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In this paper, we analyze the literature concerning the implementation of digital twins (DTs) for zero-defect manufacturing (ZDM) following a systematic method and, guided by a preliminary finding that a structured and standardised approach to the development of the DT applications is lacking, we provide a standardised design methodology to guide researchers and practitioners in their efforts to develop DTs regardless of the domain. After examination and interpretation of the literature, we also present the results of our state-of-the-art analysis, discuss the current state and limitations of research and practice, and provide useful insights on this important and complex topic. The design methodology proposed in our study will benefit both practitioners and academicians by covering the essential elements to be considered when developing DTs for ZDM for any applications in this domain. The study also contributes to knowledge by presenting a structured overview of the specific research area with a comprehensive, systematic, and critical analysis of the literature and by providing answers to some fundamental questions in the context of DTs for ZDM. Finally, we provide suggestions for further developments in research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development of ecommerce and digital technologies, we have witnessed a boom of platform operations. Amid their strong growth prospects, it is observed that platforms have created controversial issues and challenges, which could be potentially solved by the combination of blockchain features. More and more studies exploring the implementation of blockchain in platform operations have appeared in recent years. In this paper, motivated by the industrial practices of different types of product selling and service platforms, we first conduct a holistic literature review of the most representative papers relevant to platform operations. Examining the value of different blockchain features in operations management field, we further review the related works on platform operations with blockchain technologies. Afterwards, we analyse the innovative applications and challenges in platforms such as physical and virtual product selling platforms, rental/sharing and on-demand service platforms. A future research agenda is established which lays the solid foundation for further studies on platform operations in the blockchain era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the way that maintenance is carried out has evolved due to the incorporation of digital tools and Industry 4.0 concepts. By connecting to and communicating with their production system, companies can now gather information about the current and future health of the equipment, enabling more efficient control through a process called predictive maintenance (PdM). The goal of PdM is to reduce unplanned downtimes and proactively address maintenance needs before failures occur. However, it can be challenging for industrial practitioners to implement an intelligent maintenance system that effectively manages data. This paper presents a methodology for developing and implementing a PdM system in the automotive industry, using open standards and scalable data management capabilities. The platform is validated through the presentation of two industry use cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In disrupted environments, the concept of digitalisation, viability, and sustainability have attracted considerable attention for the last decade. Digital, lean, and green capabilities have stimulated enormous advances in the development of industries. This paper discusses the current state of the art literature regarding sustainable and digital supply chain management performance. It reviews the relationship between digital technologies, lean, green, sustainability, and supply chain performance. A literature review approach, combined with a bibliometric analysis was adopted for robust field analysis. A set of 86 papers has been analysed and synthesised. The analysis of these papers has enabled the identification of the impact of Industry 4.0 technologies on the supply chain performance; the relationship of lean, green, and sustainability capabilities and digital supply chain; and the implications of the digital transformation of those capabilities. It presents a roadmap model integrating lean and green for viable, sustainable, and digital supply chain performance. The study is useful for academics and practitioners as it provides a roadmap framework and a solid background for integrating lean and green in the digital supply chain to achieve sustainable and viable performance as it outlines the necessity for incorporating the sustainability and viability performances in the digital supply chains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global trade is plagued by slow and inefficient manual processes associated with physical documents. Firms are constantly looking for new ways to improve transparency and increase the resilience of their supply chains. This can be solved by the digitalisation of supply chains and the automation of document- and information-sharing processes. Blockchain is touted as a solution to these issues due to its unique combination of features, such as immutability, decentralisation and transparency. A lack of business cases that quantify the costs and benefits causes uncertainty regarding the truth of these claims. This paper explores how the costs and benefits of a blockchain-based solution for digitalising and automating documentation flows in cross-border supply chains compare to a conventional centralised relational database solution. The research described in this paper uses primary data collected through semi-structured interviews with industry experts, as well as secondary data from literature. Two models based on existing services were developed and the costs and benefits compared and then analysed using the Architecture Trade-off Analysis Method (ATAM) and the Analytic Network Process (ANP). Findings from the analysis show that a consortium blockchain solution like TradeLens is the favourable solution for digitalising and automating information flows in cross-border