Bridging gaps in cloud manufacturing with 3D printing

In order to keep up with the flexibility and cost-efficiency requirements, the manufacturing industry has begun a transformation process towards a service-oriented production approach. This approach is in line with the cloud manufacturing paradigm that applies established concepts from cloud computing to the manufacturing domain. Although the cloud manufacturing paradigm provides promising concepts for a flexible manufacturing industry, it still exposes several challenges. One of the most important challenges is the recovery from production failures and delays. Due to the physical configuration and transportation overhead in the manufacturing domain, it is often not possible to quickly replace one production facility with another one. To bridge the gap of these production delays, we propose the integration of additive manufacturing technologies tightly into cloud manufacturing processes to ensure the continuity of the production processes.