Identifying smart design attributes for Industry 4.0 customization using a clustering Genetic Algorithm

Industry 4.0 aims at achieving mass customization at a mass production cost. A key component to realizing this is accurate prediction of customer needs and wants, which is however a challenging issue due to the lack of smart analytics tools. This paper investigates this issue in depth and then develops a predictive analytic framework for integrating cloud computing, big data analysis, business informatics, communication technologies, and digital industrial production systems. Computational intelligence in the form of a cluster k-means approach is used to manage relevant big data for feeding potential customer needs and wants to smart designs for targeted productivity and customized mass production. The identification of patterns from big data is achieved with cluster k-means and with the selection of optimal attributes using genetic algorithms. A car customization case study shows how it may be applied and where to assign new clusters with growing knowledge of customer needs and wants. This approach offer a number of features suitable to smart design in realizing Industry 4.0

Contextual variety, Internet-of-things and the choice of tailoring over platform : mass customisation strategy in supply chain management

This paper considers the implications for Supply Chain Management from the development of the Internet of Things (IoT) or Internet Connected Objects (ICO). We focus on the opportunities and challenges arising from consumption data as a result of ICO and how this can be translated into a provider’s strategy of offering different varieties of products. In our model, we consider two possible strategies: tailoring strategy and platform strategy. Tailoring strategy implies that a provider produces multiple varieties of a product that meet consumers’ needs. Platform strategy depicts the provider’s actions in offering a flexible and standardised platform which enables consumers’ needs to be met by incorporating personal ICO data onto various customisable applications independently produced by other providers that could be called on in context and on demand. We derive conditions under which each of the strategies may be profitable for the provider through maximising consumers’ value. We conclude by considering the implications for SCM research and practice including an extension of postponement taxonomies to include the customer as the completer of the product

Digital Society Ecosystem Impact on Creative Industry

Industry 4.0 phenomenon has emerged since many technological breakthroughs developed in the past decades. Human well-being behavior are basically influenced by the digital technology. The current customers incline the need for customized products. This situation drive the production paradigm shift from the mass production to the individual production. This paradigm shift force companies to own more resources. Companies’ collaboration is a way to win the competition. Industrial revolution era bring the fact that dominant economic activity is coming from a strong business ecosystem. The major impact of digitalization is faced by the creative industries, an industry priority and a \u27laboratory\u27 for studying economic transformation and modern society. This paper will review the digitalization in industry 4.0 era, business ecosystem and society shift, and the digitalization impact on creative industry. Keywords Industry 4.0; business ecosystem; society shift; creative industr

A review of the meanings and the implications of the Industry 4.0 concept

The global industrial landscape has changed deeply in the last few years due to successive technological developments and innovations in manufacturing processes. The Industry 4.0 concept has emerged and the academic literature has paid an increased attention to this topic, which remains non-consensual or ill defined. In this research, a literature review is made to understand this concept in its technological dimension, and to comprehend its impacts. This new industrial paradigm brings together the digital and physical worlds through the Cyber-Physical Systems enhanced by Internet of Things and it is expected that this novel has consequences on industry, markets and economy, improving production processes and increasing productivity, affecting the whole product lifecycle, creating new business models, changing the work environment and restructuring the labor market. Therefore, this paper focuses on Industry 4.0 concept and contributes for its clarification and further understanding about the importance and implications of this complex technological system.This work has been supported by COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2013.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Implications of the Internet of Things for the Small and Medium Sized Business

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the network of physical objects containing the embedded capability to interact, communicate, and otherwise exchange data with one another and the external environment over a network without human intervention. As the Internet of Things begins to grow into almost all aspects of business, the small to midsize business (SMB) must not get behind. Some unanswered questions include: How will small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) participate in IoT? Have they already begun participating and what challenges have they encountered along the way? Do smaller organizations have a disadvantage compared to larger organizations in the IoT landscape? A literature review and a survey of owners, executives and employees of SMBs were performed in order to gain a better understanding of the current state of awareness and use of IoT technologies. The thesis concludes with a theoretical recommended implementation plan that combines the literature on the strengths and weaknesses of the SMB with the results of the survey as well as the literature examining the challenges and opportunities of IoT into a series of recommendations for implementation. These recommendations are given in the form of a “Maturity Model” that will cover the steps from infancy to a fully mature implementation of IoT solutions

Consumer-Based Ranking for Strategic Selection of IoT Business Models

The digitization of business environments requires companies to be more consumer-centric than before. In the course of these adjustments, managers operate in the area of conflict between value creation for the firm, consumers’ limited willingness to pay for products and services, and the need to gain and maintain consumers’ trust. To support managers in the challenge to redefine their business models to fit the new digitized business environment, we suggest that managers should incorporate consumer\u27s attitudes towards Internet of Things (IoT) business models in their strategic business model choice. Based on a choice experiment with 301 individuals, we identified a set of business models ranked according to the probability that users are most likely to agree with, and thus accept. The results of the study provide direct indications about which IoT business models are from a consumer perspective desirable and which not so that managers can directly implement these insights in practice