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The increasing demand for market‐oriented production leads to shorter product life‐cycles, growing product variety and, therefore, changing lot sizes. These critical lot sizes vary greatly in number. Because of this, the question of whether or not to prioritize fully automated or manual assembly arises. The intention to meet the requirements of a turbulent market leads to hybrid assembly systems in which automated and manual assembly stations operate together flexibly. This hybrid system, supported by modular structures with defined interfaces and process software, allows a fast reaction to any change in products, variants and lot sizes. Owing to the difficulty in accessing materials, traditional assembly systems have a high contingent of non‐value adding procedures. By collecting materials in advance within one main area and distributing them to the work stations simultaneously for the production of a good, a minimized quantity of material is present on the assembly line, thus making the process more efficient.

Trade construction contractors (TCC) (domestic or nominated subcontractors) are key stakeholders engaged by the main contractors in construction activities. Social media platforms may be germane in promoting small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) such as TCC. Studies regarding the role of social media platforms in TCC success are scarce in Nigeria. Therefore, the research investigates trade construction contractors’ success in leveraging social media platforms and the usage’s encumbrances.

This study adopted a qualitative research design using a virtual interview method to solicit data from 26 experts. A purposive sampling technique was utilised to engage selected participants in Lagos and Abuja, Nigeria. This study achieved saturation from the collected data, and a thematic analysis was adopted to analyse the data.

Findings show that embracing social media platforms by TCC practitioners will improve productivity and profitability. Also, findings reveal that financial constraints, high operation and implementation costs, lack of awareness, hesitation to adopt, unclear benefits, reluctance to deploy a new system and network issues are hindrances faced by trade construction contractors using social media platforms in Nigeria. The study suggested measures to mitigate these hindrances.

The findings stir new insights for TCC practitioners to embrace social media platforms better to reap their full benefits. The outcome would lead to TCC firms’ productivity and profitability.

As an emerging socio-technical paradigm, high-speed railways profoundly change individuals' lifestyle and allow for the shift toward a green transportation. Digital technologies open an opportunity window for the development of enterprises. This study aims to clarify the impact of firm digitalization on the innovation efficiency of the Chinese high-speed rail industry. In addition, human capital is the important non-physical capital of enterprises. The authors also elucidate the moderating role of human capital on the above relationship.

Based on the data of Chinese high-speed railway listed companies from 2015 to 2021, this study explores the impact of digital transformation on the innovation efficiency, and further clarifies the boundary role of human capital with two-way fixed effect regression models.

The empirical results indicate that digital transformation has a positive impact on the innovation efficiency of the Chinese high-speed railway enterprises. Furthermore, human capital significantly enhances the above relationship. In addition, digital transformation fosters the innovation efficiency of small- and medium-sized enterprises and private-owned enterprises, but the correlation coefficients between digital transformation and the innovation efficiency of large enterprises and state-owned enterprises are not significant.

This is one of the earliest studies to explore how digital technologies shape R&D activities. From the perspective of relative efficiency, this study evaluates the effectiveness of digital transformation and provides empirical evidence for the formulation and implementation of corporate digital strategies. Moreover, this study links human capital with digital transformation and identifies condition factors that affect the effectiveness of digital transformation, thereby supplementing existing knowledge.

In view of a lack of understanding of the consequences of performance‐based contracting (PBC), this paper aims to reveal deeper insights into the mechanisms inherent to PBC and explore which benefits and uncertainties may result for providers and customers.

Conducting a comprehensive literature review and drawing on insights from agency theory as a framework, the auhtors analyzed a broad range of academic publications on the benefits and uncertainties of PBC and developed testable propositions from the provider's and the customer's perspective.

With PBC, in comparison to the conventional selling and supporting of machinery or equipment, the manufacturers are more likely to acquire customers for highly innovative technologies, to increase their profit, and to improve customer loyalty. Manufacturers, however, have to deal with uncertain revenues and costs which affect their profit. The customers are more likely to receive increased performance at decreased costs. Concerning the performance, however, the customers enter into an uncertain relationship of dependence.

This is the first paper to analyze the benefits and uncertainties of PBC in manufacturing industries systematically from an agency theory perspective. The paper further develops extant research by outlining the mechanisms of PBC and relating the benefits and uncertainties that are scattered over a broad body of literature. The paper proposes several promising avenues for further research.

The relationship between corporate culture and inbound open innovation (OI) has been limited to two sub-constructs: a culture for openness and an innovation culture, but until now a richer conceptualization of corporate culture is missing.

The authors apply Quinn and Rohrbaugh's (1983) competing values framework and regress these together with company internal and external control variables on five measures of inbound OI, reflecting product innovation, process innovation and the sourcing of innovation activities. The authors use data from a survey of more than 250 Swiss companies, primarily SMEs.

The importance of the firms' market environments suggests that the results are affected by the specific situation in which the firms found themselves at the time of the survey: after a strong currency shock, inbound OI activities seem to be a reaction to external pressure that favored planning and rule-oriented (formal) cultures to implement cost-cutting process innovations.

