Development of a Smart Manufacturing Execution System Architecture for SMEs: A Czech Case Study

This study investigates the application of a smart manufacturing exectuion system (SMES) based on the current controlling structure in a medium-sized company in the Czech Republic. Based on existing approaches on the architecture of SMES, this paper develops a sample architecture grounding on the current controlling structure of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). While only a few papers on approaches in the given topic exist, this approach makes use of operative production controlling data and uses a standardisation module to provide standardised data. The sample architecture was validated with a case study in a Czech SME. This case study was conducted in two different entities of one production companies suggesting differences in the entities due to the nature of production. The research showed, that simple tasks with intelligent welding equipment allow for a working SMES architecture, while complex assembly works with a high extend of human labor and a high amount of components still remain an obstacle. This research contributes to gathering additional understanding on SMES architectures in SMEs by making use of a standardisation module