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Industrial manufacturers faced and mastered several economic challenges and disruptive changes in the past. In particular, changes to business models emerge very slowly, whereas crises such as the banking crisis or covid-19 outbreak lead to significant short-term effects and are difficult to manage.
Over the past year, the world experienced an unprecedented form of disruption due to the global covid-19 pandemic. Compared to former economic crises, the implications of social distancing, lockdowns, and supply chain shortages triggered a rapid economic and societal disruption at a global scale, which impacted all sectors and levels of society.
For a holistic understanding of the impact of the current and former crises on industrial manufacturers, the Institute for Industrial Management at RWTH Aachen and BearingPoint conducted a survey as well as expert interviews to investigate the scope and type of affects for industrial manufacturers with a strong focus on service business. Based on this a framework to successfully address these new challenges and – also – opportunities was developed.
Operating and maintenance costs, which account for 25% of total costs, are a powerful lever in reducing the electricity generation costs of onshore wind turbines (WT). These costs can be reduced by a condition-orientated maintenance approach. A condition-oriented maintenance strategy optimizes maintenance tasks by executing them with varying levels of detail and focus depending on the system and life cycle phase. OEMs evaluate operating data and structured data from the maintenance history for this purpose, but SMEs lack the capacity for this evaluation. In particular, the unstructured descriptive comments in the maintenance reports generated by service technicians remain unused. In this work, we propose a framework to incorporate this information from the maintenance reports along with the status records from the SCADA system. For this purpose, a mechanism has to be developed to make the contents of the service reports machine-evaluable. The mechanism used in this approach is an ontology, which enables the codification of implicit knowledge such as the experience knowledge of the service technicians. The ontology’s purpose is to link status codes of onshore WT with historical maintenance reports and thereby enabling an automated evaluation. Using an API (application programming interface), the ontology can be integrated into an algorithm to analyse status data and maintenance documents. In this manner, recommendations for actions can be derived and maintenance tasks can be optimized.
The additive manufacturing technique of "Selective Laser Melting" (SLM) provides the basis for a fundamental paradigm shift in industrial spare part manufacturing, affecting both technological and organizational company prac-tices. To harness the full potential of SLM-technology, considering agility and customizability, decentralized additive production networks need to be estab-lished. According to the principles just in time, just in place and just enough, a global online platform, which efficiently distributes construction orders to local manufacturing hubs could empower the market participants to utilize production capacities at optimal costs and minimal efforts. This work evaluates and selects key factors and creates scenarios for the development of platform-based networks for additive, SLM-based, spare part production. For this purpose, the selected key factors (e. g. material expenses, quality and process management and platform-based business models) are projected into the future, forming the three major scenarios "New distribution of roles in the SLM value chain", "SLM-technology for high wage countries" and "Individualization instead of mass production". These scenarios not only allow estimating the potential of an online network for additive spare part production, but also enable market participants to react pur-posively and agilely to unexpected market developments, and to foster the suc-cess of a platform-based additive spare part production.
Monetizing Industry 4.0: Design Principles for Subscription Business in the Manufacturing Industry
(2019)
Subscription business models have a major role for monetizing products and services for manufacturing companies in the age of Industry 4.0. As the manufacturing industry has difficulties generating revenues through digitalization, the implementation of innovative business models are essential to remain successful. Physical assets are often capital-intensive and require a more complex manufacturing process than subscription business models. Moreover, subscription models can focus on the individual customer benefit and a consistent service transformation, constituting a unique selling proposition and a competitive advantage. Hence, the following paper provides a management model that enables manufacturing companies to successfully realize the transformation towards a subscription business model. The management model presents four major fields of action, each matched with one design principle that must be considered when dealing with subscription models in the manufacturing industry. These principles were determined by an in-depth case study analysis among various manufacturing companies. Opportunities, challenges and recommendations for action were then systematically derived and integrated into the management model.
