Defining the Roadmap towards Industry 4.0: The 6Ps Maturity Model for Manufacturing SMEs

Abstract

In the contest of Manufacturing Industry, in order to keep competitiveness and adapt to the current trends of the market that range from the need for new Business Models up to the capability to turn their processes according to the incoming trends, Industry 4.0 is now considered a major opportunity for enhancing such transformation. However, before adapting these technologies to achieve the mentioned goals, manufacturing firms achieve specific requirements that characterize a digital transformation process. This step turns out to be particularly challenging for manufacturing SMEs which might have a biased view on both their current level of digitalization and/or lack of a clear view of the desired performances to achieve to accomplish their objectives. Hence, a clear and coherent digital transformation roadmap results crucial to move toward a smart manufacturing. In light of this, the paper presents the 6Ps maturity model (MM), developed within the MIDIH project, that aims at supporting manufacturing SMEs in the development of their roadmap towards Digitalized Manufacturing 4.0. The 6Ps maturity model is based on 6 main socio-business and technical dimensions (i.e., Product-Services, Processes, Platform, People, Partnership, Performance), 36 Industry 4.0-related areas and a 5-levels scale of digital maturity (DM). It enables a comprehensive assessment of SMEs’ status-quo, the identification of the desired future maturity level and the subsequent creation of a customized migration roadmap. The model has been developed from a review of extant literature and a comparison of current MMs according to the 31 most common areas of coverage. The 6Ps MM has been tested and validated with a sample of manufacturing SMEs.