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Present for more than 20 years, 3D food printing (3DFP) technology has not experienced the same widespread adoption as its non-food counterparts. It is believed that relevant business models are crucial for its expansion. The purpose of this study is to identify the dominant prototypical business models and patterns in the 3DFP industry. The knowledge gained could be used to provide directions for business model innovation in this industry.

The authors established a business model framework and used it to analyse the identified 3DFP manufacturers. The authors qualitatively identified the market’s prototypical business models and used agglomerative hierarchical clustering to extract further patterns.

All identified 3DFP businesses use the prototypical business model of selling ownership of physical assets, with some variations. Low-cost 3D food printers for private usage and dedicated 3D food printers for small-scale food producers are the two primary patterns identified. Furthermore, several benefits of 3DFP technology are not being used, and the identified manufacturers are barely present in high-revenue markets, which prevents them from driving technological innovation forward.

The extracted patterns can be used by the companies within the 3DFP industry and even in other additive manufacturing segments to reflect upon, refine or renew their business model. Some directions for business model innovation in this industry are provided.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first quantitative study to give an account of the current 3DFP business models and their possible evolution. This study also contributes to the business model patterns methodological development.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the business models that 3D printer manufacturers apply to commercialize their technologies. The authors investigate these business models and analyze whether there are business model patterns. The paper describes the gestalt of the business model patterns and discusses differences and similarities.

The authors review the literatures on business models and 3D printing technology. The authors apply a componential business model approach and carry out an in-depth analysis of the business models of 48 3D printer manufacturers in Europe and North America. The authors develop a framework focusing on value proposition, value creation and value capture components. Cluster analysis is used to identify business model patterns.

The results indicate that there are two distinct business model patterns in the industry. The authors termed these patterns the “low-cost online business model” and the “technology expert business model.” The results demonstrate that there is a relationship between business model and technology. The identified patterns are independent of age, company size and country of origin.

The empirical results complement and extend existing literature on business models. The authors contribute to the discussion on business models in the context of novel technology. The technology seems to influence the gestalt of the business model. The sample is limited to European and North American companies and the analysis is based on secondary data.

This is the first empirical study on the business models of 3D printer manufacturers. The authors apply an original mixed-methods approach and develop a framework that can function as a starting point for future research. 3D printer manufacturers can use the identified business model patterns as blueprints to reduce the risk of failure or as a starting point for business model innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to study the introduction of 3D-printing of concrete in the construction sector.

A survey was conducted to collect professional view on ongoing innovations in the construction sector, including 3D-printing. Participants were selected among the members of Norwegian networks for project and construction management research.

The survey highlighted effective leadership, collaboration with partners and industry-academia collaboration as primary enablers of innovation. Few of the respondents to the survey have used 3D-printing technologies.

It is difficult to obtain representative samples in this type of research, including this study. The study can be seen as a snapshot of attitudes in the sector.

3D-printing appear as a potentially interesting technology, especially for unstandardized construction components. Further work is needed to materialise the expectation for technological development in the construction sector.

Most research on 3D-printing has focused on demonstrating technical potential. This study adds a practitioners’ perspective, with a large dose of pragmatism.

The food industry is a well-established and complex industry. New entrants attempting to penetrate it via the commercialization of a new technological innovation could face high uncertainty and constraints. The capability to innovate through collaboration and to identify suitable strategies and innovative business models (BMs) can be particularly important for bringing a technological innovation to this market. However, although the potential for these capabilities has been advocated, we still lack a complete understanding of how new ventures could support the technology commercialization process via the development of BMs. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

To address this gap, this paper builds a conceptual framework that knits together the different bodies of extant literature (i.e. entrepreneurship, strategy and innovation) to analyze the BM innovation processes associated with the exploitation of emerging technologies; determines the suitability of the framework using data from the exploratory case study of IT IS 3D – a firm which has started to exploit 3D printing in the food industry; and improves the initial conceptual framework with the findings that emerged in the case study.

From this analysis it emerged that: companies could use more than one BM at a time; hence, BM innovation processes could co-exist and be run in parallel; the facing of high uncertainty might lead firms to choose a closed and/or a familiar BM, while explorative strategies could be pursued with open BMs; significant changes in strategies during the technology commercialization process are not necessarily reflected in a radical change in the BM; and firms could deliberately adopt interim strategies and BMs as means to identify the more suitable ones to reach the market.

This case study illustrates how firms could innovate the processes of their BM development to face the uncertainties linked with the entry into a mature and highly conservative industry (food).

The paper seeks to bridge the already familiar benefits of 3D printing (3DP) to the rehabilitation of cultural heritage, still based on the use of complex and expensive handcrafted techniques and scarce materials.

A compilation of different information on frequent anomalies in cultural heritage buildings and commonly used materials is conducted; subsequently, some innovative techniques used in the construction sector (3DP and 3D scanning) are addressed, as well as some case studies related to the rehabilitation of cultural heritage building elements, leading to a reflection on the opportunities and challenges of this application within these types of buildings.

The compilation of information summarised in the paper provided a clear reflection on the great potential of 3DP for cultural heritage rehabilitation, requiring the development of new mixtures (lime mortars, for example) compatible with the existing surface and, eventually, incorporating some residues that may improve interesting properties; the design of different extruders, compatible with the new mixtures developed and the articulation of 3D printers with the available mapping tools (photogrammetry and laser scanning) to reproduce the component as accurately as possible.

This paper sets the path for a new application of 3DP in construction, namely in the field of cultural heritage rehabilitation, by identifying some key opportunities, challenges and for designing the process flow associated with the different technologies involved.