Companies should develop a vision and a strategy, ensure open and transparent communication, have suitable reward and support mechanisms in place, adjust structures and processes, and institutionalize and formalize any change whenever they are confronted with a situation that requires a quick reaction and an adjustment to their degree of openness.

The paper clarifies the relationship between cultural traits and inbound OI, using a well-established understanding of corporate culture and differentiating between innovation types. It points to the importance of the external environment in order to understand the role of culture.

This paper aims to investigate the temperature and wear properties of vertical ball screws and to discuss the surface design of ball screws in industrial applications.

The energy equation of the screw surface considering the frictional heat was established to verify the surface temperature of the ball screw. X-ray diffraction was used to examine the micro-contact temperature between the ball and screw. Debris size and density were examined to investigate wear properties of ball screws and to study the relationship of wear debris and temperature.

First, the main energy source for the surface temperature of high speed vertical ball screws is derived from friction force between ball and screw. Second, the temperature rise between the ball and screw has great relevance with wear debris concentration. Third, the surface temperature of the screw is higher than between the nut and ball for high speed vertical ball screws due to high convection heat transfer. The contact temperature of the nut near the flange is smaller than that of the nut away from the flange end due to the high contact load and thermal conduction. Finally, correlation of particle size and surface roughness value for vertical ball screws was established, and its effects on contact temperature were studied. The theoretical analysis and experiments will help to characterize the design and manufacture of vertical ball screws.

The surface temperature and micro-contact temperature analytical model were established to study the ball screw design. Based on the surface-particle micro-contact temperature balance, the optimal range of surface roughness was designed for vertical ball screws, considering the wear debris and micro-contact temperature.

Although performance‐based contracting (PBC) is gaining importance in manufacturing industries, corresponding research is still in its infancy. In order to provide a basis for future research on this emerging topic, thus paper aims to propose a specific conceptual model.

Conducting a comprehensive literature review, 39 academic publications dealing with this topic in‐depth were analyzed. To structure the various approaches of PBC in manufacturing industries, existing preliminary conceptual models in the form of morphological boxes were built upon and developed further.

Focusing on manufacturing industries, the review reveals a comprehensive view on PBC, with three topics that are important to PBC but have been largely neglected in research: even though research considers PBC foremost regarding manufacturers, independent service providers can also offer PBC; closely related to ownership, financing constitutes an essential issue in PBC; and PBC may include maintenance as well as operation.

First, the paper systematizes existing literature and clarifies the concept of PBC in manufacturing industries. Second, it presents a specific conceptual model for analyzing this topic in more depth. Third, it reveals promising avenues for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to present competences that are highly relevant for manufacturing today and tomorrow. Following a discussion on the concept of “competence”, a variety of competences are presented and classified into the four facets professional, methodological, social, and self-competence.

Using an exploratory method, the paper aims at describing relevant manufacturing-related competences with the help of an online survey. Experts, mostly from the production management or HR departments of manufacturing companies in Germany, were polled and asked to evaluate the relevancy of a list of competences for manufacturing.

For the experts, flawless execution and quality awareness are competences with a very high relevance, whereas analytical abilities have very little meaning. The experts questioned expect openness to change to undergo the strongest increase in importance.

This paper shows competences particularly relevant for future production, so that companies can derive specific competence development measures. The findings are descriptive only, but should enable companies to identify specific competence gaps and to select measures to develop competences.

This paper attempts to bridge the gap between academics and practice by outlining relevant manufacturing competences that have been evaluated by managers. This is in contrast to most scientific research that classifies manufacturing-related competences as important based on own assessment.

This study aims to explore the impact of blockchain announcements on enterprises' stock market value.

Based on resource-based theory, this study constructs a complete framework of the impact mechanism of blockchain announcements on the stock price of the announcing firm using the data of 143 blockchain announcements. An event study methodology is used in this research, and the market model, market-adjusted model and Carhart four-factor model are used to estimate stock abnormal returns after the blockchain announcement; and the cross-sectional regression model is used to test the influencing factors.

Blockchain announcements elicit a significantly positive market reaction on the release day. Compared to announcements not pertaining to technical innovation, blockchain technical innovation announcements exhibit a more positive market reaction towards the announcing companies. Strategic-level announcements exhibit a more positive market reaction than operational-level announcements. Enterprise characteristics, such as enterprise-scale and enterprise innovation ability, do not affect stock market reactions to blockchain announcements.

The findings reveal the economic value of conducting blockchain activities in the Chinese stock market. Findings of this study can help managers understand the value of implementing blockchain activities in a different market environment and guide them on how to improve the market value of their enterprises through the active implementation of blockchain activities.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first event study to focus solely on the value of pure blockchain announcements in an emerging market. This study considers multiple resource and capability factors that would influence blockchain technology adoption, improve the current understanding of how blockchain announcements affect corporate stock prices and provide directions for future comparative studies of market reactions to blockchain announcements in different stock markets.