Expectations vs. Experiences - Process Mining in Small and Medium Sized Manufacturing Companies

While literature emphasizes the importance of process mining for pushing digital transformation in manufacturing, it remains unclear how process mining can be actually implemented and used by domain experts, especially in small and medium sized manufacturing companies (SMMC). This paper provides the findings of a focus group study, i.e., expectations on and experiences with the introduction of process mining in SMMC, including employees in different positions, e.g., process supervisors and shopfloor workers, and exposure to process mining. Transparency, for example, is an expected benefit for managers, facilitating the collaboration with business partners, error prevention, and legal protection. Shopfloor workers, in turn, perceive transparency as possible threat. The implementation of two process mining scenarios at one of the SMMC led to reduced documentation effort which helped to win over shopfloor workers. Altogether, the findings of this study can help to address concerns and challenges (e.g., with the infrastructure and data collection) early when introducing process mining at SMMC.