Additive Manufacturing for Mass Customization: Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract

Mass customization—the ability to produce individually tailored products atnear-mass-production efficiency and cost—has emerged as a strategicimperative across consumer goods, medical devices, footwear, and aerospace industries. Additive manufacturing (AM) technologies are uniquely positioned to enable mass customization due to their inherent design freedom, elimination of tooling requirements, and digital workflow compatibility. This paper presents a comprehensive review-based and case-study investigation examining the opportunities, technical challenges, and economic feasibility of deploying additive manufacturing for mass customization across three industrial domains: orthopedic implants, consumer footwear, and automotive interior components. A systematic analysis of 86 peer-reviewed publications (2018–2025) was supplemented by three original case studies conducted at Vivekananda Global University, Jaipur, evaluating material jetting (Stratasys J750), selective laser sintering (EOS P 396), and fused deposition modeling (Ultimaker S5) platforms for batch-of-one production economics. The analysis identifies design automation, material diversity, post-processing scalability, quality assurance, and cost parity as the five critical enablers for viable AM-based mass customization. The case studies demonstrate that AM achieves cost parity with injection molding at batch sizes below 142 units for polymercomponents, below 38 units for metallic orthopedic implants, and below 280units for multi-material consumer products. The findings provide a decisionframework for manufacturers evaluating AM adoption for customized product strategies [1], [2].  KEYWORDS: Additive Manufacturing, Mass Customization, 3D Printing,Selective Laser Sintering, Design Automation, Cost Analysis, OrthopedicImplants, Consumer Products, Fused Deposition Modeling, Industry 4.0.