Internet based Production Concepts – Implications for Business Management

An important change in the socio-economic environment of industrial firms is the increasing diffusion of Internet technologies in production processes. Applications are on the shop floor, e.g. in networking dislocated assembly lines and in assisting management processes, e.g. in production planning and control. Due to this evolution of direct, IP supported networking (down to the machinery level), an increase of distributed services in production processes is to be expected. This leads to a strong approximation of the traditional production and operation systems and Internet technologies. Therefore, this paper introduces in a first step the recent advances in industrial Internet technologies. In a second step, we will discuss new production concepts and point out their benefits for business processes within industry. However, our main goal is to analyze the arising consequences for Production/Operations Management, as well as for Business Management in general.