Engineer to Order Manufacturing in Norwegian Industry

Abstract

The fourth industrial revolution is expected to disrupt current business models and change the way manufacturing companies work. But how does Industry 4.0 and the ongoing digitalization affect companies involved with the production of customized and one-off products? This thesis focus on the current development of the Norwegian \acrlong{eto} industry. Norway has been lagging behind in digitalization and barriers to digitalization and automation have been identified.

During september-november 2017, a total of 20 interviews were conducted with employees from 9 different companies. The common denominator is that they all offer customized products of some sort. This imply that they develop, design and in most cases also produce, products that have been tailored to order specific requirements. By talking to employees from the engineering, sales and administration departments, typical work-flows and procedures when dealing with customized product orders were captured. The findings is also based on a survey that carried was carried out around the same time. The results enable us to establish some characteristics of Norwegian \gls{eto} scene.

This thesis also aim to provide a conceptual overview of tools and frameworks to support ETO manufacturing. This will help readers familiarize themselves with commonly deployed technology and solutions. The report also builds on a pre-study was carried out in autumn 2016, where the possibilities of Siemens Rulestream as an ETO automation tool were explored.