Towards an Integrated Threefold Maturity Model for Manufacturing SMEs: A Systematic Literature Review of Lean, Digital, and Sustainability Maturity Models

Abstract

In light of the ongoing twin digital and green transitions, small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises’ (SMEs’) performance and development should be reassessed using more holistic approaches, which include the use of (i) productivity (lean), (ii) digitalisation, and (iii) (environmental) sustainability practices to enable them to remain competitive in an ever more demanding market and changing industrial landscape. In this scenario, maturity models have emerged as proven methods or guides for assessing a company’s growth and development in organisational capabilities. This systematic literature review (SLR) focuses on identifying and analysing research works in the scientific body of knowledge about maturity models which offer a detailed guide for integrating productivity (lean), digitalisation, and/or (environmental) sustainability practices in a holistic way into manufacturing companies’ operating models, particularly SMEs, for improved performance and competitiveness. The SLR is based on 22 publications selected out of 763 records published in an open timeframe in the Scopus and Web of Science databases. Furthermore, this SLR offers guidelines for the structural development of comprehensive hybrid maturity models oriented to the integration of lean, digital, and (environmental) sustainability principles, practices, and tools in a synergetic way towards an integrated threefold maturity model for the lean–digital–sustainable (LDS) industrial transformation of manufacturing SMEs.