Paradigm Shift from Current Manufacturing to Social Manufacturing

The emergent phenomenon of social manufacturing is disrupting industries all over the world. Social manufacturing represents a new collaborative manufacturing paradigm. The shift from the current manufacturing paradigm to social manufacturing is facilitated by rapid development of mobile technologies, new digital manufacturing, and online social networks. There are already successful businesses that build upon the social manufacturing paradigm, e.g., in finance, hospitality, and transportation: new banks are born without physical offices (ING Direct), the world’s greatest hotel chain does not own a single room (AirBnB), and a taxi company neither owns cars nor employs drivers (Uber). The objective of this study is to construct a model concerning the paradigm shift from current manufacturing to social manufacturing. The model for the paradigm shift incorporates various topics that are central in the transition process, such as 3D printing, customization, value chains, and social networks. The model is divided into two phases. First, there is an intermediary phase of social manufacturing where customers will co-create with manufacturers. However, here manufacturers still control the manufacturing platform. This phase represents an incremental dimension of social manufacturing. Second, there is the fully-fledged social manufacturing phase that I call it the ultimate phase of social manufacturing. In this phase of social manufacturing, customers can become entrepreneurs, pursuing their ideas throughout the manufacturing value chain by using support from a public manufacturing platform. This phase represents the disruptive dimension of social manufacturing. To demonstrate the practicality of this study, the proposed model is then applied in the apparel industry for creating insights both to the intermediary and ultimate phases of social manufacturing within this field. Finally, opportunities and risks related to social manufacturing are discussed, the limitations of the study are presented, and future avenues of study are outlined

Supply Chain Modifications to Improve Additive Manufacturing

Additive manufacturing (AM) offers unique production characteristics which among those, toollessness and production of complex geometries are potentially significant to operations efficiency. Previous research has illustrated the potential sufficiency of this technology to affect the supply chains‟ arrangements and enabling decentralized production configurations. While, one of the important advantages of AM enabled distributed production is the increased flexibility, which is a necessity in today‟s competitive and ever changing global supply chains, number of obstacles have kept this method from wide implementation. In this paper, we study the possible supply chain modifications to decrease the cost of an AM-enabled decentralized production system. In other words, we perform a cost-benefit analysis on various AM supply chain strategies in a spare parts context to realize the independent operational factors affecting the implementation cost of additive manufacturing. Moreover, we analyze the ways to adapt the supply chain management to enable full potential of AM considering the present technology.Mechanical Engineerin

Removing barriers to sustainability research on personal fabrication and social manufacturing

Since the beginning of the New Millennium, increasingly widespread availability of the Internet and digitally enabled tools have made production processes more accessible to private individuals, introducing new opportunities for personal fabrication and social manufacturing. Yet scant sustainability research has been conducted on this important sector. We argue that research barriers, particularly relating to confusing terminology and lack of individual-centric analytical tools, are largely responsible for this void. The objective of this study is to overcome these barriers by (1) providing an integrating framework that can improve transferability, to other conceptual analyses, of the results of sustainability research conducted from a particular conceptual viewpoint, and (2) suggesting how some firm-centric analytical tools can be modified for effective use in studies of individual-level phenomena. We base our framework on the emerging concept of social manufacturing, first eliciting its main aspects and dimensions with a conceptual literature study, and then discovering its central properties with an empirical case study. We conclude by using the new social manufacturing framework to suggest modifications of three common sustainability analysis tools to make them more applicable to research on individual-level production. By making future investigation in this area more accessible our work contributes to both sustainability research and to the emerging field of research on social manufacturing.Peer reviewe

Collaborative Service Networks, Case Study of Uber and Airbnb

In recent years, conventional business model of ownership has been changed towards accessibility in variety of markets. Two trends can be observed in evolution of this rental-like business model. Firstly, technological development that enables emergence of new business models. These new business models increasingly become agile and flexible. For example “Spotify and SoundCloud”, online music stream companies, provides consumers access to over millions of music tracks, conveniently through the smartphone, tablet or computer. Similarly, “Car2Go, Zipcar, and Getaround” car sharing companies give flexible access to nearby cars for its members. Second trend is the increasing communication and connections via social networks. This trend enables a shift to peer-to-peer accessibility based business models. Conventionally, companies provide access for their customers to own companies’ products or services. In peer-to-peer model, nonetheless, companies facilitate access and connection across their customers to use other customers owned property or skills, competencies or services .The so-called the sharing economy business model which is referred as “the platform economy” as well. The promising start-ups that are active in this very specific and rather new market signify the potential of the so-called “the platform economy” business model. In this paper, we investigate into a new and emerging type of the platform economy business model in which role of customers and service providers may dramatically change. This new mechanism is called “Collaborative Service Networks”. We probe this mechanism from different aspects. Uber and Airbnb, two successful growing companies, have been selected for our case studies. There are similar companies that are competing in the same market like Lyft and Homeaway. However, the case study companies are significantly more successful and larger. We propose the way this mechanism can capture value in five-steps, which creates a virtuous cycle and reinforces the viability of the mechanism.Peer reviewe

