International Association for Management of Technology IAMOT 2015 Conference Proceedings P340 ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING OR 3D PRINTING AND ITS ADOPTION HARM‐JAN STEENHUIS Eastern Washington University, Department of Management, USA hsteenhuis@ewu.edu (Corresponding) LEON PRETORIUS University of Pretoria, Department of Engineering and Technology Management Graduate School of Technology Management, South Africa Leon.Pretorius@up.ac.za Copyright © 2015 by the University of Pretoria. Permission granted to IAMOT to publish and use. ABSTRACT This study is on additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing. Additive manufacturing is different from traditional manufacturing processes that shape products through milling, grinding etc. Instead, with additive manufacturing, layers are added to a product. This allows for three dimensional manufacturing and limited scrap. Additive manufacturing has been viewed by many as a disruptive innovation for society because it allows consumers to manufacture their own products. In this paper, an overview will be presented on the status of additive manufacturing. This includes the consumer perspective as well as the manufacturing perspective. For example, the consumer perspective has intellectual property protection as an emerging issue. The current status of 3D printers will be provided together with an analysis of the main producers such as Makerbot and Ultimaker (consumer markets) and Stratasys and 3D Systems (industrial markets), their models and their current capabilities and overall adoption. It is concluded that additive manufacturing is experiencing high growth but that, in particular for industrial applications, it is not yet competitive with traditional manufacturing systems. Key words: Additive manufacturing, 3D printing, technology diffusion, innovation. INTRODUCTION AND RESEARCH METHOD If you have been following any news on technology development then it is hard to have missed the hype about 3D printers. It is often described in terms of the Star Trek replicator, see for example Budmen and Rotolo (2013), O’Rourke (2013) and Zhang (2013) and it is touted as going to be one of the most disruptive technologies. Sung‐Won (2013) lists it among the top‐seven disruptive innovations, Hyman (2011) among the top‐10 technologies that will transform the next decade. It is viewed as disruptive for manufacturing (Merrill, 2014) as well as service (Soubra, 2013) although some wonder how disruptive it is really going to be (Dawson, 2014). The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into 3D printing by following an exploratory research approach. Three research questions were formulated. 1. What methods exist for 3D printing? 2. What are current 3D printing companies? 3. How is the market for 3D printing developing? Page 2468