Before investing further in digital manufacturing, a multinational manufacturer needed a clear understanding of where its production sites stood. Through a structured maturity assessment, the company gained an objective view of digital strengths and gaps across its global network, enabling a more focused and scalable transformation strategy.
Key achievements:
- Created the client’s first consistent, enterprise-wide view of digital maturity across five production sites.
- Engaged more than 80 stakeholders to build a comprehensive picture of digital capabilities and challenges.
- Identified systemic inefficiencies and underused enterprise tools through consolidated digital dashboards.
- Developed a global digital transformation roadmap aligned with enterprise strategy.
- Established a foundation for implementation of advanced technologies such as predictive maintenance, AI/ML, and digital twins.
The challenge
The client operated a global manufacturing network with significant variability in digital maturity across sites. While select plants had begun adopting automation, advanced analytics, and connected systems, others continued to rely on manual, paper-based processes. This disparity created inefficiencies in day-to-day operations and limited the organization’s ability to standardize practices and scale improvements. As a result, leadership lacked consistent, reliable data to support timely and informed decision-making across the network.
Compounding this challenge, IT and operational technology (OT) environments were not fully integrated. Critical production and performance data remained fragmented across systems, restricting real-time visibility and preventing end-to-end process optimization. This lack of connectivity hindered cross-site collaboration and reduced the organization’s ability to leverage data as a strategic asset.
From an organizational perspective, the client faced constraints in digital capabilities and capacity. Key knowledge was often concentrated with individual experts, increasing operational risk and limiting scalability. At the same time, competing priorities and constrained resources made it difficult to consistently advance digital initiatives or sustain momentum across sites.
Most importantly, the absence of a unified digital transformation strategy resulted in largely decentralized and uncoordinated efforts. Individual sites pursued local initiatives independently, leading to:
- Duplication of effort and inconsistent technology choices
- Variability in standards, governance, and cybersecurity practices
- Limited ability to scale successful solutions across the network
- Gaps in lifecycle management and long-term sustainability
Without a clear baseline of current-state maturity and a structured roadmap for progression, the organization struggled to align stakeholders, prioritize investments, and realize the full value of its digital initiatives.
To address these challenges and establish a fact-based foundation for transformation, the client engaged C&F to perform a Digital Plant Maturity Model (DPMM) assessment, providing a consistent framework to evaluate current capabilities, identify gaps, and define a scalable path forward for their global manufacturing network.
How C&F helped
C&F leveraged BioPhorum’s Digital Plant Maturity Model (DPMM), an industry-recognized framework for assessing digital manufacturing capabilities, to establish an objective baseline across the client’s global production network and define a scalable path forward. The engagement was structured around four key phases.
Alignment & Readiness
C&F worked with executive and site leadership to align on transformation objectives and tailor the DPMM framework to the client’s operating context. In addition to assessing maturity, the approach captured site-specific pain points, existing solutions, and improvement opportunities, ensuring the assessment reflected both strategic priorities and operational realities.
Site Assessments
Over five in-depth site visits, the team conducted approximately 30 hours of assessment at each location, engaging 15–20 stakeholders across production, quality, IT, engineering, and operations. Rather than relying solely on self-assessments, C&F validated digital maturity through workshops, interviews, and real operational examples, providing a comprehensive view of capabilities across people, processes, technology, and data.
Insights & Recommendations
Assessment findings were consolidated into digital dashboards and heatmaps, giving leadership a clear view of digital maturity across sites and helping benchmark performance across the network. Several common themes emerged, including:
- Heavy reliance on manual processes and limited global standardization
- Underutilization of enterprise platforms such as SAP, LIMS, and ServiceNow
- Skills and capacity gaps limiting technology adoption
- Siloed innovation with limited cross-site knowledge sharing
Based on these findings, C&F identified both immediate improvement opportunities and longer-term initiatives, ranging from digitizing tech transfer and strengthening data governance to implementing predictive maintenance and enhancing cybersecurity readiness.
Strategy & Roadmap
The final phase translated assessment findings into an enterprise-aligned digital transformation roadmap that balanced quick wins with long-term capability building. Recommendations included establishing a Digital Transformation Office (DTO) to govern execution, investing in workforce upskilling in data, analytics, and AI/ML, and creating mechanisms for knowledge sharing and continuous improvement across sites.
The result
The engagement provided the client with its first enterprise-wide, data-driven baseline of digital maturity, creating a single source of truth across its global manufacturing network. Leadership gained clear visibility into where capabilities were lagging, where pockets of excellence existed, and how to prioritize investments to maximize impact.
Armed with this clarity, the organization was able to shift from fragmented, site-led initiatives to a more coordinated and strategically aligned transformation approach. The introduction of a structured roadmap and governance model enabled sites to align on common priorities, adopt consistent standards, and reduce duplication of effort, while still allowing for local flexibility where needed.
Importantly, the assessment outcomes translated into immediate and actionable progress. Early initiatives focused on standardizing key processes, improving data accessibility, and increasing utilization of existing enterprise platforms; delivering quick wins while building momentum for broader transformation efforts.
At the same time, the client established a stronger foundation for scaling advanced capabilities across the network. This includes expanding the use of predictive technologies, enabling cloud-based data ecosystems, and increasing automation across production and quality operations. All supported by clearer ownership, governance, and investment prioritization.
As a result, the organization is now positioned to evolve toward a more connected, data-driven manufacturing model, with measurable improvements in:
- Operational consistency and efficiency across sites
- Speed and quality of decision-making through improved data visibility
- Risk reduction through stronger governance and reduced reliance on individual expertise
- Scalability of digital solutions and best practices across the network
This positions the client not just to advance individual initiatives, but to sustain and continuously scale digital transformation as a core capability.