Pricing and coordination of product service supply chain under an industrial internet platform environment

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to reveal the inner mechanisms of the role of industrial internet platforms in empowering the digital transformation of SMEs. This ROOTCLOUD-based case study shows that knowledge integration and knowledge sharing and driving play essential empowering roles in the impact of industrial internet platforms on the digital transformation of SMEs. The industrial internet platform promotes knowledge integration on the supply side, empowers cross-domain knowledge sharing and shapes the knowledge-driven digital supply chain system in the digital transformation processes of SMEs.Design/methodology/approachThis paper presents a qualitative analysis of the knowledge empowerment role played by industrial internet platforms in the digital transformation process of SMEs. Based on theoretical sampling, this paper selects ROOTCLOUD as a typical case to analyse the implementation mechanism of the industrial internet platform in solving the digital transformation problems and challenges faced by SMEs.FindingsKnowledge management (knowledge integration, sharing and driving) plays an important intermediary role between the empowerment of industrial internet platform and the digital transformation of SMEs. Specifically, the industrial internet platform empowers SMEs with knowledge, empowers supply-side knowledge integration, empowers cross-domain knowledge sharing and facilitates the formation of knowledge-driven supply chain systems.Research limitations/implicationsThis study clarifies the mechanism underlying the digital transformation of SMEs empowered by industrial internet platforms, that is, the empowerment of industrial internet platform enhances the level of knowledge integration and sharing of SMEs, thus improving the effectiveness of SMEs in achieving digital transformation. Further empirical studies should be conducted on the above mechanism.Originality/valueBased on the theoretical perspective of knowledge management, this paper discusses the problems and challenges faced in the digital transformation of SMEs through knowledge empowerment by the industrial internet platform ROOTCLOUD and proposes that knowledge empowerment in the industrial internet platform helps supply-side knowledge integration, promotes cross-domain knowledge sharing and contributes to forming a knowledge-driven supply chain system, thereby promoting the digital transformation of SMEs. System architects and relevant policy departments should pay attention to data-centred system construction, improve the construction of data-based collaborative application ecology and encourage industrial internet platforms to provide more targeted knowledge empowerment solutions for SMEs.

The construction of the industrial Internet platform is the key to the digital, networked and intelligent transformation and innovation of the manufacturing industry. At present, there are some limitations in the research on the mechanism of the construction of industrial Internet platform with the participation of developers. It fails to consider the reasonable benefit sharing coefficient and the influence of the decision-making process of the form and strength of government support. Therefore, a four party dynamic interactive evolutionary game model based on the logical framework of “government platform manufacturing enterprise developer” was constructed, and the strategic choices of the four parties in the process of building an industrial Internet platform in collaboration were analyzed in depth, and the influencing factors of the strategic choices of each party were simulated. The results indicate that government subsidies and penalties affect the strategic choices of manufacturing enterprises, platforms, and developers. A reasonable revenue sharing contract coefficient can ensure long-term cooperation and stable development between the platform and developers. In addition, the effective range of influencing factors that promote the evolution of the system to different stable states is defined, which provides a theoretical basis for manufacturing enterprises, industrial Internet platforms, governments and developers to choose strategies.

Leasing and recycling are important methods for developing the low-carbon sustainability of the construction machinery industry. However, there are some dilemmas caused by the extreme limitations of product service life. There has been little research on construction machinery leasing thus far and a lack of description of its unique characteristics in previous models. Focusing on the problem of pricing and coordination, a two-stage model of a leasing closed-loop supply chain based on the practical application of an Industrial Internet platform was proposed. Under centralized and decentralized decision-making scenarios, the prices of leasing and selling, maintenance effort, and recovery rate were calculated, respectively. By using the Shapley value method to optimize the selling price, and the two-part pricing contract to calculate the compensation fee, global profits can be reasonably distributed, while the supply chain can be improved. The effects of different contracts on the improvement of supply chain profit were investigated. Additionally, the correlation among parameters was explored via sensitivity analysis and numerical simulation. The findings show that the maintenance and recycling of construction machinery can be improved by using an Industrial Internet platform while achieving supply chain coordination via contracts. The enhancement of maintenance effort can decrease remanufacturing costs, which are positively correlated with the selling price and leasing price of products, further promoting the recovery rate of used products. The findings of this paper show that manufacturers can take advantage of the Industrial Internet platform to improve recycling efficiency as well as to decrease product prices and remanufacturing costs by promoting remanufacturing technologies. On the other hand, leasers need to enhance the maintenance of construction machinery. Strengthening cooperation via contracts can jointly promote leasing and recycling in the construction machinery industry and help achieve low-carbon sustainable development.

