A strategic outlook on Manufacturing-as-a-Service (MaaS) Platforms: differences and inspi-rations from traditional platforms ecosystems

Digital platforms represent one of the pillars of the modern economy and they have been widely discussed in the literature. We can observe a certain consolidation in approaches to create a platform and manage different sides of a platform in order to succeed. Recently, after a long process of conceptualization, this kind of platforms is also appearing in the manufacturing sector: we are approaching Cloud Manufacturing (CM) platforms where resources (e.g. capabilities of designing, simulating, manufacturing) are virtualized and made available on-demand to users, as it happens in Cloud Computing (CC), where Users are focused on the flexibility of the service requested. Manufacturing-as-a-Service (MaaS) platforms are a subset of CM platforms where users ask for manufacturing services (e.g. mechanical parts). On one hand, MaaS model is interesting for its idea of reduced lead times, increased flexibility (“on-demand manufacturing”). On the other, this model attracts the attention of many people as it is based on a platform architecture. In the future manufacturing context, the largest company in the world could produce without any production facilities, nor any logistic assets (as it happens in other context, e.g. Uber in “mobility”, Airbnb in “accommodation”). Surprisingly, to the best of authors knowledge, there is a consistent gap in the research between these two domains. In this conceptual paper the authors review the literature on domains of “MaaS” and “Platforms” and identify some interesting questions for future joint research. MaaS platforms deserve specific research as they are very peculiar from “traditional” digital companies (e.g. they deal with physical products). Although they are inspired by the model of traditional digital platforms and supported by new technologies available today, they struggle to take off. Several arguments are shown from the analysis of the literature and other insights can come from future cross-domain studies.