In-/tangible assets as a service in manufacturing service ecosystems

To compete in dynamic, globalized markets manufacturers shift from product-centric to service-oriented engineering paradigms and join forces in Manufacturing Service Ecosystems. They combine technological competences, knowledge about materials, as well as production capabilities in order to offer innovative product-services to existing or emerging markets. Even though best practices as well as scientific reports proof huge advances in concurrent engineering and collaborative innovation, recent studies show economic necessity for increasing effectiveness and efficiency of managing in-/tangible assets in manufacturing ecosystems. By taking advantage of formal semantics, the virtualization method outlined in this paper allows for transforming real-world in-/tangible assets into In-/Tangible Assets as a Service. Evaluation within four industrial use cases demonstrates that In-/Tangible Assets as a Service significantly facilitate identification, communication, and finally composition of in-/tangible assets in Manufacturing Service Ecosystem and thus empower its members to deploy highly innovative product-services to the market.