Additive manufacturing processes, used for more than 25 years, are no longer confined to
rapid prototyping applications. Mostly used nowadays in niche markets (medical
applications, aerospace...) to manufacture metallic parts, they should provide
improvements in terms of time-to-market, ecological impact and design compared to
traditional industrial processes. Current metallic additive manufacturing studied in this
paper are Selective Laser Sintering, Direct Metal Laser Sintering, Selective Laser
Melting, Electron Beam Melting and Direct Metal Deposition. The performances of these
processes are investigated through criteria derived from the time cost quality triangle
and some prospects concerning these processes are given.