A B2B Team Formation Microservice for Collaborative Manufacturing in Industry 4.0

Manufacturing in supply chains commonly involves collaboration between multiple and diverse enterprises forming temporary coalitions. The matchmaking and assembly of multi-organizational resources to respond to a business opportunity is a key stage in production and supply chain management, particularly in the selection of suppliers taking into account enterprises of different sizes, capabilities and marketplace reputations. Industry 4.0 technologies can have a positive impact on collaborative manufacturing by digitalizing the team formation stage, speeding-up the collaboration process, minimizing supplier risk and maximizing coalition potential. This paper proposes a microservice for team formation to facilitate collaborative manufacturing in the context of Industry 4.0, guided by Design Science research practices and involving stakeholders' vision from the automotive and aviation industries. From a technical perspective, the microservice design is conceived to facilitate interoperability with Business-to-Business (B2B) platforms.