Planning a digital transformation for a company with a process layout : A study conducted at voestalpine Precision Strip AB

Sammanfattning: Digitalization is an upcoming trend that divides the manufacturing industry of today. As an increasing number of companies chose to implement digitalization as a business strategy, some companies still struggle with implementing digitalization into their businesses. Previous research has developed digital transformation models, but has been admitted as too generic. This thesis used the most comprehensive transformation model as base and aimed to make it practically implementable for a manufacturing company with a process layout. To enable this, a case study was conducted on a steel-processing company with this layout design. This thesis had an inductive approach, where primary data were collected from one selected company through a pilot study and semi structured interviews, and secondary data were collected through a literature review. During the study, it was discovered that a company can benefit from using a customized guidance of how to implement digitalization, to optimally use digital opportunities. This thesis contributed with additional steps and extensions of the previous transformation model. The contribution consisted of the involvement of competency, creation of definition, identified digitalization trends relating to a SWOT analysis, additional phenomenon to take into consideration when analyzing future scenarios, additional questions to consider when analyzing impacted areas, creation of a digital business strategy, a comparison of impacted areas with previous projects, additional identified actions to fill the gap between current state and goals, and five identified criteria’s on how to prioritize these actions. This study extends current research with details and depth regarding a digital transformation model, and hence make it more practical. For future research, a case study testing the potential of the transformation model on a similar company should be conducted, and thereby improve the model further.