Readiness for Supply Chain Collaboration and Supplier Integration—Findings from the Chinese Automotive Industry

A B2B Team Formation Microservice for Collaborative Manufacturing in Industry 4.0

“…Guided by the research questions, we found that collaborative networks underpinning Industry 4.0 principles are envisioned to benefit from ICTs supporting an "instant" connection of geographically distant organisations, speeding-up the "get-to-know" process as well as promoting innovation and agile collaborations, and opening new markets and business opportunities reducing effort and risk-related costs [6]. To successfully implement this vision, organisations face a lack of adequate support from technologies to automate supply chain processes (See [7]), which is particularly challenging for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) [2], [8]. This vision was also confirmed based on data collected from the General Manager and the Technical Director of an automotive cluster (semistructured interviews), and five manufacturing suppliers who are also members of an aviation association (focus group).…”

An approach and decision support tool for forming Industry 4.0 supply chain collaborations

“…There is a growing body of literature recognising the vital role of enterprise collaborations in manufacturing supply chains [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] where autonomous organisations combine capabilities and pool manufacturing capacities. In practice, traditional approaches for organisations to come together include face-to-face networking, peer referencing, and reliance on companies known from past collaborations [8].…”

“…Traditional approaches are time and cost consuming, often lack agility, and support a collaboration model where organisations outside the mainstream networks are often excluded from tender participation [1,8,9].…”