The manufacturing industry is increasingly being dominated by information and communication technology, leading to the development of cyber-physical systems. Most existing frameworks on the assessment of such technological advancements see the technology as a solitary system. However, research has shown that other environmental factors like organizational processes or human factors are also affected. Drawing on the sociotechnical systems approach, future technologies could be evaluated using scenarios of digitized work. These scenarios can help classify new technologies and uncover their advantages and constraints in order to provide guidance for the digital development of organizations. We developed an instrument for evaluating scenarios of digitized work on the relevant dimensions ‘technology’, ‘human’ and ‘organization’ and conducted a quantitative study applying this instrument on three different scenarios (N = 24 subject matter experts). Results show that our instrument is capable of measuring technological, human and organizational aspects of technology implementations and detecting differences in the scenarios under investigation. The instrument’s practical value is significant as it enables the user to compare and quantify scenarios and helps companies to decide which technology they should implement.
Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) gained momentum within the last years and is regarded as the key to face the challenges of product engineering. Nevertheless, numerous barriers exist that inhibit the implementation of MBSE in industrial application. One is about what constitutes MBSEup to now there is no single view on this topic. This is due to the numerous disciplines involved in the enhancements of MBSEonly recently there had been efforts to create new MBSE approaches and even languages. We state that similar to classical Systems Engineering there will not be one specific MBSEcurrent trends in product engineering as well as literature support this thesis. By the help of a consistency analysis evaluating relevant features of MBSE as degree of language formalization and tool support consistent combinations of these features are clustered. As a result possible MBSE concepts are suggested. These concepts enable a better understanding of the different objectives of this interdisciplinary approach. The existence of the concepts is shown based on known pilot projects.
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