In recent years, the integration of the internet of things and information technology has become the critical technological and advancement tendency to remodel the manufacturing sectors. As a novel and advanced manufacturing technology, additive manufacturing has exhibited its splendid competency to generate products with complex geometry with the help of new materials. It is a class of manufacturing technologies that enables businesses to render innovative products and services. On the other hand, blockchain is one of the elements of the continuing digital transformation that has the potential to bring on modifications to business processes and is gaining momentum recently. Although blockchain attracts a lot of attention, few studies are available on its relations to additive manufacturing. This chapter investigates the impact of blockchain on additive manufacturing.
TopIntroduction
From the age of steam power to the age of artificial intelligence and smart factories, many achievements have been obtained with the help of the industrial reformation. For the first time, the notion of the fourth industrial revolution, namely Industry 4.0, was offered in Germany in 2011. Since that time, many countries and manufacturing industries have embraced Industry 4.0 gaining more and more attention for enhancing their position and keeping living in a competitive environment (Shah et al., 2022). Especially, manufacturing and industrial processes have tremendously evolved in a new business era thanks to Industry 4.0 facilities. It has accelerated the use of novel technologies like the robotics and internet of things. Among these technologies, Blockchain is an important technology with many advantages such as security, transparency, and decentralization (Ghimire et al., 2022:2170). Oh and Shong (2017, p.336) defined Blockchain as a “technology to secure integrity and reliability of transaction records without trusted 3rd service provider, by having all the participants in the network create, record, store and verify transaction information jointly, and has the structure to realize various application services based on distributed network infrastructure using security technologies including Hash, Digital Signature and Cryptography”.
In the beginning, Blockchain technology was utilized in the finance sector (Oudani et al., 2022). In 2009, Blockchain technology was initially performed as the underlying platform premeditated to unfasten the “double-spending” issue for Bitcoin (in other words, how to transmit digital value absent of resting on a confident third aspect) (George et al., 2019). In the course of time, many supply chains and manufacturing industries have realized the advantages of this novel technology. Blockchain applies the techniques of data structure to collect as well as decode the data for whole supply chain processes constituted by customers, manufacturers, and suppliers, which will possibly culminate in structural alternations in whole kinds of the supply chain. Except that, the advancement of Blockchain functionalities in various fields of the supply chain like the logistics and distribution, transportation, security improvement, education, electric power industry, emissions trading, smart-contract transactions, governance, healthcare systems, and business information is still necessitated to more investigation (Oudani et al., 2022). Blockchain can be labelled as a technology of distributed ledger, planned in the way that network attendees enroll as well as affirm the transaction data (Oh and Shong, 2017).
Additive manufacturing which comprises many manufacturing techniques and technologies is a forceful manufacturing method and guides a paradigm shift in manufacturing. It has a significant impact on businesses, particularly in terms of the management of supply chain process (Turkcan et al., 2022). Additive manufacturing offers many impressive benefits over other manufacturing methods. Inside of them, the most significant is probably the competency of production of geometrical shapes which are challenging or in some situations infeasible to manufacture in any other manner (Butt, 2020). As a matter of principle, it presents much support for the supply chain management performance since it enhances swift innovation as well as product amendments with quick changes in design. Additive manufacturing is applied in various sectors, comprising aerospace, automotive, machinery, medical products, and electronics (Delic et al., 2019). With the development of stereolithography in the 1980s, the introduction of additive manufacturing commenced. SLA-1 by 3D Systems was the first additive manufacturing system. The development of additive manufacturing has been facilitated by technologies of desktop computers and industrial lasers (Thomas, 2016). The technology of additive manufacturing provides rapid manufacturing proportions compared to traditional investment casting as well as better accuracy (Kulkarni et al., 2021)