supply chains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovations and advancements in technology create new opportunities to run and maintain manufacturing plants, which we refer to as digitalised manufacturing. This development is recognised as a socio-technical system (STS) change, where a change in the production system's goals, technology, processes, people, or environment may lead to ripple effects between those sub-systems. Despite this, technology development and technology use cases account for most of the research within digitalised manufacturing, while little attention has been devoted to leadership practices considering digitalised manufacturing from a socio-technical perspective. This paper focuses on the maintenance organisation, whose mission in a company is to keep production systems functional. We aim to describe leadership in industrial maintenance from an STS perspective. This is a unique interview study where twenty maintenance managers from Swedish manufacturing industry offer their perspective on the changing leadership within maintenance, providing a unique insight into the challenges facing leaders of maintenance in digitalised manufacturing. We frame the empirical findings using an STS framework and propose an overall consideration model for leadership that supports the development of a functional maintenance organisation in the face of pervasive digitalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the current state of research and the key aspects and implications of the relationships between Information and Digital Technologies (IDT) of Industry 4.0 and Lean Supply Chain Management (LSCM), with the identification of the lines of research developed and an analysis of the main findings. A Systematic Literature Review methodology has been used for the identification, selection, and evaluation of the published research. A set of 78 papers deduced from the most relevant scientific databases, including Web of Science, Scopus, and ABI/Inform, from 1996 to December 2019, has been analyzed and synthesized. The analysis and evaluation of these papers has enabled a new classification of the literature to be offered that identifies four lines of research based on the Life Cycle of Technology: obsolete IDT in LSCM; mature IDT in LSCM; emerging IDT in LSCM; and an Information Systems and IDT general approach in LSCM. The paper goes on to discuss the gaps found in the literature and proposes new opportunities and challenges for future research. A series of implications are presented intended to be useful from not only an academic point-of-view but also from a management focus, including recommendations for industrial managers and policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The manufacturing industry is experiencing a service-oriented transformation in the digitalisation era. However, many small and middle enterprises (SMEs) still rely on traditional manufacturing patterns in which they can hardly servitise manufacturing resources due to the limited budget and poor digitalisation capability. To servitise manufacturing resources, this paper proposes unified five-layer blockchain-enabled secure digital twin platform architecture, followed by its core enabling components and technologies. Firstly, a service-oriented digital twinning model is developed to transform physical resources into digital services. Secondly, a rule-based off-chain matching mechanism is designed to bridge customers' orders with manufacturing services. Thirdly, service-oriented architecture (SOA) is adopted as the major methodology to design and develop the whole blockchain platform. Four blockchain frontend services are developed using React.js, whilst the blockchain backend is developed using private Ethereum blockchain and InterPlanetary File System (IPFS). Finally, an experimental case is conducted based on the 3D printing scenario to verify the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed platform, named imseStudio. The results show that it not only provides an effective solution to digitalise manufacturing resources but also promotes the transformation towards service manufacturing. Highlights Blockchain-enabled secure digital twin platform is developed to servitise manufacturing resources Service-oriented digital twinning model is developed to transform physical resources into digital services Rule-based off-chain matching mechanism is built to bridge customers' orders with 3D printer Four blockchain explorers are developed to facilitate 3D printing services [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Machine tools play a pivotal role in the manufacturing world since their performance significantly affects the product quality and production efficiency. In the era of Industry 4.0, machine tools are expected to have a higher level of accessibility, connectivity, intelligence, adaptivity, and autonomy. With the rapid development and application of various Industry 4.0 technologies, digitalisation and servitisation of machine tools have become a new research trend. However, few review articles on the development of machine tools in the context of Industry 4.0 have been reported. To understand the current status of digitalisation and servitisation of machine tools, this paper provides a systematic literature review combining both bibliometric and qualitative analysis. Our review results provide a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of recent advancements of digitalisation and servitisation of machine tools, including the key enabling technologies, methods, standards, architectures, and applications. Furthermore, we propose a novel conceptual framework of Cyber-Physical Machine Tool (CPMT) as a systematic approach to achieving digitalisation and servitisation of next-generation machine tools. Finally, major research issues, challenges, and future research directions are discussed. This work will help researchers and industrial practitioners spark new ideas for developing the next-generation machine tools in the era of Industry 4.0. