Sustainability Assessment of Additive Manufacturing Production Configurations to Minimize the Impact of Demand Disruptions

In recent years, Additive Manufacturing (AM) has emerged as a fundamental enabler of sustainable industrial production, offering an alternative to conventional manufacturing methods and bringing advantages such as material waste reduction, enhanced design flexibility, and shorter supply chains. However, AM requires a thorough assessment of its economic, environmental, and operational impacts, especially when facing demand disruptions. This study develops a simulation-based model for sustainable production planning. The proposed methodology evaluates several AM production configurations, aiming to identify optimal production strategies that balance cost efficiency, environmental impact, and operational resilience under varying demand disruption scenarios. The case study, which simulates the manufacturing process of two distinct components, is carried out through the AnyLogic® software. Several sustainability metrics, such as energy consumption, CO₂ emissions, and production costs, are combined into a comprehensive cost function, which serves as a tool to assess the sustainability of the production strategies and enable managers to select the most appropriate ones, even in the case of demand disruptions. The findings demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in capturing the trade-offs between economic and environmental sustainability while ensuring responsiveness to customer demand variability and product customization needs. The study highlights the potential of AM to achieve sustainable and adaptive manufacturing, offering valuable insights for industrial decision-makers navigating an increasingly complex and dynamic production landscape.