Advanced Analytics in Smart Factories: Towards an actionable Taxonomy for Prescriptive Analytics Use Cases

Prescriptive analytics use cases support in the decision-making process and focus on providing actionable guidance (e.g. in the smart factory) based on a set of problems and possible solutions. Smart factories represent the core of Industry 4.0 and can greatly benefit from the implementation of advanced analytics use cases. Prescriptive analytics enables operational excellence in smart factories by providing actionable insights and decisions to (autonomously) steer and govern areas of a factory. Still, a widespread adoption of principles of prescriptive analytics is not reached, due to the complexity and interconnectivity of different use cases. Additionally, a lack of methodological support for developing prescriptive analytics use cases is observed. We support the adoption and ideation of prescriptive analytics use cases by providing a taxonomy for prescriptive analytics use cases in smart factories for researchers. To make the findings from the taxonomy actionable, we develop a concept on how to transform existing analytics use cases or use case ideas into prescriptive analytics use cases to support practitioners. We focus on the transformation of existing analytics use cases into prescriptive analytics use cases to lower the barrier to entry for the development of prescriptive use cases. The findings are based on the taxonomy development method by Nickerson. Our evaluation is supported by expert interviews as well as focus groups.