Magnus Wiktorsson

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at KTH Royal Institute of Technology

This study applies an intersectional approach to address concerns about diversity of data acquisition when applying computer vision systems in human order picking. The study draws empirical data from a single case study conducted at an automotive manufacturer. It identifies critical factors of intersectionality for the use of vision systems to enri...

This paper addresses a multi-agent scheduling problem with uniform parallel machines owned by a resource agent and competing jobs with dynamic arrival times that belong to different consumer agents. All agents are self-interested and rational with the aim of maximizing their own objectives, resulting in intense resource competition among consumer a...

This paper introduces a framework that integrates smart production logistics (SPL) with network diagrams. This integration enhances visibility in the material and information flow within the manufacturing sector, thereby adding value through data visualization. Drawing from a detailed case study in the automotive industry, we outline the essential...

Supply chain visibility has become a key priority for manufacturing companies to handle disruptions and improve supply chain performance. IoT technologies have been recognised to enable higher levels of real-time supply chain visibility. However, there is a need for empirical research focusing on testing IoT technologies to improve supply chain vis...

In the data-rich but knowledge-poor domain of production management systems, the utilization of machine learning (ML) for lead-time prediction has gained increasing attention. Despite several efforts focusing on ML and regression techniques, the selection of features for lead-time prediction remains a challenge. The purpose of this study is to expl...

Recent technological advances in capturing real-time and large amounts of data provide an opportunity for production logistics systems to enhance their performance. Transitioning to a data-driven system is a complex and multifaceted process. While many articles highlight the benefits of data-driven applications, there are few empirical studies on h...

Manual assembly task analysis is essential for optimizing work instructions, improving tasks, and scheduling assembly lines in the context of Industry 5.0’s emphasis on human-centric, sustainable, and resilient manufacturing processes. The current paper outlines a comprehensive approach for data preparation for AI-assisted video analysis, aiming to...

A key motivation to adopt data-driven solutions in facility-internal logistic systems is to create more responsive, efficient, and sustainable systems through a seamless data flow. There is thus a need to analyse the logistics system’s requirements from a data efficiency perspective. This paper presents and demonstrates a novel method, based on est...

Reconfigurable manufacturing systems (RMS), cyber-physical systems (CPS) and simulation-based multi-objective optimisation (SMO) are essential for addressing the dynamic behaviour of materials and information in manufacturing. However, the lack of consideration for material handling jeopardises recent advances in these fields. Accordingly, this stu...

Aims The paper describes efforts to understand and work towards supply chain visibility (SCV): enumerating factors influencing its implementation, information that should be shared for better visibility and evaluating different technologies that can facilitate SCV. It summarises findings from different studies conducted during the research project...

With the advent of Industry 4.0, the world is witnessing increasing use of data and data-driven services. This phenomenon has penetrated through different sectors of production including logistics. The purpose of this study is to explore the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) in production logistics. This paper is the fir...

Developing digital dashboards (DD) that support staff in monitoring, identifying anomalies, and facilitating corrective actions are decisive for achieving the benefits of Smart Production Logistics (SPL). However, existing literature about SPL has not sufficiently investigated the characteristics of DD allowing staff to enhance operational performa...

Smart production logistics has introduced in manufacturing industries with emerging technologies such as digital twin, industrial internet of things, and cyber-physical system. This technological innovation initiates the new way of working, working environment, and decision-making process. Especially the decision-making process has changed from exp...

Supply chain visibility (SCV) has been gaining recognition in recent years as a key factor for achieving analytical capabilities and improving supply chain performance. However, levels of SCV implementation lag behind current technological advances. This research was motivated by the lack of visibility in inbound logistics, which limits the possibi...

Visibility across supply chains has been a key concern for organisations for many years, but the tools and information systems to achieve real-time visibility have not been available until recently. In response to uncertainty and complexity, advanced information and communication technologies have been explored for supply chain visibility (SCV). Ho...

Digital servitization (DS) enabled by the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is essential for securing long-term competitiveness in manufacturing. The literature identifies the need for developing data models for multichannel communications across IIoT devices that fulfil the DS vision. This is crucial for avoiding isolated systems based on propr...

