Content uploaded by Jonny Holmström
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Jonny Holmström on Nov 04, 2014
Content may be subject to copyright.
Industrial Informatics: What We Know and What We Donʼt
Know
Jonny Holmström, Mikael Wiberg & Andreas Lund
Department of Informatics
Umeå University
Sweden
Introduction
This book investigates information technology in the context of the process industry. When this
context is examined, the implications of information technology go far beyond the contemporary
accounts of IT in manufacturing processes – it also includes after-market sales, service
production, sourcing, e-maintenance and so on. The sum effects of these changes are rapidly
transforming the process industry.
From a research perspective, the process industry is often characterized in terms that limit the
scope of discussion to the actual manufacturing processes. This book broadens the scope to
include the broad set of enablers that are transforming the industry into a service industry, and the
interaction processes that are emerging in the process industries. We argue in this book that the
role of information technology is profound in today’s process industry and is likely to be even
more profound in the future.
The history of the process industry has from the start been one of extensive use of technology.
This was true long before the era of information technology – the mining industry, the pulp
industry and the manufacturing industry have all co-evolved with technology. This has been the
case with technologies of the past, and this is the case today with information technology. That is
the reason why a broad view of the ongoing transformation in the process industry is necessary to
understand the effects of information technology on an industry as large, diverse, and complex as
the process industry. The contemporary developments on the Internet are likely to enhance the
ongoing changes. To this point, they have not yet done so, and it is difficult to predict whether or
how they will. Given these challenges facing the process industry this book sets out to explore
information technology in the context of the process industry from an industrial informatics
approach. This approach takes the recent reorientation of IT towards services, and IT as an
interaction technology as points of departure to identify and explore new and innovative
perspectives of process IT-use.
Industrial informatics
For a couple of decades, in the 1970s and the 1980s, the industrial setting – and in particular the
skills of the individual industrial worker – was at the core for Scandinavian informatics research.
As industrial work as we knew it in the 70s and 80s has disappeared in Scandinavia, so has the
industrial focus stepped back. As noted by Dahlbom:
“In less than 20 years we have definitely left industrial society for a service society getting more and more
of its identity from the consumer market and less and less from the production factories of the 20th
century. Indeed, we had left industrial society already in the 1980s, only that many of us […] for some
reason did not want to acknowledge this.” (Dahlbom, 2003, p. 31)
Today we must acknowledge that throwing out the industrial setting from the informatics agenda
was like throwing out the baby with the bath water. While Dahlbom (1997) envisioned the “new
informatics” as being all about dot com businesses there are many evidences now that informatics
is more concerned with the industrial setting than with dotcom businesses. Clearly, in a service
society focus is on services and their consumption rather than on goods and their production. But
while services are provided to people and goods are mass-produced in factories, it was a mistake
to believe that we left the industrial setting behind. In fact, after the dotcom businesses crumbled
around 2000-2001 the Scandinavian industrial scene has become increasingly stronger.
To this end we seek to go back to the roots with this book – to both the ideas that traditionally
have informed the Scandinavian informatics scene since its inception and the industrial base that
is characteristic for the Scandinavian business scene. Today, we label the new informatics
industrial informatics. Industrial informatics denotes the study of design, use and innovation of
IT in industrial contexts. As such, it is not a field or discipline in and of itself. Rather, industrial
informatics is building on the history of the informatics discipline, and focused and oriented
towards the particularities and challenges characterizing IT in industrial contexts. It builds on a
discourse on the design, use and innovation of IT as it is formulated in the informatics discipline
(e.g. Hedman et al., 2005; Kling, 1999; Nilsson and Pettersson, 2000) with a particular emphasis
on the industrial setting. Industrial informatics represents an engaged scholarship (Mathiassen &
Nielsen, 2008) focusing on understanding and improving IT-related design-, use- and innovation
processes. Industries pose a host of interesting challenges from an informatics point of view: A
mix of leading and trailing edge legacy technologies interwoven in complex systems (Rönnbäck,
Holmström and Hanseth, 2007); operators facing a complex interaction challenge when
monitoring key industrial processes (Wiberg, 2005); boundary spanning practices in industrial
settings (Jonsson, Holmström & Lyytinen, 2009) and industrial firms positioning themselves by
moving from selling industrial products to offering industrial services (Jonsson, Westergren &
Holmström, 2008).
Thus, we seek to bring perspectives and theories that have come to be the hallmark of
Scandinavian IT research to an object of study that has been addressed largely from engineering
and technologist perspectives.
