A smartness assessment framework for smart factories using analytic network process

The so-called smart factory is a novel paradigm that is rapidly gaining ground in scenarios for factories of the future. Many manufacturing companies try to raise the level of smartness by considering a number of aspects related to the smart factory. However, there is a lack of field-oriented systematic research to help them fit the interest of industry for promoting interest and diffusion of smart factory. Moreover, it is still difficult to assess whether the vision of the future factory that incorporates information and communication technologies is implemented. Therefore, in this study, we propose a smartness assessment framework for smart factories which is based on the concept of operation management so as to be easy to make manufacturing companies to understand and apply. The framework is composed of evaluation criteria and sets the weightings of the criteria using analytic network processes. From a case study based on 20 small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises, the effectiveness of the proposed framework has been verified.