Recent digital advancements, including social software, mobile technologies and augmented reality, offer promising opportunities to empower knowledge workers in their production environment by leveraging their knowledge processes, decision-making skills and social interaction practices. This paper proposes a conceptual framework for empowering workers in industrial production environments with digitally facilitated knowledge management processes. The framework explores four concrete facets of digital advancements that apply to a wide range of knowledge processes and production strategies in manufacturing companies. Each of these advancements are capable of supporting one specific facet of the individual knowledge management processes of workers; knowledge transfer, discovery, acquisition and sharing. The study contributes to the production research community by aligning emerging digital technologies and current trends in advanced manufacturing environments to benefit workers and improve job satisfaction, efficiency and productivity. The paper also contains suggestions about developing innovative solutions for production environments that support workers with digital technologies for flexible production.

Real-world products and physics-based simulations are becoming interconnected. In particular, real-time capable dynamic simulation has made it possible for simulation models to run in parallel and simultaneously with operating machinery. This capability combined with state observer techniques such as Kalman filtering have enabled the synchronization between simulation and the real world. State estimator techniques can be applied to estimate unmeasured quantities, also referred as virtual sensing, or to enhance the quality of measured signals. Although synchronized models could be used in a number of ways, value creation and business model development are currently defining the most practical and beneficial use cases from a business perspective. The research reported here reveals the communication and collaboration methods that lead to economically relevant technology solutions. Two case examples are given that demonstrate the proposed methodology. The work benefited from the broad perspective of researchers from different backgrounds and the joint effort to drive the technology development towards business relevant cases.

Digital twins have been recognized as a remarkable enabler for the growth of service business in manufacturing. This study focuses on the preconditions and benefits related to developing new ecosystem-based services around digital twins. As the digital twin business ecosystem is very complex and the goal of the research was to gain an in-depth knowledge in this field, the empirical evidence builds on qualitative data gathered from six case companies in the manufacturing sector. The results show that at the individual company level, the emergence of the ecosystems is determined by goal orientation and willingness to share information. The expected benefits are related to effective resource utilization, possibilities for co-learning, and new business creation. At the ecosystem level, forming a digital twin business ecosystem requires technical receptivity and common interests and goals among the members, as well as a strong customer-centric approach. At its best, a digital twin business ecosystem provides inter-organizational value for its members. This study provides new insights into developing new ecosystem-based services related to digital twins, both from the service provider and utilizer viewpoints. Further studies could broaden the implications by testing the relationships between specific preconditions and benefits at the company and ecosystem levels.

Smart city projects explore solutions to improve the sustainability of urban infrastructure. In Kalasatama, a new smart city district being built in Helsinki, a solution to excite the availability of electric demand management and other energy-related services for residents is being tested. The city has made installing a specified minimum set of home automation devices obligatory in each apartment in the district, with the intention that entrepreneurial companies would start to offer energy management solutions based on that automation. This case study examines the utilisation of home automation in energy management at a point in time when approximately one-third of the dwellings in the smart city district are complete. According to the results of the study, companies developing and building apartments in the area of Kalasatama do not seem to find the regulation concerning home automation to be directly beneficial. Also, the availability of energy management services, based on the home automation solution, seems to remain low for the residents of the district. Based on these findings, we propose that similar smart city projects should be subject to a wider dialogue between policymakers and prospective market participants in the project conceptualisation phase.

The successful introduction of new digital tools on the shop floor and the evaluation of their impacts on workers and their work practices are challenging tasks. Choosing and applying the right evaluation approach, methods, and measures to analyze the impact of digital interventions is a challenging task. To support researchers and practitioners in this challenge, the authors present a study out of the context of a large-scale European project, Facts4workers, which developed and implemented worker-centered smart factory solutions that support knowledge work on the shop floor level. Interventions through digitalization have increased workers’ job satisfaction, innovation and problem-solving skills, and productivity of organizations. The study demonstrates the context-of-use of socio-technical interventions at four case companies in Germany, Slovenia, and Spain. Combining different kinds of assessments, including quantitative (surveys) as well as qualitative data (interviews, observations) – the authors show how the digital solutions extend the workers’ knowledge and competencies and thereby enhance their problem-solving and innovation skills. The evaluation results enable us to deduce valid implications on how to introduce socio-technical interventions and to design ICT solutions that are supposed to address the productivity and more importantly the workers’ job satisfaction and innovation skills.