Using a systems engineering framework for additive manufacturing

System engineering life cycles can be used by enterprises to make assessments that facilitate the effective insertion of technology into existing practices. The updated systems life cycle processes standard, ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288:2015, is examined to assess additive manufacturing (AM), also known as 3D printing. AM's digital nature emerges as a major theme. AM's introduction into the aviation spare part supply chain is also explored using a project crashing illustration. The illustration showed that AM could be leveraged as a project crashing tool. In addition, the use of the ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288:2015 standard revealed network configurations that could be explored to broaden AM's use and obtain additional value, both of which could justify the use of AM. In this study, we suggest the multiple effects of AM on the systems engineering development life cycle.