Blockchain-Empowered Distributed Additive Manufacturing-as-a-Service: An Architectural Perspective

Additive Manufacturing (AM) is transforming the way that we fabricate, deliver, and consume a wide range of products and components, including those for consumers, medical devices, automobiles, and aircraft. In AM, 3D-printers are used to fabricate products by depositing material in a layer-by-layer fashion, leading to extremely low marginal production costs and significantly simplifying the manufacturing supply chain by providing the opportunity for production that is much closer to consumers. With extremely low marginal costs, AM facilities can quickly scale their production up and down, or redirect their resources to produce entirely different types of goods to meet dynamic market demands. However, most AM companies that employ 3D-printers have not yet upgraded their operations in a way that improves their supply chain. In this paper, we first offer an overview on the state-of-the-art of AM supply chains and then present a novel blockchain-empowered system architecture, namely, Additive Manufacturing-as-a Service (AMaaS), that can facilitate the speedy adoption of AM in manufacturing industries. Finally, we identify several major research challenges in terms of market design, control algorithms, and security, as well as research directions to tackle them.