How to Attract Users to Join the Networked Collaborative Manufacturing Platform of Complex Heavy Equipment Under Different Service Quality? An Evolutionary Game Approach

Complex heavy equipment manufacturing involves multiple stakeholders and requires a platform for interconnection and collaborative manufacturing. Networked collaborative manufacturing platform under cloud environment have emerged as a solution to enhance efficiency and innovation in industries. However, attracting users to join such platforms and addressing strategic and tactical decision-making challenges are critical concerns. To address these concerns, we develop an evolutionary game model to investigate the user acquisition strategy and the platform quality decisions. We obtain two ideal game equilibrium points: First, when the platform offers high-quality services, we find designers still actively join the platform even if they face higher risk of knowledge loss and lower synergy benefits; and manufacturers are more likely to join the platform when they get higher synergy benefits or suffer more prospective profit-and-loss, or when they pay lower service fee. Second, when the platform provides low-quality services, we find that designers and manufacturers choose to join the platform because of the low commission fee by the platform or high synergy benefits that offer a fair distribution. We then further investigate the impact of government subsidies and find that high subsidy policy can effectively encourage the platform to provide high-quality services, but it should be noted that if the service fee charged by the platform is too high, it may hinder users from joining. We also discuss the managerial implications of our results