Management aspects of smart manufacturing

Abstract

In the world of future production systems, companies become increasingly interested in the application of new technologies in order to ensure long-term competitiveness and adapt to dynamically changing environmental conditions such as shortening product lifecycles, increasing diversity of variants and ever-changing customer expectations. However, smart manufacturing poses significant challenges to the manufacturing companies not only from the technological but also from the organizational and management point of view. This paper through qualitative research aims to explore what are the driving forces for introducing new technologies and which are the main barriers of smart manufacturing. Besides production factors, the authors found that management's aspiration to increase control and to enable real-time performance can be significant driving forces to smart manufacturing. Furthermore, organizational resistance - and its inadequate management - which should be emphasized not only at the employee but also at the middle management level can significantly hinder the introduction of technologies related to smart manufacturing. Finally, the authors found that the application of new digital technologies results in the transformation of management functions.