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.

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Drawing on Deweyan pragmatism and the Science-Technology-Society approach, this ethnographic research aims at understanding the role of experience and ends-in-view when handling a product development activity. The research focuses on doings conceptualised as engineer-artefact reciprocity and contributes to practice-based learning and product development studies. The analysis demonstrates that past activities embodied in experience and materialised in artefacts and, likewise, future activities embodied in ends-in-view influence the handling of an activity differently, resulting in either a derailment of handling the activity, habitual completion or reflective completion of the activity. Derailment occurs when experienced engineers are incapable of achieving a common end-in-view; habitual completion is when engineers form a vague end-in-view and no one challenges this; and past experience combined with the formation of a common end-in-view paves the way for reflective completion of the activity. Only the lastmentioned facilitates engineers to gain new experience and create usable artefacts.

The paper addresses the consequences of using a one-size-fits-all approach when practicing transdisciplinary engineering (TE) in a global development context and suggests a method to cope with these consequences. The theoretical conceptualization is a practice-based understanding of development activities, which entails knowledge being embodied and contextually embedded. Two cases, each addressing three TE projects, are studied. Each of the six TE projects embraces a parent company located in Denmark and one of two facilities abroad, located in the Far East and Eastern Europe, respectively. Two projects are conducted successfully. Significant drawbacks and thus costly iterations are necessary in three projects; the companies do not understand the consequences of a higher level of perceived newness and interdependence than anticipated from the outset. Similarly, the last project is terminated after some costly iterations. The analysis reveals a lack of TE competences to handle increasing newness/interdependence projects; practitioners’ understanding habitually draws on existing solutions; because the nature of the handed-over knowledge differs, the one-size-fits-all approach to gain a convergent understanding is inappropriate. Three approaches to obtaining a convergent understanding are suggested: (1) transferring, (2) translating and (3) transforming.

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.