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID Pandemic since early 2019 has imposed significant effects on our life. In the retail and logistics sector, the large-scale national lockdown has drastically driven e-commerce sales because the e-marketplace has become the only sales channel. Whilst the pandemic has accelerated the shift towards a more digital world and led to an irreversible dependence on e-commerce retailing, the pressure is on retailers and logistics service providers to respond to the growing demand for immediate delivery in the e-commerce era. Given the integration of smart lockers into developing a more favourable environment which potentially makes immediate delivery more feasible, this paper introduces a novel, dynamic delivery strategy, namely Community Logistics Strategy (CLS), for formulating and updating the new delivery plan in real time as new delivery requests to smart lockers arrive. To shed light on the effect of dynamic order arrival towards delivery planning, the CLS attempts to update the delivery plan by taking new requests into account in real time. Simulation results reveal the superiority of the proposed strategy in managing e-commerce delivery requests, especially within megacities where consumers are highly dense in a compact geographical area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health organisations have adopted technologies since the 1960s, but only after the Industry 4.0 were such technologies systematized and organised under the H4.0 acronym. The pace at which digital information and communication applications have been developed in recent years challenge healthcare managers to choose assertively those with the largest potential impacts on their operations. In this paper, we propose using value stream mapping, a technique from the lean healthcare (LH) toolbox, to guide the choice of H4.0 digital applications that are more likely to support the improvement of value flows in healthcare organisations. We propose a three-step method, starting with mapping current and future value streams of the process under analysis, gathering data from team members on the indicated kaizen bursts and H4.0 digital applications, and finally assessing and ranking H4.0 digital applications that best support improvements and comply with attributes that characterise successful technological innovations. Our propositions are illustrated through a case study conducted in the sterilisation unit of a large public university hospital. Our findings indicate that three H4.0 digital applications should be prioritised to support the improvement of the value stream under analysis. Our method combines the simplicity of LH with more sophisticated solutions brought by H4.0. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent digital advancements, including social software, mobile technologies and augmented reality, offer promising opportunities to empower knowledge workers in their production environment by leveraging their knowledge processes, decision-making skills and social interaction practices. This paper proposes a conceptual framework for empowering workers in industrial production environments with digitally facilitated knowledge management processes. The framework explores four concrete facets of digital advancements that apply to a wide range of knowledge processes and production strategies in manufacturing companies. Each of these advancements are capable of supporting one specific facet of the individual knowledge management processes of workers; knowledge transfer, discovery, acquisition and sharing. The study contributes to the production research community by aligning emerging digital technologies and current trends in advanced manufacturing environments to benefit workers and improve job satisfaction, efficiency and productivity. The paper also contains suggestions about developing innovative solutions for production environments that support workers with digital technologies for flexible production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the term Operational Excellence (OE) has been widely applied over the past few decades, its meaning is still ill-defined. This issue may be especially aggravated after the advent of the Industry 4.0 (I4.0), which introduces disruptive digital technologies that may help to overcome traditional barriers in operations management. This paper examines the concept of OE in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. For that, we conducted semi-structured interviews with experts from both academia and manufacturing companies, focusing on the shifts in OE's concepts implied by the I4.0 with regards to four key aspects (people, partnerships, processes, and products and services). Experts' responses had their content analysed through the lens of General Systems Theory, which allowed the formulation of propositions towards the conceptualization of OE in the digital transformation era. Our findings indicated that, although some attributes may remain the same, the emphasis of OE in the Fourth Industrial Revolution is likely to change. The extensive integration of digital technologies into manufacturing companies tends to entail different expectations in terms of excellence in people, partnerships, processes, and products and services. As interconnectivity and cyber-physical systems gain prominence, a more integrative and systemic perspective of OE is facilitated, expanding its meaning and understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of digital technologies in service business transformation is under-investigated. This paper contributes to filling this gap by addressing how the Internet of things (IoT), cloud computing (CC) and predictive analytics (PA) facilitate service transformation in industrial companies. Through the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom (DIKW) model, we discuss how the abovementioned technologies transform low-level entities such as data into information and knowledge to support the service transformation of manufacturers. We propose a set of digital capabilities, based on the extant literature and the findings from four case studies. Then, we discuss how these capabilities support the service transformation trajectories of manufacturers. We find that IoT is foundational to any service transformation, although it is mostly needed to become an availability provider. PA is essential for moving to the performance provider profile. Besides