Tobias Redlich

Open production: scientific foundation for co-creative product realization

Globalization and the use of technology call for an adaptation of value creation strategies. As the potential for rationalization and achieving flexibility within companies is to the greatest possible extent exhausted, approaches to the corporate reorganization of value creation are becoming increasingly important. In this process, the spread and further development of information and communication technology often provide the basis for a reorganization of cross-company value nets and lead to a redistribution of roles and tasks between the actors involved in value creation. While cooperative, decentralized and self-organizing value creation processes are in fact being promoted, the associated potential for development and production engineering is being underestimated and hence not implemented sufficiently. This contribution will introduce a value creation taxonomy and then, using its notion and structure, describe the emerging transformations in value creation on the basis of case studies. Finally an adequate framework for analysing and configuring value creation will be presented.

Square Foot Manufacturing: a new production concept for micro manufacturing

Today a large number of microstructures are already employed as separate components or as constituents of larger modules in a broad spectrum of production in medical technology, optics, biotechnology, mechatronics, fluidics, (micro)-forming and tool construction. Current research activities are directed towards the downscaling of manufacturing procedures or the formation of complex process chains for the manufacture of micro workpieces. The Square Foot Manufacturing concept represents one approach aimed at achieving significant technical, economic and ecological developments in the production of microstructures by means of machining techniques that can be applied to a spectrum of materials as broad as possible. This fabrication concept representing a refinement of existing desktop manufacturing concepts is currently being developed at the Institute of Production Engineering of Helmut-Schmidt-University/University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg. This paper is intended to provide an overview of the theoretical concept and the current state of its technical implementation.

Bottom-up Economics. Foundations of a Theory of Distributed and Open Value Creation

In many industries, we can observe a paradigm shift from traditional value creation towards value co-creation and open production approaches. The boundaries of companies dissolve and many more stakeholders (suppliers, customers, users, community members etc.) are integrated into the value creation process. Thus, a new understanding and taxonomy of value creation becomes necessary to serve as a reference model in order to describe new phenomena based on the principles of so-called Bottom-up Economics. In an industrial context, openness as a precondition for participation, cooperation and interaction can be seen as a critical success factor. The need for a theory of a distributed and open value creation will be revealed by integrating case observations and conceptual insights from literature that are concerned with co-creation phenomena from a Production Engineering point of view.

Value creation in open-source hardware communities: Case study of Open Source Ecology

Technical progress in production technology, the advancement and spread of information and communication technologies (ICT) as well as the spill-over of the highly efficient and innovative open source principles to the world of physical products represent a new set of tools and concepts to address the challenges of sustainable economic development. Correspondingly, we can observe (new) modes of value creation that put into question traditional economic strategies and assumptions by stressing collaboration instead of competition and knowledge sharing instead of black box engineering. Open Source Ecology (OSE) is a famous example of a nonprofit organization which fosters worldwide participation and collaboration to jointly develop open source hardware for operation in both developing and industrialized countries. Based on the concepts open source appropriate technology (OSAT), the community aims at the free access to the knowledge and knowhow of low-cost and easy-to-build products to empower people to build and run a civilization. This case study describes and analyzes the value creation processes of OSE and derives new opportunities for business models based on openness.

Facing the conflict of transparency and non-disclosure of knowledge within value creation networks

Collaboration of autonomous and specialized actors in value networks makes special demands on the joint use of knowledge resources. On the one hand, the actors wants to protect their competitive knowledge during the cooperation within the network. On the other hand, the distribution of knowledge must be ensured within the network in develop potentials for value co- creation. Based on a description model for an interconnected and open value creation this article discusses the conflict of objectives between the protection of knowledge and the availability of knowledge within a value creation network. Furthermore, a concept for inter-organizational cooperation is introduced which fosters the depth of cooperation and interaction between the actors within the network establishing save spaces for knowledge exchange and a common development of knowledge.

