Digital Industrial Platforms

THE PLATFORMISATION OF MANUFACTURING: TOWARDS A HOLISTIC PERSPECTIVE FOR SYSTEMATISING DIGITAL MANUFACTURING PLATFORMS

Digital Platforms have profoundly changed many sectors and shaped the concept of the platform economy. While they have been a part of the consumer goods sector for several decades, their development and rise in the manufacturing industry seems to be just beginning. A number of different digital platforms now exist specifically for product manufacturers, such as digital marketplaces for industrial goods, manufacturing as a service, platforms for product development, or platforms addressing digital production and digital product-service offers via the Industrial Internet of Things. Due to this high diversity, this paper aims to deliver a holistic concept that systematises digital platforms in manufacturing using a morphological box. We distinguish and subsequently embed three different main types in an overall development. The results provide insights into the platformisation trend of manufacturing, which not only holds implications for future research, but also serve as a basis for strategic decisions in manufacturing firms.

Data-driven forwarding: a typology of digital platforms for road freight transport management

The omnipresence of digital platforms (DPs) across industries yields platform-based business concepts that disrupt the road freight market, enabling the digitalization of road freight transport management (RFTM). However, the data-driven service capabilities of DPs in supporting RFTM are manifold, and platform research provides opportunities to explore the emerging digital business concepts following the core process of transport management systems (TMSs). This, in particular, results from the side of road freight operators engaged in the transport management process that are increasingly forced to provide customer-centric RFTM via DPs to remain profitable and competitive within a fragmented business environment. Against this backdrop, this paper aims to explore DPs in the road freight transport domain to gain insights into digital freight services and support logistics companies involved in the transportation process with a novel navigation for the identification of required platform-based services. Following the grounded theory methodology, we present a morphological box encompassing 14 dimensions and eight DP types aligned to RFTM. We reveal digital services of DP visibility, optimization, and analytics. With the insights obtained by our research, we contribute to developing a comprehensive understanding of DPs for the enhanced decision-making of transport stakeholders in the area of digital transport management. Our findings provide an established theoretical research ground that guides platforms as markets for practitioners and proposes further research avenues for scholars toward data-driven and digitalized transport logistics.

Critical Obstacles Affecting Adoption of Industrial Big Data Solutions in Smart Factories

Industrial big data is the key to realize the vision of smart factories. This research aims to identify and explore potential barriers that prevent organizations from deploying industrial big data solutions in the development of smart factories through a socio-technical perspective. The research follows an inductive qualitative approach. Twenty-seven semi-structured interviews were conducted with the CEO, smart factory manager, IT managers, departmental heads, and IS consultants in the selected case company. The interview data were analyzed using a thematic analysis method. Derived from a thematic analysis, six sets of barriers including technical, data, technical support, organization, individual, and social issues were identified, as well as the relationships between them. An empirical framework was developed to highlight the relationship between these barriers. This study contributes to the knowledge of industrial big data in general and provides constructive insight into industrial big data implementation in smart factory development particularly.

Digital Technology Platforms as an Innovative Tool for the Implementation of Renewable Energy Sources

The subject matter addressed in the paper concerns digital technology platforms in the context of renewable energy sources. The main goal is to check whether digital technology platforms can be effective factors in implementing innovative business models in the RES sector. The study was based on empirical research using Computer-Assisted Telephone Interview (CATI) and Computer-Assisted Web Interview (CAWI) methods, as well as on a model of attitudes towards digital technology platforms (DTPs) built using CATREG (categorical regression) analysis. As a result of the research, it was found that digital technology platforms contribute to building innovative business models. The decisive influence on this is a number of benefits for enterprises and consumers (and the related factor is the most important when it comes to attitudes towards DTP), as well as the high interest in digital RES platforms.