A Reference Model for Organizing Responsibilities in the Smart Factory

Digitalization is conquering the factory floor and causing two different types of technology to interlock: existing operating technology (OT) is being joined by an ever-growing amount of information technology (IT). This creates new assets and services whose organizational management can no longer be adequately handled by applying analogue production theory. Therefore, there is a need for a framework that supports companies in shaping their organization according to the requirements of the (digitalized) smart factory. In order to close this research gap, this paper develops a framework in the form of an organizational reference model for the management of assets and services in the smart factory. For this purpose, the inductive reference modeling method according to Fettke (2014) is applied. The developed reference model shows a matrix of services, to which the responsible functions of the company are assigned. Key insights of the reference model are the central role for IT in the smart factory, while services relating to the production process are still run by OT functions. From the reference model can be derived, that it is not the classic IT function that reaches into the OT area but that there are new functions for digital operational technologies that overlap into the classic IT domain. As practical implication, this paper provides suggestions to organize responsibilities for smart factories. The created reference model can help companies to create their own organizational model or it can serve as a template for revising their own organization. For further research, this paper structures assets, services and functions in the context of the smart factory in a summarized presentation.