The rapid developments in information and communication technology enable new bus iness models that are based on digital platforms. Marketplaces such as Amazon or Airbnb have already adapted this business model to connect previously unconnected supply-side and demand-side to conduct a business transaction via a digital platform. Due to Industrie 4.0 and the rapid technological development that comes with it, digital platforms have entered the market within the area of the mechanical engineering. Different platform types exist, such as marketplaces for machine equipment or digital data platforms for connected machines. Although numerous companies claim to offer platform-based bus iness models, they often lack knowledge on individual business model components. To close this gap, this paper structures a variety of existing platforms based on their detail characteristics. Within this paper, existing typologies of digital platforms from other industry areas are analyzed. Case study research ofplatforms within the mechanical engineering is used to adjust these typologies and create a new one for digital platforms within the mechanical engineering.
In the food industry, a very large potential of data ecosystems is seen, in which data is understood, exchanged and monetized as an economic asset. However, despite the enormous economic potential, companies in the food industry continue to rely on traditional, product-oriented business models. Existing data in the value chain of industrial food production, e.g., in harvesting, logistics, and production processes, is primarily used for internal optimization and is not monetized in the form of data products. Especially the pricing of data products is a key challenge for data-based business models due to their special characteristics compared to conventional, analog offerings and multiple design options. The goal of this work is therefore to solve this issue by developing a framework that allows the identification of pricing models for data products in the industrial food production. For this purpose, following the procedure of typology formation, essential design parameters and the respective characteristics are derived. Furthermore, three types for pricing models of data products are shown. The results will serve not only stakeholders in the food industry but also manufacturing companies in general as input for an orientation of their databased business models.
Industrial food production represents one of the largest industries, accounting for a share of ten percent of the world’s gross domestic product. Simultaneously, it is responsible for 26 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Due to increasing CO2 taxes and population’s call for sustainability and CO2 reduction, it is facing challenges in terms of economic profitability and stakeholder demands. These challenges could partly be overcome by participating in data ecosystems in which data are refined as data products, understood, exchanged and monetized as economic goods. Despite large amounts of data, collected parenthetically along the value chain in food production, potentials of data analytics and data ecosystems are only marginally exploited. Food production mainly focuses on traditional, product-centric business models. This work shows the conceptualization of a data ecosystem for food production, enabling data-based business models. Therefore, resources, ac- tors, roles and underlying relationships of future ecosystem are analyzed. Building on these, corresponding architectural and analytical artifacts that support data ecosystem exploitation are presented. A food production data ecosystem is exemplified by applying data analytics to compressor data, which reveals high potentials for CO2 reduction.
Industry 4.0 and Smart Maintenance represent a great opportunity to make manufacturing and maintenance more effective, safer, and reliable. However, they also represent massive change and corresponding challenges for industrial companies, as many different options and starting points have to be weighed and the individual right paths for achieving Smart Maintenance need to be identified. In our paper, we describe our approach to evaluating maintenance organizations in a case study for the oil and gas industry, developing a shared vision for the future, and deriving economical and effective measures. We will demonstrate our approach, by showcasing a specific example from the oil and gas industry, where a need for action on HSE-relevant critical flanges in the company's piping systems was identified. We describe the steps, that were taken to identify the need for action, the specifications of the project and the criticality analysis of the piping system. This resulted in the derivation of a digitalization measure for critical flanges, which was first commercially analyzed and then the flanges were equipped with a continuous monitoring solution. Finally, a conclusion is drawn on the performed procedure and the achieved improvements.
Subscription business models provide an important component for monetizing the potential of Industrie 4.0. Subscription business is based on a long-term and participative business relationship between customer and provider. However, only digitalization offers the necessary framework conditions to realize the characteristic recurring and performance-based billing, and to ensure the necessary transparency about the usage phase of products as well as continuous performance improvements in the customer process. Against this background, companies must not only recognize the much-cited potential that lies in the total dedication to the success of individual subscription customers. Rather, the central obstacles must be addressed, examined, and subsequently overcome in a targeted manner in order to successfully establish subscription business models and place them on the market.
Industrial service is currently undergoing tremendous changes, largely driven by the development of new technologies, in particular the advancing digitalization. Never before have organizations had more comprehensive and insightful data assets - and never before have the opportunities to fully exploit this potential been better. However, most companies are unaware of how they can make use of this potential and which development steps are necessary to react to the current situation. To change this, a maturity-based approach was developed which describes four development stages of an industrial service company from a technological, organizational and cultural point of view. The maturity model makes it possible to develop a digital roadmap that is tailormade to each company, which helps to introduce Industrie 4.0 and transform industrial service companies into learning, agile organizations.