Network-oriented Uncertainty Evaluation of Industrial Product-service Collaborative Readiness

Abstract

Industrial practitioners and scholars have argued that collaboration for the delivery of an industrial product-service system (IPS2) has become an increasingly important strategy for industrial firms. Further, the requirements for IPS2 implementation are different from traditional sales of manufactured products. Consequently, an understanding of uncertainty sources is therefore crucial to managing network complexity and allocating resource for uncertainty mitigation. Along these lines, a fuzzy analytical framework for evaluating supply chain uncertainty is proposed in this paper for prioritising sources of network uncertainty. A stainless steel manufacturing case company illustrates how the proposed framework of uncertainty measures and fuzzy-based techniques can be applied and can help researchers and practitioners to prioritise uncertainties from a practical point of view.