Autor: Steffen Kinkel

An essential component of digital value creation is the innovation of digitally networked business models. By networking different actors and service bundles, new customer value can be created. However, this networking leads to increased complexity, which makes it difficult for tradition- al industrial companies in particular to exploit these opportunities in a meaningful way. For this reason, a system is presented that reduces com- plexity through modelling and makes it possible to compare the effort and benefits of business model ideas at an early stage.

Collaborative robots (so-called cobots) enable human-robot collaboration without security fences and are regarded as a promising future technology for manufacturing companies. However, actual market penetration has fallen behind estimations in recent years. A lack of market transparency makes it difficult to identify current barriers, development trends and the potential of cobots in practice. Will this technology become a game-changer or turn out to be a mere hype topic without significant impact on production practice? In this article, we present findings from an empirical market analysis based on secondary data and qualitative interviews with German market experts from business and academia.

In the German manufacturing industry, there is actually one backshoring company on every three offshoring companies. The most important reasons for backshoring are losses in flexibility and delivery capability as well as quality problems. Results of a large firm-level survey in the German manufacturing industry show a clear, positive correlation between the use of technologies for the digital integration of production processes (Industry 4.0) and the backshoring propensity of German companies. This paves the way for local value chains in close proximity to important customers.

More than a fourth of German companies regard flexibility as their main competitive edge. Companies set great store by delivering customized solutions to the customer or to be able to deliver swiftly and on time. Thus the diffusion of organisational concepts which are suited to support adaptability of companies and to realise flexibility advan-tages is increasingly getting into the focus of attention. However, German industry has not yet fully exploited the potential these enablers might have on companies’ flexibility. The development of customized organisational concepts for improving the flexibility might help to further increase companies’ competitive edge.

One quarter to half of the manufacturing companies in different Western European countries performed offshoring of production activities in 2002 or 2003 - with Germany not ranking in the top positions. In Eastern Europe production offshoring is rather uncommon. Attempts to reduce the costs of production factors are still the dominating motive, but factors such as market opening, vicinity to key customers or securing the ability to supply locally are important, too. However, production offshoring is not necessarily an irreversible one-way process. Varying from country to country, every second to sixth offshoring company is countered by a backsourcing company.

Today, innovations are perceived as the crucial factor for economic growth and employment. Companies investing heavily into research and development for technologically innovative products seem to have a competitive edge. This finding is empirically proved. However, further promising innovation strategies do exist. Based on a survey of 1450 companies of the manufacturing sector this article shows that also companies focussing on intelligent product service combinations or innovative techno-organisational processes outperform their competitors as regards employment growth.