Platform service portfolio management (PSPM) of social digitalization platform for cloud-based collaborative product development ecosystem: A structural approach

Abstract

In the context of digital transformation, social digitalization platform (SDP) emerges and play an important and irreplaceable role in the whole industrial ecosystems. The main value creation purpose of SDP is to develop general technical service portfolios and customized solutions. For SDPs, platform service portfolio management (PSPM) is a really difficult problem. The decision must dynamically respond to the complex external environments of business requirement, technology evolution, and system innovation. The traditional experience-driven decision-making process confuses various factors together, and it is difficult to produce scientific decisions continuously and effectively. To help these platform-kind firms make wise decision, we put forward a novel and practical decision-making methodological framework for PSPM issues. Firstly, a general system architecture model, namely Business-Digitalization-System (BDS) model, is proposed based on system engineering, which helps platform service component identification more refined. Next, the PSPM problem is formalized and modelled as a causal relation graph-based intertwined system analysis procedure. A novel platform service portfolio evaluation method is developed to obtain the priority of the identified service alternatives. The approach can effectively handle the component system importance and its heterogeneous causal interdependencies simultaneously. Meanwhile, the combinatorial manipulation of subjective judgements and objective measure improves the reasonability and efficiency within a multi-stakeholder group. Finally, a case study in the constructive industry is presented and the results of method comparisons show the feasibility and advantages of the methodology.