Digital Transformation of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises Production Manufacturing

Abstract

Industry 4.0 concepts have brought about a wind of renewal in the organization of companies and their production methods. However, this integration is subject to obstacles when it comes to Small and Medium sized Enterprises—SMEs: the costs of new technologies to be acquired, the level of maturity of the company regarding its level of digitization and automation, human aspects such as training employees to master new technologies, reluctance to change, etc. This article provides a new framework and presents an intelligent support system to facilitate the digital transformation of SMEs. The digitalization is realized through physical, informational, and decisional points of view. To achieve the complete transformation of the company, the framework combines the triptych of performance criteria (cost, quality, time) with the notions of sustainability (with respect to social, societal, and environmental aspects) and digitization through tools to be integrated into the company’s processes. The new framework encompasses the formalisms developed in the literature on Industry 4.0 concepts, information systems and organizational methods as well as a global structure to support and assist operators in managing their operations. In the form of a web application, it will exploit reliable data obtained through information systems such as Enterprise Resources Planning—ERP, Manufacturing Execution System—MES, or Warehouse Management System—WMS and new technologies such as artificial intelligence (deep learning, multi-agent systems, expert systems), big data, Internet of things (IoT) that communicate with each other to assist operators during production processes. To illustrate and validate the concepts and developed tools, use cases of an electronic manufacturing SME have been solved with these concepts and tools, in order to succeed in this company’s digital transformation. Thus, a reference model of the electronics manufacturing companies is being developed for facilitating the future digital transformation of these domain companies. The realization of these use cases and the new reference model are growing up and their future exploitation will be presented as soon as possible.