Supporting impact-, barriers-, and enablers-aware decisions on modularisation actions

A comparison between the literature and the industry leads to a communicational gap between the two: the potential benefits (together with barriers and enablers) from a modularisation action highlighted by Academics are not effectively communicated to Practitioners. This paper aims at contributing to Practitioners’ awareness, by proposing a methodological tool to support decisions on modularisation actions, barriers- and enablers-aware, that Managers can use to get further understanding on its implementation process and its possible outcomes. The associated decision-making-driven Ontology – on which the tool grounds – can help them to recognise which decision (or set of decisions), with regard to the modularisation action(s), is the most proper to make in order to achieve a specific/desired impact (Target-driven perspective), or in order to identify the achievable impact considering the current condition of the firm (Context-driven approach). Practical implications of the use of such a tool, based on such an Ontology, are discussed in the last section of the paper, together with the description of a likely implementation process. Finally, some hints of the next research steps are provided.