This paper provides an overview of established approaches for function integration in additive manufacturing and critically compares their capabilities. One of the decisive factors is how functions and structures are addressed. This is necessary because function integration - among many others - affects material decisions and the manufacturing process chain. It is one of many reasons to rethink the product architecture and a way to support the design of resource-efficient products. Various strategies for function integration exist. However, there are currently no approaches in additive manufacturing that provide systematic support for early function integration.

A systematic literature review identified 21 unique approaches. All approaches were categorized according to their abstraction level within a product architecture and their design type to be supported. They were then compared on the basis of their categorization, design objective and strategy for function integration to allow for a better understanding of when to use the approaches in research and practice. Key findings and considerations for adapting function integration approaches to early design stages are presented. In addition, several research gaps were identified.

Additive manufacturing (AM) technologies enable the design of new products due to their potentials. The potential of function integration can be extended through a combination of AM with a component integrating technology forming a hybrid integrating additive manufacturing technology (hiAM). With a created development method optimization areas within a product are identified on a functional level using characteristics, structural configurations and integrated functional areas. These are derived analysing examples in literature. The method is applied to a mechanical arm and hand prosthesis.