Control architectures for Industrial Additive Manufacturing Systems

As the emergent technologies of Industrial Additive Manufacturing become increasingly employed in commercial manufacturing environments, challenges arise in terms of how resources of the manufacturing system should be marshalled and controlled for sustainable manufacturing. While control architectures are well established for conventional manufacturing, to-date there has been little explicit consideration for Industrial Additive Manufacturing. This article provides redress for this research gap by exploring four feasible control architectures employed in current manufacturing practice. Drawing upon 12 case studies and the operations of three companies, the relative merits, demerits, and challenges for each architecture are explored in terms of changeability criteria for sustainable manufacturing.