Affording digital transformation: The role of industrial Internet platform in traditional manufacturing enterprises digital transformation

Servitization is vital to manufacturing enterprises’ competitive advantages and financial performance in contemporary digitalisation environments. Enterprises are increasingly relying on industrial Internet platforms to satisfy potential customers’ needs as well as to create superior value, but the literature has neglected to explain how enterprises can leverage such digital platform to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of servitization. This study aims at describing how the industrial Internet platform can enable servitization of manufacturers. Based upon the meta-theoretical foundations of service-dominant logic, we identify the ‘sense and respond’ servitization strategy enabled by the industrial Internet platform. By performing a questionnaire survey, we find that the industrial Internet platform approach based on the connectivity and compatibility architecture can enable manufacturers to improve the efficiency of resource integration and resource reconfiguration, which facilitates the implementation of servitization via market perception . We argue that the industrial Internet platform affects an organisation’s ability to sense the market and resource management actions; these operational resource actions are a significant antecedent of the servitization strategy.

In order to meet the challenges, such as global competition, uncertain environment, and personalized requirements, manufacturing collaboration has got more and more attention. Recently, with the development of a series of industrial internet platforms, more and more distributed manufacturing resources and capabilities of different enterprises could be interconnected and integrated in the form of services, and then would be utilized on demand easily by the social or ubiquitous users. As a result, manufacturing collaboration in the form of or based on services, namely manufacturing services collaboration is the inevitable trend. In this paper, it aims to provide a prior analysis on manufacturing services collaboration toward industrial internet platforms. The development path of manufacturing collaboration is discussed at first. As the inevitable trend, manufacturing services collaboration toward industrial internet platforms and its characteristics are summarized. What is more, a manufacturing services collaboration framework toward industrial internet platforms is designed, in order to provide a reference for manufacturing enterprises to participate in an industrial internet platform and practice their collaboration in it.

A comprehensive industrial practice for Industrial Internet Platform (IIP): General model, reference architecture, and industrial verification

The industrial Internet platform has been applied to various fields of industrial production, effectively improving the data flow of all elements in the production process, improving production efficiency, reducing production costs, and ensuring the market competitiveness of enterprises. The premise of the effective application of the industrial Internet platform is the interconnection of industrial equipment. In the industrial Internet platform, industrial robot is a very common industrial control device. These industrial robots are connected to the control network of the industrial Internet platform, which will have obvious advantages in production efficiency and equipment maintenance, but at the same time will cause more serious network security problems. The industrial robot system based on the industrial Internet platform not only increases the possibility of industrial robots being attacked, but also aggravates the loss and harm caused by industrial robots being attacked. At the same time, this paper illustrates the effects and scenarios of industrial robot attacks based on industrial interconnection platforms from four different scenarios of industrial robots being attacked. Availability and integrity are related to the security of the environment.

Industrial Internet platforms have the ability to access, manage and control product-related data, information and knowledge across all the lifecycle phases (beginning of life, middle of life and end of life). Traditional product lifecycle management/product data management software have many limitations when it comes to solving product lifecycle management challenges, like interoperability for instance. Industrial Internet platforms can provide real-time management of data and information along all the phases of a product’s lifecycle. Platform openness in combination with the above-mentioned industrial internet platform characteristics helps solve the product lifecycle management challenges. This article describes the product lifecycle management challenges in detail from the existing literature and presents solutions using industrial internet platform openness and related dimensions as well as sub-dimensions. A wide pool of platforms is narrowed down to specific platforms that can solve the documented product lifecycle management challenges and allow the manufacturing companies to collaborate as well as enhance their business. We also present in detail managerial implications toward long-term and sustainable selection of industrial internet platform.

Under the current background of an information society, the digital transformation of enterprises has become a necessary means to enhance the competitiveness of enterprises. This article is based on the industrial Internet platform, the digital planning and architecture of enterprises research. First, we analyze the current challenges of digital transformation and the development opportunities brought by the industrial Internet. Then, we propose a digital planning method based on the industrial Internet platform, which takes the full connectivity of people, machine and things and intelligent decision making as the core, takes data collection, processing, analysis and application as the main line, and finally forms the top-level design of the digital transformation of enterprises. At the same time, we also built an industrial Internet platform architecture model, including the previous end perception layer, network transmission layer, platform service layer, and application innovation layer for four levels, to support enterprises in innovative applications and decision support under the industrial Internet environment. Research shows that this kind of enterprise digital planning and architecture based on an industrial Internet platform can effectively promote enterprises to achieve business model innovation, system innovation, and strengthen the flexibility and agility of enterprises to respond to market changes. The results of this research not only have important theoretical and practical significance for guiding enterprises to carry out digital planning and build an industrial Internet platform, but also provide useful reference for relevant policy formulation.