Collaborative Service Networks, Case Study of Uber and Airbnb

In recent years, conventional business model of ownership has been changed towards accessibility in variety of markets. Two trends can be observed in evolution of this rental-like business model. Firstly, technological development that enables emergence of new business models. These new business models increasingly become agile and flexible. For example “Spotify and SoundCloud”, online music stream companies, provides consumers access to over millions of music tracks, conveniently through the smartphone, tablet or computer. Similarly, “Car2Go, Zipcar, and Getaround” car sharing companies give flexible access to nearby cars for its members. Second trend is the increasing communication and connections via social networks. This trend enables a shift to peer-to-peer accessibility based business models. Conventionally, companies provide access for their customers to own companies’ products or services. In peer-to-peer model, nonetheless, companies facilitate access and connection across their customers to use other customers owned property or skills, competencies or services .The so-called the sharing economy business model which is referred as “the platform economy” as well. The promising start-ups that are active in this very specific and rather new market signify the potential of the so-called “the platform economy” business model. In this paper, we investigate into a new and emerging type of the platform economy business model in which role of customers and service providers may dramatically change. This new mechanism is called “Collaborative Service Networks”. We probe this mechanism from different aspects. Uber and Airbnb, two successful growing companies, have been selected for our case studies. There are similar companies that are competing in the same market like Lyft and Homeaway. However, the case study companies are significantly more successful and larger. We propose the way this mechanism can capture value in five-steps, which creates a virtuous cycle and reinforces the viability of the mechanism.Peer reviewe

The Evolving Customer Experience Management Landscape: A Case Study on the Paper Machine Companies

Customer experience is increasingly the differentiator between successful companies and those who struggle. Currently, customer experiences become more dynamic; and they advance with each interaction between the company and a customer. Every customer conversation and any effort to evolve these conversations would be beneficial and should ultimately result in a positive customer experience. The aim of this paper is to analyze the evolving customer experience management landscape and the relevant challenges and opportunities. A case study on the “paper machine” companies is chosen. Hence, this paper analyzes the challenges and opportunities in customer experience management of paper machine companies for the case of “road to steel”. Road to steel shows the journey of steel from raw material to end product (i.e. paper machine in this paper). ALPHA (Steel company) and BETA (paper machine company), are chosen and their efforts to evolve the customer experiences are investigated. Semi-structured interviews are conducted with experts in those companies to identify the challenges and opportunities of the evolving customer experience management from their point of view. The findings of this paper contribute to the theory and business practices in the realm of the evolving customer experience management landscape

Path Planning System for Smart Cars Used in Education

In this paper, we developed a path planning system for smart cars for teaching electronic engineering or computer science, which consists of the interactive platform for smart cars development and path planning. Designed by Visual C++, the interactive platform can call Matlab engine, allows users to choose path optimization algorithms such as genetic or A-star(A*) algorithm for different tasks and control smart cars through serial ports. The simulation and practice demonstrate that our interactive platform can help learners to plan paths and control intelligent vehicles without specially designing a user interface.Peer reviewe

Improving sustainability in the value chain of the apparel industry empowered with social manufacturing

the IEEE Xplore database, Web of Science and indexed by EI Compendex and ISI Proceedings;One of the major contributions of social manufacturing is in the realm of sustainability. The apparel industry is a good example to assess contribution of social manufacturing to improve sustainability in practice. Value chains in the apparel industry are faced with various challenges regarding sustainability issues. Apparel companies pay higher attention to economic sustainability issues, and environmental and social sustainability issues of the apparel industry are often underrated. We realize that the apparel brand owners have the highest impact on improving the sustainability of the apparel industry. Thus, we design a collaborative business model empowered with social manufacturing to join the forces among the brand owners for improving sustainability of the apparel industry throughout the value chain. We chose a case study of shifting from conventional screen-printing to more environmentally sustainable digital textile printing. We suggest that this shift can be accelerated if the brand owners join theirforces together to shift from conventional printing to digital printing technology in the apparel industry.Peer reviewe