A Maturity Model for Assessing the Digital Readiness of Manufacturing Companies

“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 manufac‐ turing transformation. In fact, the introduction of such technologies allows companies to find solutions capable to turn increasing complexity into opportu‐ nities for ensuring sustainable competitiveness and profitable growth. Nonethe‐ less, 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 imple‐ menting 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 Inte‐ gration) 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 manage‐ ment and (5) logistics management. Thus, the maturity model provides a norma‐ tive 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 imple‐ menting 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.