Blockchain and additive manufacturing: a taxonomy of business models

Additive manufacturing processes such as 3D printing have seen significant progress in the industry in recent years and have become an integral part of Industry 4.0. This fourth industrial revolution is characterized by the increasing networking and automation of production systems and the use of large amounts of data. In this context, distributed ledger technologies (DLT), which include blockchain technology, offer promising opportunities to change production fundamentally. Production processes can be more secure and efficient by creating trust and transparency in data storage and eliminating dependence on centralized instances. However, the full potential of blockchain technology is often not realized due to the perceived complexity of its implementation. Overcoming this skepticism requires a better understanding of the application possibilities and, more importantly, successful practical examples demonstrating blockchain technology’s transformative power in the industry. This study explores how blockchain can be effectively integrated into additive manufacturing processes and offers a structured overview of existing blockchain-based business models within this domain. Hence, a systematic literature interview, Crunchbase review, and Workshop are performed to examine specific use cases of blockchain in additive manufacturing and analyze how these technologies interact with existing business models. In order to provide an overview of existing blockchain-based business models in the context of additive manufacturing, a taxonomy is developed in the underlying paper to identify characteristic features. The taxonomy is further demonstrated along different existing business models.