A data-oriented shopfloor management in the production context: a systematic literature review

Abstract

Data not only plays an essential role in traditional shopfloor management, but it is also becoming even more important in Industry 4.0, particularly due to the increasing possibilities offered by new digital and data technologies and developments. In this context, the literature often refers to digital shopfloor management, the next generation shopfloor or other evolutionary synonyms. This raises the question of how to differentiate the content of data-oriented shopfloor management from digital shopfloor management. This paper discusses the state of the art — in terms of both data and digital perspectives — using a systematic literature review. Due to the complexity of the topic, three different levels of consideration — technology, organisation and people — are examined and discussed. Existing conceptual approaches are analysed in terms of conclusions and research gaps. It was found that the area of technology, including dedicated applications, is very well represented and researched in the literature. In comparison, there are larger research gaps in the other areas of organisation and people, which could be a possible reason for the lack of implementation of digital shopfloor management in practice. There is also a lack of holistic approaches that consider all three levels simultaneously and provide an overarching concept of maturity as a guideline, as well as taking into account the increasing trend towards value stream orientation. Apart from the research gaps, this paper could also define the term data-oriented shopfloor management and distinguish it from digital shopfloor management.