Digitalized manufacturing logistics in engineer-to-order operations

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Advances in Production Management Systems. Production Management for the Factory of the Future. APMS 2019. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, vol. 566. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30000-5_71. The high complexity in Engineer-To-Order (ETO) operations causes major challenges for manufacturing logistics, especially in complex ETO, i.e. one-of-a-kind production. Increased digitalization of manufacturing logistics processes and activities can facilitate more efficient coordination of the material and information flows for manufacturing operations in general. However, it is not clear how to do this in the ETO environment, where products are highly customized and production is non-repetitive. This paper aims to investigate the challenges related to manufacturing logistics in ETO and how digital technologies can be applied to address them. Through a case study of a Norwegian shipyard, four main challenges related to manufacturing logistics are identified. Further, by reviewing recent literature on ETO and digitalization, the paper identifies specific applications of digital technologies in ETO manufacturing. Finally, by linking manufacturing logistics challenges to digitalization, the paper suggests four main features of digitalized manufacturing logistics in ETO: (i) seamless, digitalized information flow, (ii) identification and interconnectivity, (iii) digitalized operator support, and (iv) automated and autonomous material flow. Thus, the paper provides valuable insights into how ETO companies can move towards digitalized manufacturing logistics

Conceptualizing customer value in data-driven services and smart PSS

In the age of the industrial internet, manufacturers of industrial equipment compete through the offering of digital product-service solutions. These are built integrating smart connected products (SCP) and data-driven services, such as remote control, data analytics, diagnostic and predictive maintenance services. These services strongly influence the value created in the customer context and, consequently, the attractiveness of the integrated offering. A great issue remains about how these services should be designed by manufacturers of industrial equipment. Through integrative literature review over multiple domains, this paper provides a conceptual model that shows: i) which benefits can be created from smart product-service systems offerings at both business and individual level, in the customer organization; ii) how these benefits are linked to the choices about design and delivery of data-driven services. In respect to the second point, this study merges service science theory and data management to show how the data autonomously collected by SCP can be transformed into insights that deliver value, as far as the customer and the supplier interact, share resources and apply their specialized competences. Applying these concepts, we elaborate four exemplary archetypes of data-driven services that differ in respect to the kind of customer-supplier interactions along this data life cycle, bringing these options to different kind of customer value co-creation. Linking the mechanisms of value co-creation to design options of data-driven services, this paper has therefore notably implications for the research on servitization and smart product-service systems

Circular Economy in the Digital Age

The Circular Economy has been pointed out by scholars and policymakers as a promising approach to decouple economic growth from resource consumption and waste generation [...

Servitization in Engineer-To-Order companies: evidences from a multiple case study research

Nowadays, services are increasingly taking the lead in global economy, in terms of both wealth produced and value added (Wölfl, 2005); at the same time the economic downturn has led in the last years, to demand stagnation on European markets. Thus, services, that are much more difficult to imitate by being less visible and more labor dependent, are becoming a sustainable sources of competitive advantage. Several evidences from OM literature show that in capital goods manufacturing context, extending service business through what has been defined “servitization” (Vandermerwe and Rada, 1988), can lead to generate new additional revenues and profits (Oliva and Kallenberg, 2003; Brax, 2005, Neely, 2009; Baines et al., 2009). Given this context and the relevance of the machinery industry (a typical Engineer-To-Order context) in the Italian economy, we investigate through an empirical research the state-of-art of this servitization process. The main objective of our study is to identify lines of improvement that ETO companies can follow to better exploit the service potential. Preliminary results highlight that, although companies perceive the increasing importance of services, they have not tackled yet the real challenges of servitization: strategy and culture are still focused mainly on tangible product and service portfolio is underdeveloped. Moreover, there is a lack concerning the management of service, both in terms of methodology and ICT support systems. Therefore, a more structured approach to the servitization process may ease companies in optimizing service delivery and gaining (real) competitive advantages

Assessing customer centricity: a new framework for manufacturing companies

As a direct result of the changeable market conditions, manufacturing companies are currently shifting their focus from goods to services. Given this process of servitization, customer’s needs and preferences are becoming more and more relevant for companies. In this context, it becomes strategic and essential for companies to adopt a customer centricity approach: a strategy that puts customer needs at the center of all business processes and decisions. This paper aims to develop a new framework that identifies the elements characterizing the customer centricity paradigm in manufacturing companies and supports companies in the evaluation of the customer orientation level. Moreover, by applying the new framework in practice, this paper also discusses how it can helps manufacturing companies in designing a structured customer centricity paradigm and in consistently identifying the actions needed to implement it

Evaluation of technical and economic feasibility of additive manufacturing technology: Evidences from a case study

3D Printing has been firstly licensed in the far 1980 year by Charles Hull, the founder and (still) president of 3D Systems, which is a leading company in this sector. The technology has followed an incubation period of almost 25-30 years before becoming enough mature to propose a big spectrum of printing techniques, usable materials which allowed to cross the boundaries of traditional prototyping activities, fully soaking in the direct production of parts, components and final products. The main aim of this work is to test and validate an empirical guideline and tools thanks to which every manufacturing company can evaluate whether additive manufacturing (AM) applications could be suitable according to their specific context. Guidelines and tools, coming from a previous work developed by Pour et al. (2015), have been properly updated and integrated, thanks to a new application in a case study involving a large enterprise, belonging to the textile machinery sector

Towards usage-oriented business models: an assessment of European capital goods manufacturers

This paper is part of the T-REX project, funded by the European Commission. An exploratory survey was carried out to analyse the business models of 95 companies, to assess the diffusion of service-oriented business models. We found that business models are in general still product-oriented. Revenue models are dominated by product sales, with a contribution of services close to 20% due to corrective maintenance and spare part sales. Rental or “Pay-per-x” contracts are an almost negligible revenue source. This paper has also defined a set of variables that can be used to describe the business model configuration in servitization contexts

Analysis of Servitization in Engineering-To-Order Manufacturing Companies: an Empirical Research

Evidences from OM literature show that in such a context, extending the service business through what has been defined as servitization can lead to generate new and less imitable competitive advantages and new additional revenues and profits. This paper investigate the servitization level of Italian manufacturers that operate in ETO industries-a noteworthy instance of the machinery sector, being Italy the fourth producers of machine tools in the world representing the 7,6% of the worldwide production-and how they support service processes through ICT systems