Additive Manufacturing Technology for Spare Parts Application: A Systematic Review on Supply Chain Management

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have performed a review on the supply chain management of the additive manufacturing technology for spare parts application, and considered approximately 60 paper. The topic of this paper is of significant interest, however there are several thing that must be heavily improved.

 

1 – “Additive Manufacturing (AM), also known as 3D printing or rapid manufacturing, has been considered by researchers from both industry and academia.” - Has been considered for what?

 

2 – “AM is considered to have the potential to change the spare parts industry because it helps in reducing the overall cost and production time, which boosts SC robustness. Thus, whenever a part is demanded, AM technology can be used to print the parts immediately with a significantly shorter lead time.” - The affirmation is true, however it should be emphasized  how does AM allow this reductions to happen, i.e. with AM there is no need to storage several spare parts that may not be necessary in a short time, because it enable the rapid production of parts as needed. Which may make the spare parts supply chain overall more efficient.

 

3 – “2. Research Methodology” - I think this section is unnecessary the presented methodology should be further resumed into one paragraph and included in the end of the  introduction. As an example: it is enough to say that "152 article were retrieved from which 60 were eligible for the present study, according to the established criteria" no further detail is necessary to describe the methodology. Also Figure 1 is not relevant, the only relevant data from fig1 is the paper numbers per industry sector, and this data is also presented immediately bellow in a pie chart.

 

4 – “The inclusion criterion considers only the articles that concentrate mainly and contribute to the three core subject areas: AM, SC, and spare parts” – It is not clear that the authors have considered only the papers that contribute simultaneous to the three core areas.

 

5 – There is a fig reference error in chapter 3.1.2 "error! Reference not found"

 

6 - Sub-chapters 3.1.1 and 3.1.2  should be considerably condensed, it is information that is not that relevant to deserve a sub chapter each. Consider merge this sub-chapter into only one sub-chapter.

 

7 - "digital files that need to be converted to 3D printed parts" - this sentence should be revised. Digital files cannot be converted into 3D printed parts, they only transmit information required to manufacture the part.

 

8 - The authors use both 3D printing and Additive manufacturing terms to describe the technology, in fact they are both related to same, but 3D printing is a more commercial term to describe additive manufacturing, i suggest to uniformize and use only one of the terms.

 

 

9 – “With a carbon taxation policy, the carbon footprint of the AM process is expected to be reduced.” - The carbon footpringt of the AM process is already lower when compared to other manufacturing process especially when the buy-to-fly ratio is considered, it is ambitious to say that it is expected to be further reduced. This should be sustained by a reference.

 

10 - Table 3 reference appears in bold and Table 4 does not.

 

11 – Most of the paper is a summary of the reviewed papers, I understand that this is a significant part of a review paper, but it should be accompanied by a more graphical presentation whenever it is possible.

 

12 – “This review shows an increasing trend in research related to AM”

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper is a comprehensive literature study on the use of additive manufacturing in the production of spare parts.
Given the complex structure of the factors analysed (the paper contains level 5 titles, e.g. 3.2.2.2 Decision Making divided into Inventory Strategy, Manufacturing Strategy, etc.) I consider that the paper is more suitable as a book chapter.
For journal publication I recommend restructuring the article by focusing on fewer criteria analysed.
It should be borne in mind that the field of additive technologies includes many types of processes and many types of materials. Authors may focus the paper on specific types of AM processes or on specific materials (e.g. metallic materials).

Author Response

The field of additive manufacturing include many types of materials and processes. The scope of this work is to review the research done on the supply chain of spare parts of AM including all the adopted AM processes and materials. The number of headings is reduced to only three levels.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors responded in detail to all my comments, so I recommend publishing the article. However, several formatting errors of the figures references - "Error! Reference source not found." - are present in the document, that should be taken into consideration in the editing process.

Reviewer 2 Report

I think the paper still deals with too many distinct issues and its structure is too complex. I understand, however, that a complete reorganisation of the material would be difficult. I recommend the publication of the paper and wish success to the authors!