The concept of “open innovation,” as a development approach in innovation, may also be seen to have an analogue in production, and it has been suggested in our previous research (Lager et al., 2015) to define the concept of “open production” as:
The extension of company production activities across formal organizational borders and a collaboration with external suppliers of production resources, technology or equipment.
Open innovation in this context is about integrating a customer or supplier into the process company’s innovation process – or, from the other collaborative partner’s perspective, integrating the process company into the supplier’s or customer’s innovation process. In a similar vein, open production in this context is about integrating a customer or supplier into the process company’s production process – or, from the other collaborative partner’s perspective, integrating the process company into the supplier’s or customer’s production process. From an “open innovation” perspective, supply chain integration is already common. However, advanced collaborative production is still in its infancy and appears to be an interesting avenue for further company exploration and exploitation.
”We can expect that the process-industrial supply/value chains
and related business models will, in the future, be in a constant flux”