Platform Supply Chains 4: Platform Supply Chain Integration (Platform Supply Chains in the AI Era)

This open access book turns fragmented insights on platform supply chains into a practical integration framework and guidelines. It shows how to design and govern four interlocking pillars, technology, logistics, suppliers, and customers, in platform supply chains to remove value-creation bottlenecks and deliver measurable performance. Readers get clear design rules, governance options, and metrics they can apply across digital-intelligent, complex and end-to-end platform networks.

What’s new is a platform-specific lens on integration. The book frames blockchain as a complex adaptive systems enabler and a governance substitute, explains how 3PL coordination scales into platform logistics orchestration, and unpacks trust–contract interactions under data-rich uncertainty, including the role of data breaches in supplier replacement. It also links cross-functional coordination to customer integration and free-trial strategies, clarifying when network effects amplify or erode value.

The scope begins with foundations and the rise of platform supply chains, then develops a four-pillar framework: technology integration (from IT integration to blockchain-enabled coordination and performance effects), logistics integration (relational and economic mechanisms and platform models), supplier integration (balancing trust and contracts under platform-specific uncertainty), and customer integration (systems, processes, teams, and value creation via trials and communities). The intended readership includes advanced students and researchers in operations, supply chain, and information systems, as well as leaders in platform firms, logistics, and procurement. Core benefits are a unifying framework tailored to platforms, evidence-based governance choices across the pillars, and concise checklists and measures to test and refine integration decisions.

Baofeng Huo is Qiushi Distinguished Professor of Operations Management at the School of Management, Zhejiang University, China. He received his PhD from The Chinese University of Hong Kong and his M.E. and B.E. from Tianjin University. His research covers operations management, supply chain management, energy management, and sustainable management. His work has been published in leading journals such as Journal of Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, Journal of Supply Chain Management, and International Journal of Operations and Production Management. He has served as PI or Co-PI for major international collaborative research projects as well as projects funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Ministry of Education of China. He serves as Editor of Journal of Digital Management, Associate Editor of Journal of Operations Management and Industrial Management & Data Systems, and Editorial Board Member of Production and Operations Management and Fundamental Research.