providing scalability in all profiles, CC is specifically used to implement an industrialiser strategy, therefore leading to standardised, repeatable and productised offerings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Close and novel forms of collaboration among supply chain stakeholders within and beyond industry boundaries are essential for implementing a circular economy. Industry 4.0 technologies, as recognised enablers for circular systems, can support such collaboration. This study explores the intersection of the circular economy, supply chain collaboration, and Industry 4.0. First, we derive an analytical framework that contextualises circular supply chain collaboration. Second, based on this framework, we conduct a systematic literature review that explores how Industry 4.0 technologies can enable collaboration mechanisms. The review shows that information sharing and joint planning and decision-making are the most common collaboration mechanisms studied. Simultaneously, the Internet of Things, Blockchain, and Cloud Systems are the most discussed technologies to enable those mechanisms. The most prominent review sample patterns are synthesised into three archetypes for Industry 4.0-enabled circular supply chain collaboration. Furthermore, the study derives nine promising questions for future research along six main dimensions: Digital Twins and Artificial Intelligence, joint knowledge creation and innovation, collaboration in product design and planning, systemic collaboration across industry boundaries, contextualisation with barriers for implementing circular supply chains, and transferability of applications across industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of digitalisation and Industry 4.0 on the ripple effect and disruption risk control analytics in the supply chain (SC) is studied. The research framework combines the results from two isolated areas, i.e. the impact of digitalisation on SC management (SCM) and the impact of SCM on the ripple effect control. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that connects business, information, engineering and analytics perspectives on digitalisation and SC risks. This paper does not pretend to be encyclopedic, but rather analyses recent literature and case-studies seeking to bring the discussion further with the help of a conceptual framework for researching the relationships between digitalisation and SC disruptions risks. In addition, it emerges with an SC risk analytics framework. It analyses perspectives and future transformations that can be expected in transition towards cyber-physical SCs. With these two frameworks, this study contributes to the literature by answering the questions of (1) what relations exist between big data analytics, Industry 4.0, additive manufacturing, advanced trace & tracking systems and SC disruption risks; (2) how digitalisation can contribute to enhancing ripple effect control; and (3) what digital technology-based extensions can trigger the developments towards SC risk analytics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Methods and principles of Lean Production have become the major concepts to create highly efficient processes since the early 1990s. Due to its high effectiveness by reducing complexity and focusing on value-adding tasks, the Lean concept is still successful. Nevertheless, its changeability to produce highly customised products is limited. Industry 4.0 describes the vision of a smart production which can meet these future market requirements. Enablers are innovative information and communication technologies and the integration of all production entities into a common digital network. Lean Automation is the application of Industry 4.0 technologies to Lean Production methods in order to combine benefits from both domains. First proprietary Lean Automation solutions exist, but to enhance changeability in production, a common, unified communication interface is required. This paper presents the ongoing work towards an interface for digitising Lean Production methods using Cyber Physical Systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital enterprise technology (DET) is a theoretical framework for collaborative design and production development in the context of a product's lifecycle. The DET framework can be used to configure digital product and process development technologies which assimilate design data, at various levels of completeness, with a high degree of real-time measurement feedback from the production environment in order to validate the product's tolerance specification and the selected production and assembly processes. This paper describes research focused on the integration of two major facets of DET; process planning and large volume metrology (LMV). The challenges encountered include the representation of early designs of complex products, the definition of high risk areas in the process plan and the generation of accurate, dynamic measurement data from large-scale laser metrology in the production environment. The methods employed demonstrate how DET-based strategies for design, manufacture and integration can utilize recent technology advances in aggregate modelling and planning, tolerance analysis tools and 3D coordinate metrology. Early testing using aerospace products has been very promising and the research findings will benefit manufacturers of high-value, high-complexity products within distributed production networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital platforms are transforming almost every industry today and are expected to revolutionize future value creation. Digital platforms require collaboration, but this is challenging especially in the manufacturing industry where sensitive data need shared and high investments are required. