A maturity framework for autonomous solutions in manufacturing firms: The interplay of technology, ecosystem, and business model

Abstract

Significant advancements within the fields of digitalization, electrification, and automation have enabled the development, testing, and implementation of increasingly advanced autonomous solutions. Current examples of industrial automation promise significant economic and sustainability-oriented benefits for industrial customers. Yet, implemented autonomous solutions have rarely advanced beyond ‘islands of autonomy’. Although enabling initial improvements in the efficiency and effectiveness of operations, they have not led to the systemic process improvements that fully integrated site-wide solutions can achieve. It is becoming increasingly clear that the major challenges in this shift extend beyond technology to focus on business transformation and ecosystem relationships. Yet, extant research offers few insights into these domains. There is a need to develop a business-focused maturity framework for autonomous solutions to contribute to a predominantly technical discourse and support equipment actors and their wider ecosystems in commercializing autonomous solutions. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how industrial equipment manufacturers can align the development of technology, business models and ecosystem relationships for the advancement of autonomous solutions. We build on case studies that include 32 interviews from four industrial equipment manufacturers and their extended ecosystems of customers and partners. We capture our findings in a three-level maturity framework for industrial autonomous solutions. This framework unwraps the attributes of each level from the perspectives of technical system development, ecosystem configuration, and business model design and is complemented by three overarching principles for the successful commercialization of autonomous solutions.