An Overview of a Smart Manufacturing System Readiness Assessment

Smart manufacturing, today, is the ability to continuously maintain and improve performance, with intensive use of information, in response to the changing environments. Technologies for creating smart manufacturing systems or factories are becoming increasingly abundant. Consequently, manufacturers, large and small, need to correctly select and prioritize these technologies correctly. In addition, other improvements may be necessary to receive the greatest benefit from the selected technology. This paper proposes a method for assessing a factory for its readiness to implement those technologies. The proposed readiness levels provide users with an indication of their current factory state when compared against a reference model. Knowing this state, users can develop a plan to increase their readiness. Through validation analysis, we show that the assessment has a positive correlation with the operational performance.