Adoption of Additive Manufacturing in process industries : A case study

Abstract: This paper explores the adoption of additive manufacturing technology in the process industries and tries to provide a holistic view about the preference and scope of this technology in the process industry sector. There has been vast literature about use of this technology in the automobile, aerospace, and medical sector. This study will help us to understand how Additive Manufacturing technology is shaping the other process industries and explore if it has same significance. To address the research questions qualitative research method is used in this study with semi-structured interviews with the respondents in process industries and Additive Manufacturing suppliers. All respondents are selected using purposive sampling and remote interviews were conducted with them.The first finding of this study was that additive manufacturing can neither be stated directly as radical or disruptive innovation because this technology has shown both radical as well as disruptive changes in the process industry. Secondly, this technology is adopted in the process industry based on the three innovation attributes: relative advantage, trialability, and observability. Following this, there is discussion on important barriers and how companies are taking efforts to overcome this barrier and adopt this technology easily. Further, this study implies that there is still an immense scope to explore this technology to reap its full benefits. This study gives understanding to AM suppliers that small-scale firms in process industry could be a possible direction to explore for more business opportunities apart from automobile and aerospace industry. For potential researchers in additive manufacturing, this study stands to give understanding for adoption pattern and innovation attributes for which it is valued.