Evaluating the smart maturity of manufacturing companies along the product development process to set a PLM project roadmap

For manufacturers investing in Industry 4.0 technologies could not be enough to be competitive. They also need to assess their actual digital status quo and to evaluate how these technologies support their product development process. Different methods and maturity models exist in literature helping practitioners to evaluate the maturity of either their smart manufacturing level or their design and engineering process and to analyse the wastes along their development process. Nevertheless, a coalescence of these tools is still missing. The paper aims at proposing a systematic and integrated methodology evaluating a company under the two-fold level of digital and lean maturity, also supported by a benchmark analysis. The final aim is to set and adequately ground a PLM project roadmap for companies willing to approach digitisation. Three application cases, business to business engineering to order Italian companies engineering and developing advanced industrial machineries, have been selected to validate the research.