Value Engineering as a Tool for Developing Medical Components Using Additive Manufacturing
摘要
Biomedical components are considered to be difficult to manufacture due to the requirement of customized production. The customized production means the development of tooling, leading to high manufacturing time and cost for fabricating a component. In this work, several biomedical components were aimed at producing using a suitable manufacturing process. For that, a relatively new approach, known as Value Engineering (VE), was adopted. In this approach, brainstorming sessions are held and decisions are taken with the aim of increasing the value and reducing the wastage during product development. The discussions led to the selection of an important manufacturing process, called Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), for the production of all the components. The material for the components and process parameters for the SLS was also decided based on the VE approach. The integration of VE with SLS led to the identification of unnecessary costs associated with biomedical components and material usage by optimizing various functions and removing them without compromising on the product quality and its functional reliability.