Understanding the Barriers That Slow Firms Shifting from Products to Services

This chapter provides an introduction to “servitization” and, in particular, why manufacturing firms are moving into services and how the transition has been slowed. The first section provides an overview of how this book works. It then moves on to introduce product-service systems and the rationale for servitization from the perspective of a manufacturing firm. This is then examined from different perspectives and uses the product lifecycle as an anchor. It moves on to describe the journey into services and then a complex system that often exists within industrial product-service systems. Finally, the seven barriers are explored before providing additional reading.

Surface Defect Detection Methods for Industrial Products: A Review

The comprehensive intelligent development of the manufacturing industry puts forward new requirements for the quality inspection of industrial products. This paper summarizes the current research status of machine learning methods in surface defect detection, a key part in the quality inspection of industrial products. First, according to the use of surface features, the application of traditional machine vision surface defect detection methods in industrial product surface defect detection is summarized from three aspects: texture features, color features, and shape features. Secondly, the research status of industrial product surface defect detection based on deep learning technology in recent years is discussed from three aspects: supervised method, unsupervised method, and weak supervised method. Then, the common key problems and their solutions in industrial surface defect detection are systematically summarized; the key problems include real-time problem, small sample problem, small target problem, unbalanced sample problem. Lastly, the commonly used datasets of industrial surface defects in recent years are more comprehensively summarized, and the latest research methods on the MVTec AD dataset are compared, so as to provide some reference for the further research and development of industrial surface defect detection technology.

Innovative Energy-Recovery Unit for the LED-Lighting System of Heavy-Duty Vehicles

In this work, the development of an energy recovery control unit to be incorporated in the light-emitting diodes (LEDs) lighting systems of heavy-duty vehicles is presented. This innovative industrial product adopts modern power electronics technology to improve existing trucks’ LED lighting system by eliminating the so far inevitable power consumption by the conventional central control unit of the majority of these vehicles, which is obligatory for the uninterruptable operation of their lighting system. The main idea of this innovative product is its capability to virtually increase the lighting system power consumption without actually consuming this amount of energy, thus facilitating the central control unit requirements regarding these vehicles in an energy-conscious way. Under this light, a mature power converter’s topology is employed to draw the proper amounts of power from the vehicle’s batteries supply, to the level that the central control unit recognizes, and return this energy back to the batteries. The tests results of the developed industrial product highlight the energy saving potential of the proposed energy recovery scheme, while the Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA) results confirm its techno-economical and environmental profit for the truck applications under study.

Integration of the buyer–supplier interface for Global sourcing

While global sourcing often implies that the firm needs to, for example, redesign the procurement organization and make decisions on what to centralize and what to manage locally, global sourcing also has direct implications for management of the buyer–supplier interface. This study takes an organization design focus and addresses global sourcing organization design as well as provides illustrations on how to integrate the buyer–supplier interface for global sourcing. Integration is conceptualized as coordination and cooperation. The paper is based on an embedded unit case study of a global technical industrial product and service systems provider, TechInd (pseudonym). Data was collected from TechInd as well as from six of its suppliers. The findings indicate that the global sourcing organization structure, as well as the differences in the buyer’s sourcing and supplier’s sales organizations, pose requirements for management of the interface in terms of coordination and cooperation. Challenges arising particularly due to differences in geographical scope and level of centralization can be managed by introducing the key account role and alignment of incentives.