This paper aims at conceptualising a digitised Shop Floor Management (SFM) visualisation board. The logic of inquiry throughout the study is an iterative back and-forth approach between our theoretical conceptualisation of the digitised visualisation board and empirical data collected in three industrial companies. The paper shows that digitised visualisation boards should have malleable representation capacities to transfer, translate and transform knowledge within and across SFM teams. A digitised visualisation board is suggested, which consists of; translating practices within SFM teams, translating practices across SFM teams, transforming practices across SFM teams and translating practices within SFM teams.
Smart manufacturing, an offspring from Industry 4.0 (I4.0), defines the future for the manufacturing industry. Smart manufacturing leads to digitalization of the shop floor, which is automated, computerized and complex. To stay competitive, digitalization of the shop floor management (SFM) boards will be instrumental in improving performance management and continuous improvement. The purpose of this paper is to improve the understanding of SFM board meetings in the era of I4.0. The paper explores the current adaptation level of digital SFM boards, and identifies influencing forces for and forces against a further transition from analogue to digital SFM boards. Based on a survey and a subsequent workshop with practitioners, this paper reveals that digital SFM boards have not yet been adapted at shop floor level, and currently, practitioners are stuck to the standardized procedures and manual processes. The forces against a further adaptation are a managerial mindset stuck in an Industry 2.0 era and immature technologies to digitize the visualization of real-time data. The forces for are the need of enhancing data transparency within and across teams, which means elimination of information silos and timeconsuming manual updates of SFM boards.
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