Making a Digital Transformation Framework for SMEs come Alive

Abstract When searching for information and gaining more knowledge about AI, smart industry, Industry 4.0 or other similar emerging technology areas, one may easily be overwhelmed by the vast amount. It is important not to forget that these emerging technologies, their possible implementations and abilities, cannot be fully understood, used and applied without context, i.e. a broader perspective, not only technology focused, is needed. Such broadened perspective could be understood as digitalization or digital transformation (DT) covering not only the technology itself but a broad scope of the business and organization. But even with a solid understanding of the technology, domain, processes and value chain, it is not easy to move forward with digital solutions transforming the business. Not least, this challenge is a reality for many small– and medium sized manufacturing companies (SME) who often have limited resources both in terms of financial strength, and in number of employees. To keep competitiveness, SMEs need to continuously adopt and implement such emerging technologies and methods in their business. Though most research on DT do not focus processes and implementation at SMEs. In this paper, we present our work on developing a DT framework. Our work is aiming SMEs in manufacturing and our primary target has been family-owned businesses studying practical implementations of digitalisation initiatives. The paper describes how the framework has developed from the initial versions, mainly based in literature, and how implementations at SMEs, along with contemporary publications, iteratively have developed and validated it.