Digital Visualisation Tools to Bridge Communication Across Manufacturing – A Transdisciplinary Journey

Abstract

The future of manufacturing is happening. Today’s cyber technologies allow real-time visual control of various production processes in manufacturing through the intelligent utilisation of data. Having access to knowledge is power. Providing shop floor practitioners with the opportunity to gain and share knowledge across boundaries in manufacturing in the right way at the right time is a prerequisite to doing a proper job controlling a production line. Carrying out shop floor operations without visual control leads to actions performed in blindness based on gut-feeling decision-making and is often prone to errors. This paper investigates a practical problem of securing knowledge integration across production units on the shop floor and managerial stakeholders via a digital visualisation tool (a visualisation board (VB)). The study constitutes an instrumental case study and follows a transdisciplinary engineering process, outlining a collaborative approach with practitioners across various disciplines in a large manufacturing company in the Renewable Energy sector. The findings illustrate an unsuccessful approach to designing and deploying a digital VB. The paper’s contribution is a set of lessons learned from an unsuccessful attempt that highlights the importance of socio-technical solutions to digital transformations as opposed to purely technical solutions.