A methodology to guide manufacturing companies towards digitalization

Within the era of Industry 4.0, digital technologies are seen as the main drivers for manufacturing industry transformation. If on one hand manufacturing companies have to be able to “ride” this wave of transformation in order to remain competitive, on the other hand, before investing in digital technologies, they have to understand what their current situation is and what their needs are with respect to both digital technologies and organizational processes in different functions. Indeed, the success of the transformation process mainly depends on the company ability to be ready to apply the technological change that some of these digital technologies envision. From these considerations, after having figured out their current readiness level for starting the digital transformation fostered by the Industry 4.0, it is possible to state that the next step manufacturing companies have to undertake is to define their transformation roadmap. With the aim to guide them towards this transformation process, a maturity model, called DREAMY (Digital REadiness Assessment MaturitY model) and based on the inspiring principles of the CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) framework, has been developed and utilized. The objectives of this model are twofold. Firstly, it allows the assessment of the current digital readiness of manufacturing companies and the identification of their strengths and weaknesses with respect to implemented technologies and organizational processes. Secondly, it enables the identification of a set of opportunities offered to companies by the digital transformation, considering their strengths and aiming to overcome their weaknesses. Through the application of this methodology into case studies, it has been possible to reach two main results. On one hand, the analyzed manufacturing companies have been aware of their digital readiness level, of their strengths and weaknesses and of the main opportunities they can exploit from the digitalization process starting from their current situation. On the other hand, empirical evidences were gathered on the current level of manufacturing companies’ digital readiness and on the possible common traits among the identified opportunities.

Le tecnologie digitali sono oggi viste come il driver principale che abilita la trasformazione delle imprese manifatturiere. Se da una parte le aziende devono avere le capacità per indirizzarsi verso questo percorso per restare competitive e far fronte alle crescenti esigenze derivanti dal mercato in termini di personalizzazione e flessibilità, dall'altra dovrebbero analizzare la propria situazione attuale in base alle proprie peculiarità e alle proprie esigenze prima di investire in tecnologie. Infatti, il successo della loro trasformazione dipende principalmente dalla capacità che l'azienda ha di applicare il cambiamento organizzativo e tecnologico che queste tecnologie richiedono e, a partire da questa constatazione, dal definire la propria roadmap di trasformazione digitale. Da qui, con l'obiettivo di supportare le aziende in queste fasi, l'output di questo lavoro è una metodologia che si basa su un modello di maturità digitale chiamato DREAMY (Digital Readiness Assessment MaturitY model) e che ha come obiettivo quello valutare la maturità digitale attuale delle aziende manifatturiere, di analizzarne punti di forza e di debolezza e di identificare, a partire da questi, le opportunità offerte dalle tecnologie digitali per migliorare il proprio status quo.