Abstract
Despite the myriad of possibilities and applications of additive manufacturing (AM) technology, knowledge about the social impacts of this technology is very scarce and very limited in some areas. This paper explores how factors generated by the development of AM technology may create social impacts, affecting the health and social well-being of people, quality of life, working conditions, and the creation of wealth. This paper presents the results of an exploratory multiple case study conducted among four Portuguese organizations that use AM technology, aiming to determine their perceptions regarding the social impacts of AM, its effects, and causes. The results confirm that AM technology is mainly seen to create positive impacts on health and safety (regarding physical hazards), on expectations for the future, on leisure and recreation, on low disruption with the local economy, on economic prosperity, on the professional status, and on innovative employment types. Nevertheless, a negative impact was also found on health and safety (concerning hazardous substances), as well as several mixed and null impacts. The main limitations of the research arise from the use of a case study methodology, since the results can be influenced by contextual factors, such as the size of the organizations in the sample, and/or social, cultural, technological, political, economic, and ecological factors. This study gives an up-to-date contribution to the topic of AM social impacts and social changes, an area which is still little-explored in the literature.
Highlights
The introduction of additive manufacturing (AM), better known as 3D printing, emerges as a disruptive technology that seems to bring with it several changes and impacts to the traditional product lifecycle, conveying new challenges to business models and society in general
This paper presents an endeavour to determine the social impacts of AM and the respective causes of said impacts
The first research question (RQ1) aimed at identifying “causes”, i.e., the main factors originated by the use of AM technology in a productive context that could cause any type of social impact
Summary
The introduction of additive manufacturing (AM), better known as 3D printing, emerges as a disruptive technology that seems to bring with it several changes and impacts to the traditional product lifecycle, conveying new challenges to business models and society in general. AM technology emerged in the 1980s, through the work of Charles Hull [1,2], in stereolithography Nowadays, this technology is used in several industries to describe an additive process where material is added layer-by-layer to create physical prototypes, parts of products, or a final product, directly from digital data [3,4]. A growing number of companies and new business models based on AM processes are emerging, creating enormous opportunities for the economy and society [18,19,20] This technology is used by two groups of companies, those that use low-cost, low-end technologies, and those that use high-end technologies in cutting-edge sectors, such as in biomedical sectors, nanomanufacturing, [21,22] or bioprinting, known as 4D printing [23].
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