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Christopher Gustafsson

Christopher Gustafsson has a BSc in Industrial Design and Product Development from Örebro University in 2015 and an MSc in Innovation and Design from Mälardalen University in 2019. From 2015 to 2019 he worked as a teaching assistant at Örebro University and assisted in research projects related to additive manufacturing (industrial 3D printing). In 2019 he joined Mälardalen University as a research engineer and this led to him starting his PhD studies in 2021.

Foto: Jonas Bilberg

About Christopher's thesis

Christopher Gustafsson started his Ph.D. studies in the field of innovation and design with a focus on additive manufacturing together with Volvo CE. Additive manufacturing is the key and an integral part together with traditional manufacturing for gaining long-term competitive advantage in the manufacturing industry. However, engineers and managers still find additive manufacturing challenging to integrate due to the overall complexity the technology brings to product development and production. The research topic focuses on facilitating the integration of additive manufacturing into traditional industrial settings. Some of the objectives include 1) identifying challenges in the integration of additive manufacturing, 2) identifying mitigation actions and capabilities to overcome the challenges, and 3) deriving propositions on how the mitigation actions and capabilities can overcome the challenges.