Sustainable additive manufacturing supply chains with a plithogenic stakeholder analysis: Waste reduction through digital transformation

Abstract

The Additive Manufacturing (AM) industry is of paramount importance as means of personalized design capabilities by rapid prototyping, using exact amount of required materials avoiding waste, and applying Industry 4.0 technologies with digital transformation ability. The characteristics of AM are regarded as the prerequisites for sustainability in the manufacturing industry. However, there are limited papers discussing the stakeholders and sustainability objectives in a single comprehensive analysis. Hence, the purpose of this research is to identify the degree of each stakeholder to achieve the objective of sustainability in AM supply chain by proposing a novel Plithogenic Fuzzy MACTOR approach. Results reveal that the customers are in triggering position to shape entire AM supply chain as the demand generators. Workforce is a significant player in the AM supply chain by creating the design, manufacturing, marketing, and communicating to provide the collaborations in this business segment. Academia positions here a supportive role to enable the whole supply chain members in terms of delivering technological advancements, training people, and providing the workforce. The AM manufacturers and material / software / printer suppliers are the key players leading to the supply chain by producing the main business products. Thus, a practitioner can interpret its position in the AM supply chain and understand the requirements of sustainability points in detail. Besides, this study provides a theoretical contribution to the literature by extending the MACTOR analysis with Plithogenic sets via including a different uncertainty measure.