Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Publication
    SmartProducts Deliverable D7.2.1: Qualitative and Quantitative Business Case Analysis Model
    (-, 2010) ;
    Volland, Dirk
    ;
    Tokmakoff, Andrew
    ;
    Mascolo, Julien Etienne
    ;
    Golenzer, Jerome
  • Publication
    SmartProducts Deliverable D7.1.1: Report on the State-of-the-Art of Smart Products in Management Research
    (-, 2009) ;
    Ridinger, Holger
    Public Deliverable - Work package 7 complements the technical work packages of the SmartProducts project. It covers the socio-economic and managerial aspects of Smart Products. Its main purpose is to analyze the business potential of Smart Products and to investigate the main factors which are important for later market success. Finally, the ultimate goal is to provide a generic assess-ment framework that can be applied to different kinds of Smart Product applications and im-plementations for analyzing their business potentials and support investment decisions, taking into account privacy, legislatory and risk communication aspects. In the project, we specifically look into three pilot applications: Philips' Smart Kitchen scenario, Fiat's Smart Vehicle scenario and EADS' Aircraft Manufacturing scenario. Business research into these pilots promises to deliver representative results as the pilots taken together cover product and process innovations, internal users and end users, and all phases of the product life cycle. For each pilot, we will conduct in-depth business case analyses including estimates for poten-tial revenue increases, cost reductions, and the necessary investments so that we will finally be able to provide a statement on the expected return on investment (ROI). A convincing ROI at acceptable risks is fundamental to persuade companies to invest into Smart Products. Further, positive user acceptance is usually crucial for quick adoption by users. Therefore, we will supplement our business case analyses by user acceptance studies, which will allow con-clusions particularly about how to design Smart Products in an appealing way. This first deliverable is the bedrock for our subsequent analysis. Our work presented here consists of three pillars: first, we present an in-depth review of academic business and man-agement literature to document the research state-of-the-art; second, we evaluate analyst reports to document how Smart Products are perceived by the market today and how market development is forecasted; third, we discuss the results from the expert interviews we con-ducted with representatives from inside and outside the consortium to find out about how Smart Products are perceived from an application-oriented view, to get insights into ongoing research activities that are not published so far, and to broaden our view with respect to other industries, other technologies and other perceptions of Smart Products as a whole. The literature review has shown that - from a business perspective - Smart Products is a very fragmented topic, which crosses several research disciplines. Only little literature is available that addresses Smart Products as such. Most of the work covers only some aspects of Smart Products, either from a technology perspective (e.g. RFID), or from an application perspective (e.g. virtual product models). The same holds true for analyst reports. The more concrete they are, the closer they are focused on a specific technology, mostly RFID. Nevertheless, they commonly predict prosperous market developments for some Smart Product technologies and concepts. The expert interviews have shown that the way how value is created and turned into business benefits differs very much between the three different pilots: The Smart Kitchen scenario aims at developing a product innovation that is oriented towards the consumer. So the critical success factor is an enhanced user experience at moderate ad-ditional costs. Consequently, the business case analysis for this scenario will focus on user perception and production costs. The Smart Vehicle scenario intends to develop two different scenarios, one targeting at a cus-tomer-centric product innovation, the other one targeting at a process innovation that focuses on internal optimizations through improved spare parts management. As business benefits from the process innovation are expected to be much higher, further WP7 analyses will con-centrate on the spare parts management scenario. In the Aircraft Manufacturing scenario, Smart Products will be applied to realize internal process optimizations. Business benefits are expected from reducing manufacturing time and cost. In this scenario, our future WP7 work will provide a quantitative assessment of process improvements that can be achieved by deploying SmartProducts concepts. Taken together, the results of WP7 will help to close a significant gap in business research on Smart Products and related concepts. Most of the existing work has a technical focus. So far, no comprehensive business case study is available that analyses the business potential of Smart Product concepts. Our work will provide in-depth investigations of three very different Smart Products implementations. It will demonstrate whether and how business benefits can be reaped, and how Smart Products should be designed such that users are likely to adopt this change in consumer products, industrial equipment, and business processes.
  • Publication
    SmartProducts Deliverable D11.1.1: Market and Competition Analysis
    (-, 2010) ;
    Tokmakoff, Andrew
    ;
    Zhou, Xiaoming
    ;
    Mascolo, Julien Etienne
    ;
    Galgani, D.
    ;
    Capano, P.
    ;
    Golenzer, Jerome
    Confidential Deliverable - It is the objective of this document to conduct a market and competition analysis for the competitive environment, in which SmartProduct results may be exploited. This document shall provide a sound baseline for the development of individual and joint exploitation strategies that will be developed in the course of the SmartProducts project.