Development of a holistic framework for the description and characterization of company-individual Manufacturing Change Management processes

Abstract

In today’s manufacturing industry, companies operate in a complex and rapidly changing environment, resulting in an increasing number and variety of Manufacturing Changes (MCs). To ensure long-term competitiveness, companies must respond quickly, flexibly, and effectively to various types of MCs. While many companies have established processes to manage MCs, these processes often lack flexibility and a comprehensive methodological and digital support. Existing approaches to support these processes are often generic and difficult to transfer to a company’s unique Manufacturing Change Management (MCM) process. For this purpose, a framework and an associated application method have been developed in which MCM processes are abstracted and mathematically modeled using descriptive and characterizing attributes. To achieve a comprehensive view of the processes, the holistic framework intends to model people’s activities involved in the process, process steps, and the occurrence of information inside the process. The framework was developed through a three-phase approach, with attributes derived from the literature, case studies, and expert interviews. The framework and the associated application method were tested in a first industrial use case. In conclusion, the framework developed in this contribution supports practitioners and researchers to consistently describe and to flexibly adapt generally valid theoretical and practical approaches to company-individual MCM processes.