Extended guest editorial: Smart product platforming in the industry 4.0 era and beyond

Abstract

Since 1990s, product platforming has been extensively pursued in many industries to design and offer personalized products and services tailored for specific needs. The recent emergence of advanced technologies extends platforming to both integrate different units within a firm and connect different firms in the entire chain of value creation. The resulting process and activity expansion creates new opportunities and challenges in fulfilling personalized requirements based on smart platforms. We launched the special issue: Smart product platforming in the Industry 4.0 era to collect promising research and developments in this topic. The aim of this extended editorial is threefold: 1) introducing the context of the special issue, 2) presenting collected papers, and 3) offering our reflections and future research perspectives on the topic. In presenting the collected papers, we transversally classify them from different lenses, including product lifecycle stages, methodologies, and performance indicators. Based on these papers, we highlight our reflections and point out future perspectives, in hope of inspiring more research in the domain.