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to enhance the understanding of how to successfully collaborate on digital platforms in the manufacturing industry by developing a contingency framework. The study is an explorative single case study of a digital platform. More specifically, the study examined the development process of a digital twin platform created by a large high-technological company and its collaborative actors. The results are based on 21 semi-structured interviews and reveals that actors on digital platforms can face five types of challenges that hinder a successful collaboration: disadvantages of dependency, uncertainty regarding data management, varying customer needs, insufficient work methods, and unsuitable payment models. The analysis also reveals four strategies that can be used to address the challenges: transparency strategy, incentive model strategy, servitization strategy, and control strategy. Moreover, these findings are summarized in a contingency framework that explains which types of challenges that can be addressed with which strategies based on the specific prerequisites of each collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid development of information technologies, shared manufacturing is proposed to meet the prevailing tendency of servitization and digitalisation in the industry. As the crucial section for performing shared manufacturing, resource monitoring and maintenance aim to detect production exceptions and ensure normal task execution. Existing research mainly uses a resource-centric strategy to acquire production-related data and make decisions for the management of shared resources. The experience data from the users/customers of the shared resources or its similar resources is rarely acquired actively in a cost-effective manner. However, the user/customer's experience data may contain essential knowledge that can be used for effective production performance identification and maintenance. To fill this gap, a hybrid sensing-based approach is proposed to perform the monitoring and maintenance of the shared manufacturing resources. It leverages both the sensor-sensed production data and user/customer-generated data for value creation in a cost-effective manner. Based on the acquired hybrid data, a service model is constructed to achieve the monitoring of the shared manufacturing resource, and a knowledge-based mechanism is designed to perform efficient maintenance. A case study is further presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital servitisation has emerged as an important strategy to enhance industrial companies' competitiveness. Leveraging the IIoT (industrial internet of thing) platform is considered an essential way to facilitate digital servitisation. Selecting an appropriate IIoT platform from numerous alternatives in the market is a difficult task for the firms due to lack of deep understanding of the required IIoT platform capabilities for deploying industrial service. To help firms make wise decision, we propose a feasible multi-criteria decision making framework for IIoT platform selection. Firstly, a practice-oriented technical-managerial-service criteria system is derived from typical platform leverage logics for digital servitisation. Next, an integrative approach combining cloud hierarchical BWM (best-worst method) and cloud TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) is proposed for selecting the best IIoT platform. Using this approach, the criteria weights and the ranking of potential platforms can be accurately determined by considering the fuzziness and randomness of linguistic decision information. Finally, a case study of a Chinese crane manufacturer illustrates the feasibility and reliability of the proposed framework. The analysis results can help the managers find the best IIoT platform and provide them with deep insight and direction for leveraging the IIoT platform towards digital servitisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The complexity of composite grinding movement, the variety of machining features and available grinding wheels, and the changing working conditions pose a challenge to the rapid programming of safe and efficient composite grinding procedure. The procedure optimisation plays an important role in solving this difficult problem. Therefore, a procedure optimisation method is proposed for composite grinding based on a Digital Twin (DT) system, which takes procedure time as optimisation objective to achieve high efficiency and ensures process rationality and safety by constructing corresponding constraint conditions. Moreover, the actual working conditions mapped into the DT system, such as workpiece parameters, machining requirements, grinding wheel parameters and status, machine tool motion position, and so on, are obtained to update the parameters involved in the optimisation model. And thus, the proposed method has the ability to timely find the optimal procedure under changing working conditions. In addition, a combination algorithm based on genetic algorithm (GA) and dynamic programming is proposed, which greatly reduces the search space of GA and realises the two-class co-optimisation of grinding wheel selection and procedure. Finally, the case study verifies the effectiveness of the proposed method to reduce procedure time and the dynamic response ability to changing working conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to identify and analyse factors that determine the implementation of Information and Digital Technologies (IDT) of smart manufacturing. By performing a state-of-the-art and content-driven review of literature, consulting a group of experts from academia and industry, and implementing interpretive structural modelling methodology, the study identified eleven enabling factors and mapped the contextual interrelationships among them. The study further explained the complex precedence relationships that exist among determinants of smart manufacturing IDT adoption. Results showed that perceived benefits and management support are the two driver determinants that act as stepping-stones in the implementation of smart manufacturing IDT. Operations technology maturity and cybersecurity maturity were found to be the dependent determinants of smart manufacturing IDT implementation and highly driven by the linkage and driver determinates. The findings are expected to assist academicians, industrialists, and the policymakers with achieving a detailed understanding of smart manufacturing transformation processes, and conditions that facilitate the manufacturing digitalisation in the Industry 4.0 era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]