Innovation Management in Manufacturing - A Study on Industrial Application, Deficits, and Opportunities

Abstract

Manufacturing companies are constantly pressured to innovate in an increasingly complex and discontinuous environment. In addition to developing new products and product features, innovation management in manufacturing has become necessary to ensure the competitiveness of technologies and processes in the context of digitalization, human centricity, sustainability and resilience (Industry 5.0). In the study, presented in this paper, companies from various industries participated in an online survey on their approach to incremental and radical innovation in manufacturing and the associated innovation management. In the study, more than 50 participants provide insight into the innovation management of their manufacturing unit and identify concrete fields of action as well as challenges in the areas of technology, organization and people. The study results are intended to provide manufacturing innovation managers with an overview of the challenges, deficits and potentials of innovation management in manufacturing and to help them identify and describe challenges in their organization.