Lean Information and Communication Tool to Connect Shop and Top Floor in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises

In small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), information acquisition and transmission between business departments is carried out mainly in a paper-based way. For instance, in manufacturing and assembly, the modifications of technical drawings are documented manually on technical drawings. At the end of the production process, all technical drawings have to be forwarded to the design/development department. Nowadays, all these drawings are passed over, in order to create an overall machine documentation. The technical drawing and machine modifications have to be reviewed successively which increases both the completion time and project term. Furthermore, it increases the risk of consequential errors. Moreover, it is personal intensive, which results in a delayed engineering documentation for the customer. To overcome this ineffective process, a computerized production application in combination with smart devices was developed. This shop floor information application supports employees with recording and communication of modifications of components and technical drawings. The tool for Industry 4.0 focuses on different business departments and business processes to digitalize the previously described analog processes and avoid media gap in the company.