Evaluating the Smart Readiness and Maturity of Manufacturing Companies Along the Product Development Process

Abstract

Nowadays, manufacturing industries are compelled to go down the river of Industry 4.0 to either become or remain competitive on the market: in this context digital technologies represent the most important means for manufacturers to drive their transformation. However, investing in this kind of technologies could be not enough to go through this transformation in an effective way: manufacturers need to realize which is their actual digital status and at the same time to evaluate how they support their product development process. In addition, it has not to be neglected the importance of how the process of product development is organized and managed throughout the several functions involved. So far, different methods and maturity models have been proposed in literature to help practitioners to evaluate the readiness and maturity of either their smart level or their design and engineering process. Nevertheless, a suitable combination of these tools still needs to be implemented to fully and systematically measure and gauge a company under a PLM and digital perspective: to do this, a case study has been conducted.