Developing IIoT-enabled digital services is essential for facilitating human centered digital transformation and achieving resource-efficient production. IIoT-enabled digital services focus on providing the best possible value proposition to end users based on three main components including hardware, middleware, and visualization applications. An...

Production logistics has an important role as a chain that connects the components of the production system. The most important goal of production logistics plans is to keep the flow of the production system well. However, compared to the production system, the level of planning, management, and digitalization of the production logistics system is...

Production logistics has an important role as a chain that connects the components of the production system. The most important goal of production logistics plans is to keep the flow of the production system well. However, compared to the production system, the level of planning, management, and digitalization of the production logistics system is...

Supply chain visibility is a concept that is gaining increasing attention. Increasing levels of visibility in the supply chain is considered beneficial in many respects. A systematic literature review identified 47 empirical research papers from international scientific journals. Two main findings emerged from the content analysis. First, the persp...

Blockchain technologies can support traceability, transparency and trust among participants. This has primarily been explored in established supply chains and not in the growing use of business networks or ecosystems, which is a notable limitation since supply chains typically are organised with a dominant actor that ensures common information syst...

Cities are growing and sustainable urban mobility planning (SUMP) is gaining in importance with it. The problems in the domain often involve multiple stakeholders with conflicting or competing objectives. The stakeholders and objectives can be local to certain neighborhoods or apply to the global city-wide scale. We present a methodology to address...

With the increased electrification of transportation, there is a growth in the number of electric vehicles (EV) in use, and hence also discarded EV batteries. It is critical to trace the batteries so that the policy of electrification does not lead to a negative impact on sustainability. To achieve the goals of circular economy, it is necessary to...

With the increase in the number of avenues for production of data everywhere including logistics, using this data has become an obvious next step. In this paper, we look at the major logistics problems in details as discussed in a seminal work in highlighting the problems in logistics by X. Li in 2014. Together with discussing the problems, we als...

Part 1: Data-Driven Platforms and Applications in Production and Logistics: Digital Twins and AI for Sustainability

Part 1: Data-Driven Platforms and Applications in Production and Logistics: Digital Twins and AI for Sustainability

Events such as Covid-19 have revealed the vulnerabilities that companies face due to low visibility. Consequently, companies experience impact on their supply chains in terms of disruptions of material supply, deliveries, productivity and revenue. Thus, the importance of Supply Chain Visibility (SCV) in global and competitive markets with increasin...

Combining Smart Production Logistics (SPL) and Machine Learning (ML) for adaptive scheduling and execution of material handling may be critical for enhancing manufacturing competitiveness. SPL and ML may help identify, adapt, and respond to scheduling changes originating from disturbances in and enhance the operational performance of material handl...

Visibility in production logistics and across the supply chain has become a key concern for organizations. Its need has been further emphasized due to the current COVID 19 crisis. Organizations find it challenging to prepare the internal logistics and supply chain, and quickly respond to such unexpected events, due to low visibility. Against this b...

Digital Twins are increasingly perceived as critical enablers for improving operational performance and sustainability of Smart Production Logistics. Addressing the lack of empirical research on this topic, this study explores the economic, environmental, and social sustainability impact of Digital Twin-based services for Smart Production Logistics...

Optimizing urban logistics is a complex multi-stakeholder and multi-criteria decision problem. This paper presents a tool made for a case study wherein a city is investigating different options for heavy commercial vehicles to traverse the city and calculating how much pollution they produce. In the process, participatory modelling is adopted as th...

The Swedish strategic innovation programme, Produktion2030, is a national long-term effort towards global industrial competitiveness addressing Swedish industry’s transition towards climate goals of the European Green Deal while simultaneously realising smart manufacturing and Industry 4.0 (I4.0). This paper investigated the extent of sustainabilit...

A data-driven approach in production logistics is adopted as a response to challenges such as low visibility and system rigidity. One important step for such a transition is to identify the enabling technologies from a value-creating perspective. The existing corpus of literature has discussed the benefits and applications of smart technologies in...

The study analyzes the application of reinforcement learning (RL) for material handling tasks in Smart Production Logistics (SPL). It presents two contributions based on empirical results of a RL model in dynamic production logistics environment from the automotive industry. Firstly, an architecture integrating the use of RL in SPL. Secondly, the s...

