The digitalization of operations and supply chain management: Theoretical and methodological implications

• Author: Benn Lawson,Jan Holmström,Matthias Holweg,Frits K. Pil,Stephan M. Wagner
• Date: 01 December 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/joom.1073
• Published date: 01 December 2019

EDITORIAL

The digitalization of operations and supply chain

management: Theoretical and methodological implications

Abstract

The digitalization of intra- and inter-organizational pro-

cesses offers significant opportunity for research in the

field of operations and supply chain management

(OSCM). This essay summarizes the contributions of the

special issue articles, highlighting their focus on additive

manufacturing and the encapsulation of design and pro-

duction information in a digital artifact. We conceptualize

the digital artifact as containing the digital genes of the

associated physical object. Digital encapsulation thus

involves the integration of product design information

with additional information on how that design is to be

translated into a physical object, delivered to the cus-

tomer, and used. Building on insights from the special

issue articles, we identify three pathways by which digital

encapsulation affects OSCM practice, as well as theory

elaboration and extension. First, digital encapsulation

allows each unique digitally encapsulated artifact to be

acted on independently by OSCM systems. Second, digital

encapsulation enables the redistribution of activities

across organizational and geographic landscapes. Third,

digital encapsulation facilitates interactivity of the digital

artifact with external environment inputs. We conclude

with a number of directions for future research.

KEYWORDS

digitalization, encapsulation, object orientation, operations and supply

chain management theory

1|INTRODUCTION

The diffusion of digital technologies can manifest as digi-

tization (the straightforward replacement of discrete

processes or tools with digital analogues) or digitalization

(the use of digital information to fundamentally revisit

intra and inter-organizational decision-making, pro-

cesses, and architectures). In our special-issue call, we

invited articles that addressed digitalization, and pres-

ented a number of potential avenues for contribution to

operations and supply chain management (OSCM) the-

ory. We outline the findings from the articles and provide

a theoretical perspective on how they serve as a stepping-

stone for future research in the OSCM field by situating

them in a landscape of merging physical and digital oper-

ational environments.

Three research articles and two technical notes com-

prise the special issue and collectively focus on one spe-

cific digital technology: additive manufacturing (AM).

Friesike, Flath, Wirth, and Thiesse (2019) investigate the

emerging practice of design remixing in AM, exploring

how a more fluid boundary between product design and

manufacturing processes shifts economies of scale from

manufacturing to design. Hedenstierna et al. (2019) pro-

pose a novel mode of operation for additive manufactur-

ing that facilitates capacity pooling in a network of

general-purpose manufacturers. Roscoe, Cousins, and

Handfield (2019) address the challenges of aligning pro-

cess and organizational architectures as AM capabilities

are developed at an aerospace company. Baumers and

Holweg (2019) use a series of experiments to investigate

the role of scale in AM, while Heinen and Hoberg (2019)

explore opportunities created by the digitalization of

spare parts and its implications for inventory manage-

ment and after-sales operations.

In the next section, we discuss the contributions of

the special issue articles and elaborate on the common

theme that emerges: the digital merger of product

design and production-process information. This merger

exemplifies broader shifts for OSCM enabled by digitali-

zation. We conclude with a discussion of the implica-

tions of digitalization for OSCM theory and methods

development.

The copyright line for this article was changed on 16 December 2019

after original online publication.

Received: 11 November 2019 Accepted: 11 November 2019

DOI: 10.1002/joom.1073

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any

medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

© 2019 The Authors. Journal of Operations Management published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of The Association for Supply Chain Management, Inc.

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