A Maturity Model for Assessing the Digital Readiness of Manufacturing Companies

Abstract

The most profound technologies are those that disappear... They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it" wrote computer scientist and visionary Mark Weiser nearly 25 years ago in his essay "The Computer for the 21st Century." It turns out he was right: in the age of "Industry 4.0", digital technologies are the core driver for the manufacturing transformation. In fact, the introduction of such technologies allows companies to find solutions capable to turn increasing complexity into opportunities for ensuring sustainable competitiveness and profitable growth. Nonetheless, the effective implementation in manufacturing still depends on the state of practice: it may slow down, or even worst, may prevent from implementation. Indeed, we assume that a minimum level of capabilities is required before implementing the digital technologies in a company. Based on this concern, our research question is "are manufacturing companies ready to go digital?". This paper wants to illustrate a "tool" to answer this question by building a maturity assessment method to measure the digital readiness of manufacturing firms. Based on the inspiring principles of the CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) framework, we propose a model to set the ground for the investigation of company digital maturity. Different dimensions are used to assess 5 areas in which manufacturing key processes can be grouped: 1) design and engineering, 2) production management, 3) quality management, 4) maintenance management and 5) logistics management. Thus, the maturity model provides a normative description of practices in each area and dimension, building a ranked order of practices (i.e. from low to high maturity). A scoring method for maturity assessment is subsequently defined, in order to identify the criticalities in implementing the digital transformation and to subsequently drive the improvement of the whole system. The method should be useful both to manufacturing companies and researchers interested in understanding the digital readiness level in the state of practice.

Maturity Models in the Age of Industry 4.0 – Do the Available Models Correspond to the Needs of Business Practice?

“…The search terms included "Industry 4.0", "Industrial Internet", "I4.0", "Internet Table 1. Overview of scientific Industry 4.0 MMs [7] DeCarolis et al [21] Klötzer and Pflaum -Maturity Model for Digitalization: The authors distinguish between two facilitators of digital transformation: smart product realization and smart product application, which leads to two MMs. Both consist of five stages (digitalization awareness; smart networked products; the service-oriented enterprise; thinking in service systems; the data-driven enterprise) and cover nine dimensions with only minor differences (strategy development; offering to the customer; "smart" product/factory; complementary IT system; cooperation; structural organization; process organization; competencies; innovation culture).…”

Maturity Models and Tools for Enabling Smart Manufacturing Systems: Comparison and Reflections for Future Developments

“…To define the DREAMY architecture, it was fundamental to identify the relevant manufacturing operational processes, within which value-added activities are performed, and that are strategic for the digital transition to SM [20]. To make the architecture as general as possible, manufacturing operational processes were grouped in five main areas: 1) Design and Engineering; 2) Production Management; 3) Quality Management; 4) Maintenance Management; 5) Logistics Management.…”

“…Each process area can be considered as a self-contained module and therefore it is possible to add or remove areas as needed based on certain industrial situations. Cutting across the process areas is the Digital Backbone, within which all the information exchange processes across the process areas are considered [20]. The digital readiness of a manufacturing company is then defined through a scale of maturity levels.…”

“…The CMMI maturity levels provide a generic staring point. These maturity levels have been adapted in order to gather the definitions, and so the semantic, of the digital readiness levels for the DREAMY model [20] (see Table 1).…”

“…According to the maturity level definitions in Table 2, a manufacturing company's digital readiness needs to be evaluated along the four dimensions as shown in Fig. 1: Process, Monitoring and Control, Technology, and Organization [20].…”