ABSTRACT Digitally supported continuous improvement (CI) in manufacturing SMEs often stalls not because tools fail, but because governance decisions are made under low visibility, mixed signals, and uneven trace quality. Existing instruments can position an organization or report activity and outcomes, yet they rarely bind minimal, auditable evidence to an explicit next move. This paper introduces the Positioning and Governance Compass (PG‐Compass), a low‐burden decision overlay that converts a fixed Minimal Evidence Packet into exactly one risk‐aware governance move—ADVANCE, HOLD, REPAIR, or RESTART—paired with a short Decision Record for decision provenance. PG‐Compass enforces conservative defaults: it caps confidence and blocks escalation under severe credibility constraints (e.g., trace‐integrity/backfilling risk or control‐framing risk) and routes to HOLD/REPAIR when signals are incomplete or contradictory. The artifact is grounded in routine dynamics and socio‐technical thinking, treating routine–trace mismatches and off‐ledger work as governance‐relevant signals. Evaluation uses an independent multi‐rater protocol on transcript‐derived evidence packets (nine interview cases) to assess decision consistency and auditability, without making performance or outcome claims.
Antar Türüc (Fri,) studied this question.