Process Types of Customisation and Personalisation in Design for Additive Manufacturing Applied to Vascular Models

Manufacturing companies face high demand for products that fulfil individual customer desires. Recent improvements in additive manufacturing (AM) enable the fabrication of customer-specific components of a product.This paper presents a categorisation of design processes for customised and personalised products through the use of AM in three process types: special design, specific adaptation, and standardised individualisation. The characteristics of design processes are examined in medical development of vascular models integrated into a modular neurovascular training setup. The paper considers how initial customer involvement and preplanning of customer-specification influence the design process for varying degrees of individualisation enabled by additive manufacturing.