Recent studies suggest that data-driven decision-making facilitated by Digital Twins (DTs) may be essential for optimizing resources and diversifying value creation in production logistics. However, there exists limited understanding about the design of DTs in production logistics. Addressing this issue, this study proposes a process for the design...

Recent studies suggest that data-driven decision-making facilitated by Digital Twins (DTs) may be essential for optimizing resources and diversifying value creation in production logistics. However, there exists limited understanding about the design of DTs in production logistics. Addressing this issue, this study proposes a process for the design...

The manufacturing industry is facing multi-dimensional, ever-growing challenges ranging from the lack of real-time manufacturing resource data, the inability of catching production exceptions, to the occurrence of cascading failures. This paper proposes a network-based cyber-physical production system to model, diagnose and control complex producti...

The purpose of this study is to analyze the use of Simulation-Based Multi-Objective Optimization (SMO) for Reconfigurable Manufacturing System Configuration Analysis (RMS-CA). In doing so, this study addresses the need for efficiently performing RMS-CA with respect to the limited time for decision-making in the industry, and investigates one of the...

Manufacturing simulation has been used as a decision support tool to solve various problems in production systems. However, with the advent of Industry 4.0 and CPS, manufacturing simulation becomes not only a tool for supporting decision-making but also essential for operation, monitoring, and forecasting the production system. In this paper, a tra...

Globalisation, competitive markets and increasing sustainability requirements are demanding companies to focus on visibility to improve their supply chains and ultimately their businesses. This paper aims to identify perspectives, principles and prospects of production logistics visibility (PLV). The study is based on a literature review of article...

How to design Human–Industrial Robot Collaborative (HIRC) workstations is one of the key challenges in the realisation of safe and efficient HIRC systems in industry. The aim of this paper is to present a simple method to be used in early phases of HIRC workstation design. The design method requires a simulation tool and is based on systematic desi...

Digital Twins (DTs) are described as the next wave in simulation, a critical component of Cyber Physical Systems (CPS), and a key enabler for da-ta-driven decision-making. Yet, the literature presents limited understanding about the characteristics of DTs and their relation to current simulation capabilities. Addressing this problem, the purpose of...

Shipyards around the world have several differences that affect the logistics processes at each yard. The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework for mapping the key factors affecting shipyard logistics. We test and validate the framework by applying it to three case shipyards—one Norwegian and two South Korean. To develop the framework, we...

Digitalisation and automation of existing processes are key factors for competitive industry, but still logistics operations are often dominated by manual work. A shift towards higher degree of automation within existing infrastructure is often challenged by high cost and complex processes, thus a return-on-investment is hardly achievable within de...

Globalization, escalating competition, and demand for sustainable practices have required supply chain and production managers to consider various capabilities and value creation strategies for the customers. Rapid technological advancement in the current production environment calls for integrative and collaborative efforts for effective resource...

Production logistics systems in the context of manufacturing, especially in automotive sectors today, are challenged by the lack of real-time data of logistics resources, optimal configuration and management strategies of materials, and optimisation approaches of logistics operations. This turns out to be the bottleneck in achieving flexible and ad...

This study investigates the achievement of information consensus and the reduction of equivocality in process innovations. Drawing on the operations management literature, a new framework to guide information consensus in the reduction of equivocality in process innovations is proposed. The analysis is based on a real-time case study in the heavy v...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the selection of decision-making approaches at manufacturing companies when implementing process innovations. Design/methodology/approach This study reviews the current understanding of decision structuredness for determining a decision-making approach and conducts a case study based on an interactiv...

Production logistics is typically considered a nonvalue-adding activity with a low level of automation and digitalization. However, recent advancements in technology infrastructure for capturing real-time data are key enablers of smart production logistics and are expected to empower companies to adopt data-driven strategies for more responsive, ef...

The transition to more sustainable manufacturing is urgently needed. We need to produce with radically less use of energy, virgin material and other resources. As a response to those needs, sustainable manufacturing has emerged as a concept and practise with the underlaying goal that manufacturing shall preserve resources, still contributing to eco...

There is a strong interest in the scope of human–industrial robot collaboration (HIRC) in manufacturing industry for greater flexibility and productivity. However, HIRC in manufacturing is still in its infancy; industrial practitioners have many apprehensions and uncertainties concerning the system’s performance and human operators’ safety. Therefo...

