and also try to tackle the aforementioned challenges.This contribution therefore presents an approach using agile product development methods to develop components for additive manufacturing. The potentials of additive manufacturing are specifically used (e.g. tool-free manufacturing) to enable the principles of agile development also for physical products. The Design Pattern Matrix as an opportunistic approach is applied to systematically link the potentials of additive manufacturing with the functions of the product. Therefore, design elements are conducted from additive manufacturing case studies and provided to design engineers during the development. Furthermore, already known methods of design for additive manufacturing are classified into the procedure of the agile framework scrum.