Although Industry 4.0 and other initiatives predict widespread adoption of digitalised technology on the factory floor, few companies use new digitalised production technology holistically in their ecosystems; in practical implementation, companies often decide against digitalisation for financial reasons. This is due to a paradox (akin to the so called “productivity paradox”) caused by the complexity of value creation and value delivery within digitalised production. This article analyses and synthesises cross-disciplinary research using a grounded theory model, thus offering valuable insights for businesses considering investing in digitalised production. A qualitative model and an associated toolbox (complete with tools for practical application by business leaders and decision-makers) are presented to address organisational uncertainty and leadership disconnect that often contribute to the paradoxical gap between digital strategy and operational implementation.

Digital transformation affects almost all areas of society and business and is of increasing interest to academics and industry practitioners. New digital technology is expected to enable manufacturing companies to capture competitive and productivity advantages compared to conventional methods. Aggregated information based on production process data represent a new production factor to generate innovative forms of digital value generation. Paradoxically, the implementation of digitalised production in manufacturing companies remains at unexpected low levels as companies’ investment decisions often vote against digitalisation due to uncertainty in judging novel forms of criteria related to digital value. Digital transformation constates a new set of latent structure and relationships to generate, capture and monetise value. A holistic view on heterogenous research disciplines related with digital transformation of production is proposed in this short communication. This research presents a new paradigm which takes the moderation function of value propositions, value architectures and value capture to evaluate projects relative to digitalised manufacturing.