Additive manufacturing (AM) technologies, also known as three-dimensional printing (3DP), is a technological breakthrough that have the potential to disrupt the traditional operations of supply chains. They open the way to a supply chains innovation that can significantly benefit hospitals and health-related organizations in dealing with crises or unexpected events in a faster and more flexible way. In this study the authors identify the boundary of this potential support.

The authors adopt a case study approach to understand the dynamics behind a well-known best practice to identify the main opportunities and the main pitfalls that AM may pose to health-related organizations wanting to leverage them.

The case highlights that it is possible to increase hospital flexibility using AM and that by leveraging the Internet it is possible to spread the benefits faster than what it would be normally possible using traditional supply chain processes. At the same time the case highlights that leveraging these technologies needs buy-in from all the relevant stakeholders.

The paper is one of the first, to the best of the authors' knowledge, to highlight the main opportunities and difficulties of implementing 3DP technologies in hospital supply chain management.

This paper investigates how the adoption of additive manufacturing (AM) impacts upstream supply chain (SC) design and considers the influence of drivers and barriers towards the adoption.

Ten case studies investigating AM adoption by Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) in five industries were conducted. This research is driven by a literature-based framework, and the results are discussed according to the theory of transaction cost economics (TCE).

The case studies reveal four patterns of AM adoption that affect upstream SC design (due to changes in supply base or types of buyer–supplier relationships): make, buy, make and buy and vertical integration. A make or buy decision is based on the level of experience with the technology, on the AM application (rapid manufacturing, prototyping or tooling) and on the need of control over production. Other barriers playing a role in the decision are the high initial investments and the lack of skills and knowledge.

This paper shows how different decisions regarding AM adoption result in different SC designs, with a specific focus on the upstream SC and changes in the supply base. This research is among the first to provide empirical evidence on the impact of AM adoption on upstream SCs and to identify drivers of the make or buy decision when adopting AM through the theoretical lens of TCE.

There are many academic contributions dealing with the impact of additive manufacturing on supply chains (Ben-Ner and Siemsen, 2017; Durach, 2017; Gravier and Roethlein, 2018; Brown, 2018; Rogers et al., 2016; Sasson and Johnson, 2016; Nyman and Sarlin, 2014). But how future supply chain design may differ from today is still vague. In this article, possible scenarios are discussed and decision support is provided for the management, which is responsible for long-term strategic decisions.

This papers introduces the general characteristics of additive manufacturing and its next steps of development. Based on these technological assumptions various scenarios are systematically derived applying the standardized nomenclature of SCOR-model. Resulting threats and chances will be discussed and finally brought to a conclusion.

With the spread of additive manufacturing, the industry has the opportunity to pursue completely new approaches in terms of product development, design and product properties. This not only leads to new competitive models and the possibility of customer individualization of the products down to volume “1”. In addition, there are new models for supply chain management that can be used to react quickly and flexibly to customer requests. Already today new approaches for the cooperation between partners play an essential role.For start-ups, market entry should be simplified by using the resulting opportunities.

Future developments and especially the development speed of additive manufacturing are not predictable. Therefore, the expected scenarios may differ from reality and lead to a different supply chain design. There will also be industries that can use additive manufacturing much more intensively than others – not least because of the technological restrictions of the manufacturing process. Corporate culture and the overcoming of technical challenges are a decisive factor.

This paper gives supply chain management an outlook on future development opportunities. This enables management to set the right course for a future-oriented position today.

The changes in the supply chain will open up new business models while existing models will disappear. This leads to a change in the field of logistics but also for many technology providers. As a consequence, there will be serious changes (opportunities and risks) for the employees involved and their working environment.

This paper enables management to understand the scope and impact of upcoming changes. In this way, it significantly promotes awareness-raising and contributes to the future-oriented proceeding of companies.

Additive manufacturing, that is, layer-based manufacturing technologies, is thought to change supply chain operations from global to local, while also affecting design processes and product structures. As this transformation happens, a power struggle among various actors relating themselves to additive manufacturing has emerged. The purpose of this paper is to discuss and explain the development of additive manufacturing from a power dependence point of view.

The paper is based on data collected from a number of seminars hosting a total of 620 industry experts representing 102 companies in the area, and reflecting every step of the supply chain.

The paper points out how measures to deal and create power imbalances occur also related to indirect parties, and how the disruptive character of the supply chain leads to exercised power.

The power struggle provides new insights into how an emerging technology is realised and the effect of protectionism on such attempts. Specifically related to additive manufacturing, the paper illustrates the business side from various actors’ point of view, which adds to technological perspectives on additive manufacturing, as well as studies viewing the supply chain from a bird’s-eye perspective.

This study aims to present a vision-guided robotic system design for application in vat photopolymerization additive manufacturing (AM), enabling vat photopolymerization AM hybrid with injection molding process.

In the system, a robot equipped with a camera and a custom-made gripper as well as driven by a visual servoing (VS) controller is expected to perceive objective, handle variation, connect multi-process steps in soft tooling process and realize automation of vat photopolymerization AM. Meanwhile, the vat photopolymerization AM printer is customized in both hardware and software to interact with the robotic system.

By ArUco marker-based vision-guided robotic system, the printing platform can be manipulated in arbitrary initial position quickly and robustly, which constitutes the first step in exploring automation of vat photopolymerization AM hybrid with soft tooling process.

The vision-guided robotic system monitors and controls vat photopolymerization AM process, which has potential for vat photopolymerization AM hybrid with other mass production methods, for instance, injection molding.