Nesting and Scheduling in Additive Manufacturing

Nowadays, additive manufacturing and 3D printing technologies are no longer just used to create prototypes in the product development process, but are also used in the manufacture of marketable products in a wide range of industries. The ability to produce different products or components simultaneously on a 3D printer has also led to the development of new business models, such as "Factory-as-a-Service". As a result of this development, efficient planning of workflows within the production process is essential in order to make the best possible use of the resources used and to meet customer requirements.

The dissertation focuses on optimizing the placement of components in the available installation space, the associated definition of component bundles and the allocation or sequencing of the resulting component bundles on the available 3D printers. The optimization should take into account both the efficient use of resources and customer-oriented objectives, such as on-time delivery. Due to the interplay of the sub-problems shown in the additive manufacturing environment, the problem represents a novel combined planning problem in the field of machine allocation planning. As part of the dissertation project, the following aspects are to be considered and investigated in relation to the planning of additive manufacturing:

• Nesting: In order to bundle the components to be processed, the arrangement of the components in the existing installation space must be optimized. Depending on the technology under consideration, a distinction can be made between two-dimensional and three-dimensional cases.
• Scheduling: The combined component bundles must be scheduled to the available 3D printers. However, not only the printers themselves, but also downstream process steps must be taken into account in the planning, as these take up a large proportion of the required processing time. The resulting problem can therefore be described as a flow store problem.