Production logistics systems consist often of a number of low value-added activities combined with a high degree of manual work. Therefore, increasing effectivity and responsiveness has always been a target for production logistics systems. Sharing data in real-time may have a considerable potential to increase effectivity and responsiveness. The f...

Previous environmental studies indicate several barriers to circular economy and material efficiency including a lack of detailed methodologies for manufacturing improvement in terms of environmental and operational performances to measure, monitor and evaluate material consumption and waste generation. A lean and green tool, the green performance...

This paper presents challenges of using discrete event simulation when supporting decision in early stages of production system design, when significant changes are introduced. It was based on three real-time case studies performed at one manufacturing company during 2014–2016. Challenges in the cases were mapped to previous literature, pointing ou...

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are not only essential during manufacturing operations. Also during the development phases of product and manufacturing system, where future performance of the operational order-to-delivery-process is set, KPIs are important to consider. This paper introduces “enabling indicators” that can be analyzed or assessed i...

Virtually every company has implemented a Business Performance Measurement System (BPMS) with the purpose of monitoring production and business performance and to execute the corporate strategy at all levels in a company. The purpose of this article is to shed light on common pitfalls related to the practical use of BPMS and further to present a li...

What constitutes a company’s capabilities to develop a Smart Factory? South Korean and Swedish perspectives are here illustrated by company examples of smart factory solutions and related strategic aspects of their digitalization. It is concluded that the “smart-factory-capability” of a manufacturing company is integrated with its corporate product...

Improving material efficiency contributes to reduce the volume of industrial waste as well as resource consumption. However, less has been published addressing on what to measure for material efficiency in a manufacturing company. This paper presents the current practice of material efficiency performance indicators in a manufacturing context throu...

This article investigates sustainability in the performance measurement systems of Swedish manufacturing companies. It builds on a previous study that documents relatively few direct environmental indicators at shop floor level, which raises questions about possible indirect links between existing indicators and the environment that could be used t...

In order to fully utilise a 3D simulation software capable of evaluating hand-guided human-industrial robot collaborative (HIRC) work tasks, there is a need of a HIRC design process for early production development stages. This paper proposes a HIRC design method that uses the possibilities of the demonstrator software in the HIRC workstation desig...

Virtually every company has implemented some kind of Business Performance Measurement System (BPMS), with the purpose of monitoring production and business performance and executing business and corporate strategy at all levels in a company. A majority of these BPMS emanates from a multidimensional scorecard integrating operational development prin...

INDUSTRIAL WASTE MANAGEMENT involves several actors and personnel from different organizations; this together with the fact that material waste management may be of less operational importance than producing the main product, means that even effective and environmentally aware companies usually have improvement opportunities in waste management. A...

This paper links production system research to advanced material research for the vehicle industry. Facilitated by need for reduction of fuel use, the automotive industry is pushing a radical change from using steel structures to new mixed materials structures. In production systems optimised for steel, the changes will affect productivity and mate...

There are trade-offs between cost and capabilities throughout specification, implementation and operation of automated solutions in manufacturing companies. This chapter describes four identified dilemmas or contradictions while balancing flexibility to automation, based on an empirical study with interviews and workshop in five internationally com...

The simulation possibilities of Human – Industrial Robot Collaboration (HIRC) are limited in commercial software and published research. In order to meet this a demonstrator software has been developed. This paper presents the combination of the quantitative output from the software (measuring operation time and biomechanical load) together with ex...

A clear and well-defined new product development (NPD) process, cross-functional development teams and project fit with manufacturing resources and skills, are three areas critical to achieve lower cost, high quality and short time to market in NPD. However it is not clear who from manufacturing function should be involved and in which phase during...

Companies are challenged to achieve maximised benefits in time, money and novelty when introducing new products or technologies into their existing manufacturing systems. This paper set the focus on the introduction of new materials into existing products and if the adverse effects on manufacturing will outweigh the benefits. An automotive case was...

Two change management strategies: a minimum change, exploitation strategy (kaizen) and a maximum output, exploration strategy (kaikaku) have been applied in a manufacturing case study. Value stream mapping and discrete event simulation were used to analyse the production system changes, with regards to robustness and total lead-time, to increase kn...

