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The purpose of this paper is to explore case studies of business models (BMs) driven by supply chain innovations (SCIs) in order to investigate how SCIs can lead companies to discover new BMs.

This research is based on an in-depth literature analysis. Literature supports that SCIs drive new BMs. An exploratory interview-based study with practitioners from German and Italian companies shed more light on the ways SCIs can contribute to the discovery of new BMs.

So-called operators can establish close links between SCIs and BM innovation. Because in general, supply chains are designed to improve operational performance, most BM improvements are incremental. Large companies, however, can leverage SCIs to generate new BMs that are complementary to their current BMs.

This research is exploratory in nature. Further (quantitative) research studies can link SCIs types to specific BM patterns and examine contingency factors such as size and industry sector that influence the relationship between SCIs and BMs.

This research draws the attention of practitioners to SCIs as a valuable opportunity to discover new BMs. The operators enable companies to estimate the effects of specific SCIs on their BMs and to identify the SCIs required for achieving a targeted BM.

This paper elaborates propositions about the relationships between SCIs and BMs. It identifies supply chain and process management as important streams of literature that can support the advancement of BM research.

In today’s dynamic environment with shortened product life cycles, phase-outs because of product elimination are becoming increasingly frequent. Research on the phase-out process is still scarce. The lack of formalization of the process, especially from the labor perspective, leads to disturbances in phase-out execution. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to analyze how phase-out is organized in industry to derive a generic labor phase-out process.

This research identifies manufacturing firms that have eliminated products in the past as an adequate sample. Data collection relies on exploratory cross-industry after-the-fact interviews of entirely finished replacement and closure phase-outs.

The labor phase-out process consists of four stages and each stage of several activities. There are two types of activities: rational and emotional, which should be combined to support companies in implementing a successful phase-out.

Phase-out is a sensitive process, and many experts from industry do not like to discuss phase-outs, in particular closure phase-outs. Although cross-industry coverage could be achieved, companies that intend to apply the developed process should individually adapt it to their own requirements and their own context.

The presented labor process supports companies in formalizing phase-out, while identifying best practices.

This research sheds light on a phase of the production cycle – the phase-out – that has been neglected so far in the extant literature and generates insights for manufacturing companies how they can formalize this process and how they can deal with it more systematically.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework that explains how new product development and supply chain variables are related to one another and how they affect performance.

The insights from literature and an exploratory case study are combined to develop an alignment framework, which is then tested using a multiple case study design.

Variety, modularity, and innovativeness are the product features that are taken into account when studying alignment. From the supply chain viewpoint, configuration, collaboration, and coordination complexities are the variables that matter. Innovativeness is found to have a stronger effect than variety on supply chain complexity. In addition, there is evidence that matching product features with supply chains improves performance.

The paper provides empirical support to the relationships among the variables within the alignment framework. There is evidence that product innovativeness, a variable so far neglected in the alignment literature, can have a critical impact on the supply chain. Furthermore, supply chain complexity must be adequately adapted, depending on the product features.

To identify and examine the origins of complexity in a mass customization system and to propose an effective application sequence of variety management strategies in order to cope with this complexity.

Through the application of Suh's complexity theory an understanding of the causes of complexity in the specific context of a mass customization environment is developed. This facilitates the identification of the strategies that are adequate to tackle the problems induced by complexity.

The mass customization system is a coupled system that cannot be mastered simply. It is definitely impossible to transform it to an uncoupled system with a low complexity level. However, the effective and targeted implementation of variety management strategies at the product and process levels enables the management of this complexity by making the system more decoupled.

Complexity can be decreased if managers ensure less dependency between the satisfaction of customer requirements and position of the decoupling point. It is also advantageous to reduce the coupling level between fast delivery requirement in mass customization and the decoupling point placement. Furthermore, an effective variety management calls for the implementation of the identified strategies in an ascending order of complexity reduction potential.

The article relates the complexity theory of Suh to mass customization system, provides a framework for the classification of variety management strategies and derives managerial recommendations so as to reduce the complexity in a mass customization environment.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the transferability of the open source principles of product development from the realm of software to the realm of physical products.

Based on the inherent differences between software and physical products, a theoretical discussion of the challenges that face the implementation of open source principles in the physical world are provided. A multiple case study methodology is adopted to provide insights into the applicability of the open source concept in product development outside software.

Many of the challenges identified theoretically are actually encountered in practice. To cope with these challenges effectively, hardware design activities can be translated into software development tasks, using programmable hardware. When dealing with open source projects in the physical realm, it is useful to distinguish between projects driven by commercial firms and those driven by individuals, as each project type can impose different conditions on successful implementation.

Although much scholarly attention has been devoted to open source software, the issue of transferability of the identified principles to other industries has undergone little in‐depth research. This paper provides a solid foundation for further investigation of this topic based on theory and empirical case examples. It derives recommendations for industrial experts wishing to benefit from the open source model in new product development.