Assembly and Through Life Services in the Context of Urban Cloud Manufacturing

Platform economy enables entirely new value creation processes with remarkable resistance to crises compared to centralized production systems. Acknowledged samples in commerce, travel accommodations, and creative media platforms are well known. Samples in production technology are, despite the potentials in platform economy, still rare. Its application in complex production systems must contribute to individualized product and process design and realization. Thus, research and development on structuring and utilization in a platform-supported production economy are required. We propose the framework “Urban Circular Cloud Assembly and Services (Urban CIRCLAS)”, which is developed for granularization and order-specific ad-hoc new combination of operating resources, processes and workers. The Urban CIRCLAS framework contains handling technology, measurement technology, manual and automated assembly systems as well as a cloud-based IT infrastructure for demonstration of feasible circular production samples in an urban context. This paper presents the concept, potential and challenge of the Urban CIRCLAS framework. It highlights how users such as freelancers or small companies combine and upgrade their know-how and capabilities to realize innovative product and process designs, which meet established industry standards. This is elaborated by three scenarios with different requirements. Based on the outcomes, potential application and research areas enabled by the Urban CIRCLAS framework are discussed. As a result, important insights can be gained from the concept of the Urban CIRCLAS.