Organizing for Smart Manufacturing

The 4.0 technological change can be more or less drastic for companies, depending on their technological and organizational maturity. Smart Manufacturing can strongly impact the organization of work at different levels and, consequently, employees’ reaction towards the implementation of the new technologies. Despite the relevance of these aspects for the success of Smart Manufacturing implementation, empirical evidence is still limited in this area. Theoretical arguments developed so far analyze this broader topic by identifying possible alternative future scenarios, such as «augmentation» strategy (i.e. technologies used to augment operators’ capacity/competence) vs “substitution strategy” (i.e. technologies used to augment operators’ capacity/competence). But how companies can choose and implement the proper ‘organizational pathway’ for Smart Manufacturing remains unclear.

For these reasons, this research project deepens the following research questions:

• Which are the emerging organizational models in terms of work design at the micro level and the design of organizational units that emerges when different 4.0 technological use cases are introduced in companies?
• Which are the drivers of a successful approach to organization-technology 4.0 co-design?
• Which are the organizational enablers (in particular models of delegation, participation and empowerment) for the implementation of success of 4.0 technologies?

Results map different use cases and related organization models, offering best-practices for companies implementing Smart Manufacturing applications. In particular, organizational models are described both at the micro level (i.e. the design of individual roles and jobs in terms of autonomy, cognitive demand, task significance, social interaction, level of formalization) and at the macro-level (i.e. number and types of organizational units, the hierarchical levels and the coordination mechanisms between different units).