Open Production: A New Broker-Based Approach to Interactive Value Creation and User Manufacturing

Business strategies and organization are subject to a permanent adjustment due to the discontinuity of the markets. Mass production, in particular, and a focus on tayloristic principles, in general, no longer seem to be the right choice within this context. Rather, the increasing importance of customization and the transition to an information-based economy leads to the question whether the currently enshrined distinction between producer and consumer is still appropriate. The authors of this paper assume that the key to dealing with complex economic turbulences can be found in the implementation of a new form of coordination, in which the strict separation between producer and consumer is repealed. That requires changeability at all levels of production systems as it is inherent to the approach of “Open Production” that will be introduced with this paper. While Open Production encompasses recent concepts like “Open Innovation”, “Mass Customization”, and “e-Manufacturing”, the three “pillars” of Open Production are openness, individualization and web integration. Additionally it implies a superior broker system that coordinates the information and material flows between the stakeholders of open production. This represents a completely new, but profoundly changeable form of coordination integrating the customers into production directly, where as the previously static separation into a customer and a corporate domain and the division of labor and competence is dissolved.Copyright

Tesla Motors, Inc.: Pioneer towards a new strategic approach in the automobile industry along the open source movement?

In many industries, we observe a paradigm shift from traditional value creation towards co-creation and open production approaches. The boundaries of companies dissolve and many more players (suppliers, customers, community members, etc.) are integrated into the value creation process. This also implies the share of knowledge to set industry-wide standards and to advance new technologies. Tesla Motors, Inc. recently announced that it would give away all their patents to anyone who in good faith wants to use them. They say their aim was to foster the advancement of electric vehicles to compete with conventional vehicles and give the zero-emission mobility a push. Nevertheless, what about the traditional automobile industry with its big players where even the slightest growth in market share is crucial and the intellectual property (IP) of a company is kept secret like the Holy Grail as it ensures competitive advantages? Based on a Tesla case study our research focusses on product-, company-, market- and industry-specific factors that might enable even small players to start an industry-wide revolution by applying strategic aspects of openness in their business model.

Neue Kooperationsmuster in Entwicklung und Produktion: Open Production

Kurzfassung Die augenblickliche wirtschaftliche Entwicklung belegt die Schwächen von ausschließlich auf Wachstum ausgelegten Unternehmensstrategien. Gleichzeitig zeichnet sich ein fundamentaler Wandel von Wertschöpfungsprozessen ab. Wertschöpfung findet nicht mehr nur innerhalb abgeschlossener Unternehmensgrenzen statt, sondern lässt sich zunehmend auch außerhalb davon, zum Beispiel innerhalb der Kundendomäne beobachten. Die deutsche Industrie ist daher reif für einen tief greifenden Paradigmenwechsel hinsichtlich der Gestaltung von Entwicklungs- und Produktionsprozessen, bei dem „Offenheit“ und „Veränderungsfähigkeit“ das Fundament einer neu zu schaffenden Wertschöpfungssystematik bilden. Im Fokus dieses Beitrags steht „Offenheit“ als ein Wesensmerkmal von Open Production, das einen ersten Ansatz zur Konstitution dieser Wertschöpfungssystematik darstellt.

Square Foot Manufacturing: Event-Driven Manufacturing by Means of Multifunctional Work Spaces

This paper presents Square Foot Manufacturing (SFM) as new approach to realize changeability in the manufacturing process. SFM encompasses a down scaled manufacturing plant for machining small parts; it has reconfigurable structure and holds micro machining units (MMU) that are reduced in function and flexible in adjustment. Because they are sufficiently small it is easy to move these machine tools between individual operation steps and it is feasible to use more than one of them simultaneously machining one work piece.Copyright

Mitarbeiterqualifikation in der Smart Factory

Kurzfassung Mit Blick auf Industrie 4.0 ändert sich in produzierenden Unternehmen das Tätigkeitsspektrum der Belegschaft und erfordert somit neue Kompetenzprofile der Mitarbeiter. Diesem Wandel muss mit adäquater Mitarbeiterqualifizierung begegnet werden. Im vorliegenden Beitrag wird der Qualifizierungsbedarf ausgehend von den neuartigen Geschäftsmodellen einer Smart Factory analysiert. Zu diesem Zweck werden Lenkungsfaktoren einer Smart Factory identifiziert, die zur Gestaltung der Mitarbeiterqualifikation beitragen.