Project management proposal on the use of 3D printing in small and medium-sized manufacturing companies

Abstract

Two years ago, I did an internship in a small agricultural machinery manufacturing company. Basically, they used traditional processes, and they were inefficient because a high number of finished products at the end of the chain needed to be fixed. The main problem was that when all the pieces of a component were assembled, they did not do it equally each time. Also, the interfaces between all the pieces sometimes were not well integrated due to late changes in the design or manufacturing of the pieces used. This meant that after the machines had some use and the machines did not work properly and the customers complained about some problems and the company had to repair a machine, they could not have standard parts for replacement. Moreover, some of the pieces they manufactured used CNC or were produced by semi-manually processes. This last method was risky because every piece had different sizes or tolerances. Therefore, the product support is a nightmare, because each machine is almost unique in the sense that every machine has some pieces with a slight modification so they cannot easily be replaced. In conclusion, finding the reason why a product is not working, and the cost of the repair has a huge impact on the business budget. This project aims to find an optimal solution for reducing all the constant failures that appear during the manufacturing process that are the root cause of lack of efficient support of produced goods