Abstract
Due to many serious wide-influence disruptions during the last few years, the stability of the manufacturing shop floors' performance has suffered significantly. Therefore, the companies, including small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), have shifted from a stability to a resilience approach. The purpose of the research is to examine from the SMEs' perspective, how the Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPS) main characteristics comply with the requirements for a resilient system. The literature review method was adapted to collect SMEs' requirements for complex digital systems. The collected requirements were generalized and evaluated from the resilience components' perspective. The SMEs' requirements were further analyzed using the House of Quality method, where the importance of CPPS's main characteristics to fulfill the SMEs' requirements for resilient manufacturing systems were assessed and ranked. The findings of the study show a wide variety of SMEs' requirements. The most crucial requirement is related to the management of know-how and training in a company. Technical harmonization was identified as the characteristic that best fulfills the requirements for a resilient manufacturing system from the SMEs' perspective. These findings illustrate the relationships between SMEs' requirements, resilient systems, and CPPS. The results contribute to a better understanding of the SMEs' needs for complex digital systems and the influences between CPPS characteristics and resilient system requirements from the SMEs' perspective.