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.

中文翻译：

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运营管理和制造中的区块链：潜力和障碍

摘要 透明度、可见性和去中介化是有抱负的区块链技术在企业对企业环境中的一些前景。数字化转型和工业 4.0 趋势也促进了区块链在运营管理 (OM) 和制造中的应用。然而，该领域的科学贡献和成功的工业应用仍然很少，主要处于概念验证阶段。本文中的实证研究基于专家访谈研究，旨在揭示和分析行业内在 OM 和制造业中采用区块链技术的潜力和障碍。与行业专家的半结构化访谈被用来详细阐述行业的有前途的实践，以有效地促进区块链的采用和对学者有意义的研究方向。调查结果包括分布式生产网络和协作方面的未开发潜力、物联网的预期演进步骤、导致令牌化等新业务模式的去中介化，以及短期而非长期关系。当前的障碍包括人员困难、法律不确定性、基础设施和标准化缺失以及治理结构不明确。提高智能合约的安全性和私有和公共协议的互操作性将促进该技术的进一步传播。