Blockchain in operations management and manufacturing: Potential and barriers

Abstract Transparency, visibility, and disintermediation are some of the prospects of the aspiring blockchain technology in the business-to-business context. The digital transformation and Industry 4.0 trends also facilitate blockchain applications in operations management (OM) and manufacturing. However, scientific contributions and successful industrial applications in this area are still scarce and mainly at a proof-of-concept stage. The empirical research in this article is based on an expert interview study to uncover and analyse the potential and barriers to the adoption of blockchain technology in OM and manufacturing from within the industry. Semi-structured interviews with industry experts are employed to elaborate on promising practices for the industry to efficiently promote blockchain adoption and meaningful research directions for scholars. Findings include unexplored potential regarding distributed production networks and collaboration, expected evolutionary steps of IoT, disintermediation leading to new business models like tokenisation, and short-term rather than long-term relationships. Current barriers include staff difficulties, legal uncertainties, missing infrastructure and standardisation, and unclear governance structures. Improving smart contract security and interoperability of private and public protocols will enable further dissemination of the technology. Managers and academic scholars can address these findings and new propositions of this study in future application development and implementation.