A tenet of production system design is to increase a manufacturing company's competitiveness by introducing novel processes, technologies, and products. However, uncertainties exist regarding the actual benefits that can be attained when novelty and change are introduced into a production system. Addressing this issue, this paper explores how manuf...

The purpose of this article is to empirically investigate the present state of the performance measurement systems (PMS) at 7 sites of 6 different large Swedish manufacturing companies. The methodology has both a bottom-up and a top-down perspective. Important findings are that the PMSs are very similar in how they function but differ a lot in what...

Previous environmental studies indicate several barriers towards sustainability and material efficiency. There is a lack of detailed methodologies for manufacturing improvement in terms of environmental and operational performances to measure, monitor and evaluate material consumption and waste generation. A lean and green tool, Green Performance M...

This paper describe the trade-offs between automation and operational flexibility, throughout specification, run-in and operation of automated solutions in discrete manufacturing companies. It is an empirically driven study based on interviews and workshop with five internationally competitive manufacturing companies. Six contradictions while balan...

This paper presents how the lead plant role within an international manufacturing network (IMN) is expressed from a site perspective, in relation to key competitive factors. A participative observational study of a workshop series with five Swedish manufacturing sites, all working within international companies, showed how the sites' interests chal...

Two change management strategies: a minimum change, exploitation strategy (kaizen) and a maximum output, exploration strategy (kaikaku) have been applied in a manufacturing case study. Value stream mapping and discrete event simulation were used to analyse the production system changes, with regards to robustness and total lead-time, to increase kn...

Improved material efficiency is key to improving the circular economy and capturing value in industry. Material efficiency reduces the generation of industrial waste, the extraction and consumption of resources, and energy demands and carbon emissions. However, material efficiency in the manufacturing sector, as a means of improving the recyclabili...

Effective production systems are necessary for companies to achieve competitiveness in manufacturing, and the production system design process is fundamental to meet this goal. Discrete event simulation is a tool that can support the production system design process. However, few empirical studies have shown the use of this tool prior to the verifi...

In this study, we have asked respondents to rank ten different waste fractions that are both common in manufacturing industry and easily recognizable. The purpose of the study has been to clarify to what extent individuals are able to identify the waste fractions that are most important to recycle from an environmental perspective. The individuals’...

Innovative, resource-efficient solutions and effective waste management systems capture value in business and contribute to sustainability. However, due to scattered waste management responsibilities in the vehicle industry and the orientation of operations management and lean tools, which mostly focus on lead-time and labour-time improvements, the...

Human industrial robot collaboration (HIRC) aims to combine the benefits of industrial robots with humans in production environments. This is a growing research field where most work focuses on the safety aspects, while little research is performed on simulation and visualisation. The aim of this paper is to present demonstrator software for simula...

Based on an increasing need of life cycle perspectives in product and production development, there is a call for more effective working methods for the reconfigu-ration, rearrangement, retro-fit and reuse of current equipment, systems and pro-cesses within production systems. This chapter discusses the need and character of such methods based on c...

The scope of industrial automation is shifting into a third wave of automation based on extreme information availability, cyber-physical systems and data analytics. This paper present critical factors and way forward for the development of the Swedish industrial automation sector, both users and suppliers. Based on literature and practice studies,...

Growing operational complexity and higher variety of products require flexibility in assembly. Despite its many benefits flexibility is a complex concept that requires evaluation to harness its full potential. This study uses virtual verification tools as enablers of the decision making process for production system design of a flexible multi-produ...

Automation in internal logistics is an enabler to increase overall competitiveness in an organisation. However, its use is currently limited. The main objective of this paper is to highlight the existing strategic and operational challenges to using and developing automation in internal logistics. A three-phased empirical study has been conducted,...

By a broad empirical study it is indicated that automation development show potential of improvement. In the paper, 13 lean product development principles are contrasted to the automation development process and it is suggested why and how these principles can facilitate, support and improve the automation development process. The paper summarises...

The paper explores the process and criteria used in production location decisions, based on a literature overview and a case study in a Swedish manufacturing company with a global production network. The data collection comprised interviews with top management and project management as well as a document analysis. The findings indicate that the pro...