Chasing the digital transition of visualization boards: Achieving fit between visualization boards and shop floor tasks

Visualization boards (VBs), technology-enabled operations management (OM) resources, are essential in many manufacturing companies. VBs will likely gain even more impact due to the contemporary digital transition of shop floors. Digitalization of manufacturing creates tons of data and facilitates new functionalities for VBs. With data increasingly becoming pivotal, an empirical study of the functionalities of current and emerging VBs for handling shop floor tasks is warranted. This intervention-based research consists of two exploratory phases: a cross-case study of two companies followed by a longitudinal study within a third company. Both phases use the Task-Technology-Fit theory, first to explore the fit/misfit between current VB-shop floor tasks and second to explore prerequisites for tailoring shop floor VBs to the context of smart manufacturing. By appreciating both OM design principles for improving the usability of VBs and technology management (TM) design principles related to the digitalization of manufacturing, this paper asserts the following: Current VBs adhere to OM design principles and provide many of the necessary functionalities. Four prerequisites for providing all needed functionalities are frontend development of user-friendly interfaces, backend development to enhance interoperability, backend development to enable automation of data lifecycles, and the ability to transcend OM and TM knowledge boundaries.