Digitizing Processes in Manufacturing Companies via Low-Code Software (to appear)

Low-code development platforms (LCDPs) recently sparked interest in both academia and industry, promising to speed up software development and make it accessible to users with little or no programming experience. Thus, the mass-development of software applications that are custom-made to the tasks, skills, and preferences of end users is potentially enabled. Although different LCDPs have been analysed with respect to their functionality and applied to exemplary case studies in recent work, there is a shortage of experience reports in which LCDPs are used to digitize business processes in small and medium manufacturing enterprises. In this paper, we therefore summarize our experience from supporting industry partners to identify business processes that are suitable for being implemented with low-code technologies and to select an LCDP that meets the requirements of the business process while aligning with the overall digitization strategy of the respective company. We also present the opportunities and challenges of the low-code approach as perceived by industry partners. In summary, the low-code approach should be seen as an essential factor for the digitization of business processes in small and medium manufacturing companies.