Ubiquitous manufacturing: overview, framework and further research directions

The aim of this article is to develop a conceptual framework for successful implementation of ubiquitous manufacturing (UM). An interpretivist philosophy has been adopted, guided by deductive and inductive approaches, to develop a conceptual framework for successful implementation of UM. An attempt is made in this article to provide an overview of the available UM literature by developing and classifying a contextual relationship among identified variables using an interpretive structural modelling (ISM) technique, and further categorising these variables into four categories, depending upon their dependence and driving power, using cross-impact matrix multiplication (MICMAC) analysis. The synthesis of an ISM model and MICMAC analysis has resulted in a conceptual framework for successful implementation of UM. Finally, this article concludes with a summary of our findings and further research directions.