Open Manufacturing: Impacts of Resource Based View and Servitisation

The environment of manufacturing has faced significant changes in the past decade. Meanwhile, the traditional focus of manufacturing strategy is also impacted by resource-based view and servitisation. Thus, no matter from a practical or theoretical perspective, it is time to rethink what kind of view we can have on manufacturing. In this paper, the literature is reviewed firstly to track the evolution of theories on manufacturing strategy and to investigate new views on manufacturing from a theoretical perspective. This is followed by three case studies, which are used to explore how manufacturing is used from a practical perspective. The usages of manufacturing are classified into three groups and their relationships are discussed further. Based on these findings and inspired by open source software (OSS) and open innovation, a new paradigm on manufacturing termed as “open manufacturing” is proposed in the combination of new views on manufacturing both from theoretical and practical perspective.