Hybrid digital manufacturing: Capturing the value of digitalization

A chasm is growing between the advanced technologies available for improving manufacturing operations and those effectively used in practice. The vision of Industry 4.0 is to mobilize industry to seek out these possibilities for improvement and to close the gap between opportunity and reality. However, when compared with more established improvement opportunities such as lean manufacturing, the digitalization of manufacturing lacks in both paradigmatic examples and an understanding of how to achieve the benefits. This lack is a complication of concern: Without an appropriate operations strategy to capture the value of digitalization, manufacturing companies will be unable to focus on technological investments and operational changes. To address this concern, operations management academics must develop new theory through active engagement in the practice of digitalization in manufacturing. This research presents a paradigmatic example, based on engaged scholarship, focused on effectively combining novel object-interactive and conventional manufacturing syntax for benefiting from digitalization in internal operations and the wider supply chain. The contribution to literature is a novel operations strategy—hybrid digital manufacturing—for capturing the value of Industry 4.0 technologies.