The Umeå school of informatics
As new information technologies are increasingly immersed in industrial settings new challenges
and opportunities emerge. In this book we seek to identify and discuss these challenges and
opportunities, and the book is a good illustration of leading research conducted in the realm of
industrial informatics. In the 1980s, driven by advances in computer and telecommunications
technology, there was an upsurge of interest in new information technologies that led to the
establishment of informatics as an academic discipline. Starting in the early 1980s, scholars at the
department of informatics (formerly the department of information processing) at Umeå
University began seeking for a theoretical basis for understanding the social implications of
information technology. This search reflected a strong ambition to study information technology
and its development in a social science tradition. In this tradition, philosophical and scientific
questions coexist with the goal of contemporary and social relevance. Rooted in Langefors’ early
definition of information systems to include people interpreting the data of the computer systems
turning data into information (Langefors 1995) the Umeå school of informatics has explored the
ways in which information technology and people interact. A key issue adapted early on by
informatics researchers was how the technology would not necessarily bring about the
advantages intended by designers. Fresh theoretical perspectives were needed to spur innovative
technology design, as well as to understand the technology implementation process. Results
include research on how to successfully involve users in the IT design process (Ehn, 1988), the
role of creativity in IT design processes (Stolterman, 1992), organizational impact of IT use
(Henfridsson & Söderholm, 2000; Holmström & Stalder, 2001) and the societal effects of IT
(Ivanov, 1989; Ivanov, 1991; Wiberg, 2004). The history of the informatics discipline illustrates
how it evolves with the evolution of new technologies, and the focus on industrial informatics in
this volume is the most recent part of this evolution. The contributions in this volume build on the
historical legacy of the Umeå approach to informatics, albeit with new technologies as objects of
study, all situated in industrial context.
Industrial organizations are expected to be key players in an emerging digital economy. However,
there has been little research to date on what is happening within and across industrial
organizations as they are increasingly intertwine with new information technologies and
participate in and collectively enact a digital economy and interaction landscape. This volume has
contributed to describe state-of-the art research in industrial informatics, and the issues discussed
here are likely to dominate the agenda for the informatics discipline for years to come.
Based on what we know about the ways in which industrial organizations are intertwined with
new information technologies and faced with and socio-technical change processes, we suggest
that future research on industrial informatics continue to focus on leading practice drawing from
a rich theoretical body. Specifically, some useful questions to consider might include: how can
industrial firms build on open standards and break free from vendor-specific standards and
platforms? What are the key media convergence challenges facing industrial organizations as
web 2.0 components are increasingly introduced in industrial settings? What are the key
challenges associated with the service orientation among industrial firms? How can industrial
firms balance the benefits associated with increased IT use and the risks associated with it? How
are questions of information technology development associated with organizational innovation
processes? We believe that industrial informatics issues – including the aforementioned questions
– are embedded in a variety of different social and temporal contexts that relies on an evolving
technological infrastructure, and whose uses are experimental and emergent. Focusing on these
questions is like focusing on a moving target, which is the key challenge for the informatics
discipline. While more empirical work is necessary in order to better understand these challenges,
we believe that this volume offers a useful beginning.
References
Dahlbom, B. (1997). The New Informatics. Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, 8(2).
Dahlbom, B. (2003). Producers or Consumers: Two ways of looking at technology. In People
and Computers: twenty-one Ways of Looking at Information Systems. Järvi, T. and Reijonen, P
(eds.) Turku centre for Computer Science: TUCS General Publication.
Ehn, P. (1988). Work-oriented design of computer artifacts. (Doctoral diss.). Umeå-Stockholm:
Umeå University & Arbetslivscentrum and Almqvist & Wiksell International.
Hedman, J., Kalling, T., Khakhar, D., & Steen, O. (eds) (2005). Lund on Informatics. Malmö:
Liber. Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business Press.
Henfridsson, O., & Söderholm, A. (2000). Barriers to Learning - On Organizational Defenses and
Vicious Circles in Technological Adaptation. Accounting, Management, and Information
Technologies (10:1), 33-51.
Holmström, J., & Stalder, F (2001). Drifting technologies and multi-purpose network: the case of
the Swedish cashcard. Information and Organization, 11, 187-206.
Ivanov, K. (1989). Computer applications and organizational disease. In C. W. Churchman (Ed.),
The well-being of organizations, pp. 283-312. Salinas, Calif.: Intersystems.
Ivanov, K. (1991). Computer-supported human science or humanistic computer science? Steps
toward the evaluation of a humanistic computing science (UMADP-WPIPCS-41.91). Umeå
University, Inst. of Information Processing.
Jonsson, K., Holmström, J., & Lyytinen, K. (2009). Turn to the material: Remote diagnostics
systems and new forms of boundary spanning. Information and Organization, 19, 233-252
Jonsson, K., Westergren, U. H., & Holmström, J. (2008). Technologies for value creation: An
exploration of remote diagnostics systems in the manufacturing industry. Information Systems
Journal, 18(3), 227–245.
Kling, R. (1999). What is Social Informatics and Why Does it Matter? D-Lib Magazine 5(1).
Langefors, B. (1995). Essays on infology. Studentlitteratur, Lund.
Mathiassen, L., & Nielsen, P. A. (2008). Engaged Scholarship in IS Research: The Scandinavian
Case. Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, 20(2), 3-20.
Nilsson, A. G., & Pettersson J. S. (Eds.) (2000). Om metoder för systemutveckling i
professionella organisationer: Karlstadsskolans syn på informatikens roll i samhället.
Studentlitteratur, Lund.
Rönnbäck, L., Holmström, J. & Hanseth, O. (2007). IT-Adaptation Challenges in the Process
Industry: An Exploratory Case Study. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 107(9), 1276-
1289.
Stolterman, E. (1992). How system designers think about design and methods. Scandinavian
Journal of Information Systems, Vol 4, 137-150.
Wiberg, M. (Ed.) (2004). The Interaction Society: Practice, Theories, and Supportive
Technologies. Information Science Publishing, IDEA-group Inc.
