A customer-centric evaluation of a smart manufacturing concept : Development of a continuous improvement strategy for improving the productivity of a small and medium-sized enterprises

Sammanfattning: Nytt AB is a startup focusing on simplifying the concept of smart manufacturing to small and medium-sized companies providing an add-on machine monitoring solution for data analyzing. The product is currently under development with the final product soon to be launched. In the next phase of Nytt AB, a marketing plan has to be strategized. This thesis, which is built on previous Nytt AB’s work, focuses on addressing issues that will be important when creating a marketing and sales strategy. The customer is put as the focal point and the customer values analyzed including discussions on productivity improvements within the machines and how to standardize the changes to satisfy every customer. Using research questions as a base for the study, the customer values were analyzed by first understanding the main threats, weaknesses, strengths, and opportunities for the product and then analyzing data from an installed prototype and the improvements that can be achieved based on the data. The customers can, by using the product get statistical facts about their machines which can be the first step to understand the need for changes within their company. With future development, further customer values will appear, such as providing aid on how to improve KPIs such as availability. Providing this information to the customers will help them obtain a better insight into the field of smart manufacturing, the manufacturing of the future.