Catena-X
Manufacturing as a Service (MaaS)
Use Case
Federated Marketplace for Manufacturing-as-a-Service:
Connecting Manufacturing Capabilities in Catena-X
MaaS in Catena-X concentrates on the matchmaking between the manufacturing capability demand and the offered manufacturing capability.
The goal is a federated marketplace for Manufacturing-as-a-Service, connecting single manufacturers and on-demand manufacturing platforms over different manufacturing domains, including the support in digitalization and automation by provided services supporting specific steps in the offering process.
Manufacturers who want to offer their manufacturing resources as a service, will do so by onboarding their manufacturing capabilities directly to the federated marketplace or to existing on-demand manufacturing platforms or networks.
Capabilities can include knowledge of the factories, e.g., machinery, employee expertise, past production outputs and processes, capability terms like “band sawing”, certifications, etc. Buyers search for the manufacturing capabilities they need to produce a specific product (usually parts or assemblies).
This can include individual manufacturing steps to cover missing capabilities related to existing productions or even fully external production offers. Both the ODM platform and the marketplace can perform the necessary matchmaking between required and offered capabilities.
Typically, the ODM platforms offer the production of a specific part and often act as manufacturers, whereas the marketplace only offers the production by an arbitrary number of manufacturers. However, both may utilize additional IT or engineering services to provide their customers with added values such as onboarding application, automated process derivation or sustainability services.
A federated marketplace not only offers manufacturing capabilities registered directly by the manufacturers, but also capabilities registered with ODM platforms.
As a result, a network of networks is built, which connects different networks of manufacturers (according to their capabilities) and different domains. This approach enables a single-entry point to the network of networks via the marketplace.
Partners