With the rapid development of industrial internet services, the integration of IT/OT has enabled the continuous expansion of network security boundaries and put forward higher requirements for platform application cross-domain identity authentication. Aiming at the insufficient security of existing user-centric identity authentication schemes, this paper proposes a distributed authentication scheme based on the consortium blockchain in industrial Internet platform. The solution analyzes its applicability to the Industry Internet Platform from three perspectives: network architecture, industrial Internet platform user identity control, and user privacy. It defines the identity composed of consortium ID and consortium digital identity credentials, and builds distributed authentication architecture. The consortium blockchain is used to record the digital identity information of the industrial Internet platform users, and the consortium ID and the consortium digital identity credential are designed to realize the industrial Internet platform business securely access.

Low carbon has become a highly relevant topic in today’s society, particularly for manufacturing enterprises. To gain insight into how manufacturing enterprises embedded in the industrial internet platform make decisions regarding low-carbon technology innovation, this article examines the service quality of the platform, the low-carbon preferences of the manufacturing enterprises, and government subsidy factors. A platform ecological system game model, comprised of a single manufacturing enterprise and an industrial internet platform, is then established. The results indicate that, under the model’s assumptions, the decarbonization of production can only occur when the cost of low-carbon innovation is below a specific threshold. Decentralized decision making is more effective in promoting low-carbon innovation by the manufacturing enterprises when the cost of low-carbon technology innovation is low. The greater the service quality of the industrial internet platform, the stronger the positive influence of the low-carbon preferences of users and government subsidies on the low-carbon innovation level of the manufacturing enterprises. This study offers useful decision-making advice for both the industrial internet platform and the manufacturing enterprises.

Failures detection and cascading analysis of manufacturing services collaboration toward industrial internet platforms

In any industry, Equipment Asset Management (EAM) is at the core of the production activities. With the rapid development of Industrial Internet technologies and platforms, the EAM based on the Industrial Internet has become an important development trend. Meanwhile, the paradigm of EAM is changing, from a single machine to integrated systems, from the phase of using them to the end of their lifecycle, from breakdown maintenance to predictive maintenance, and from local decision-making to collaborative optimization. However, because of the lack of a unified understanding of the Industrial Internet platforms (IIPs) and the lack of a comprehensive reference architecture and detailed implementation framework, the implementation of EAM projects will face greater risks according to special needs in different industries. Based on the method of system engineering, this study proposes a general reference model and a reference architecture of implementation for the Industrial Internet Solution for Industrial Equipment Asset Management (I3EAM). Further, to help enterprise to evaluate and select their best-fit I3EAM scheme and platform partner, we proposed a set of performance indicators of I3EAM schemes and a quantitative decision-making method based on fuzzy DEMATEL-TOPSIS. Finally, a case study for an I3EAM in automated container terminals was conducted. In the multi-criteria decision environment with complex uncertainty, the project group identified the I3EAM metrics priorities and social digitalization platforms that were more in line with the actual needs of the automated container terminal and firms. The complexity and time of the decision-making process were dramatically reduced. In terms of feasibility and validity, the decision result was positively verified by the feedback from the enterprise implementation. The given model, architecture, and method in this study can create a certain reference value for various industrial enterprises to carry out the analysis and top-level planning of their I3EAM needs and choose the partner for co-implementation. In addition, the research results of this study have the potential to support the construction of standard systems and the planning and optimization of the cross-domain social platform, etc.

For pursuing smart manufacturing, the industrial Internet platforms have got more and more attention. An industrial Internet platform can gather almost all information flows, manufacturing capacities and production tools in the form of services to achieve sharing and collaboration of resources, subjects and knowledge. The aggregation characteristic of the platform results a problem, namely the distributive services scheduling for the concurrently submitted manufacturing tasks, which hinders the further application of an industrial Internet platform. In this paper, it aims to propose an aggregated-tasks oriented manufacturing services scheduling approach toward industrial Internet platforms for improving their effectiveness and global performance. Firstly, the dual-aggregation of manufacturing services and tasks in the platform is analyzed. Then based on aggregated manufacturing services collaboration, a services-aggregation aware modeling for the aggregated tasks is presented to describe the dual-aggregation characteristic and decompose the aggregated tasks. Finally, a manufacturing services scheduling optimization model is established and solved by particle swarm optimization algorithm. The experimental result proves the effectiveness of the proposed scheduling approach for the dual-aggregation of manufacturing services and tasks on the platform.