Approach for stakeholder identification in Manufacturing Change Management

Resilience, agility, and flexibility are considered key factors in maintaining the long-term competitiveness of manufacturing companies. In addition to assembly and production systems that offer a high degree of reconfigurability, the intelligent design and implementation of the change management process is an important prerequisite for this. In this context, the identification of the affected employees and departments during change initiation, planning, and implementation is necessary to ensure the consideration of all relevant perspectives on the intended change, e.g. concerning the resulting change effects. Especially in medium-sized and large companies, this is complicated by a multidimensional division of tasks and responsibilities. Therefore, this paper presents a methodological support for stakeholder identification in Manufacturing Change Management. Through an extensive literature research and several expert interviews, relevant dimensions for the description of technical changes and the responsibilities of employees are defined. Based on this, the entire approach is described from the initial modeling of the company's internal organizational structures to the application and interpretation of the results. The evaluation and validation were carried out in cooperation with a globally operating mechanical engineering company in southern Germany. Five different use cases, including the redesign of several assembly workplaces, were analyzed and evaluated through expert interviews.