# A Framework for Assessing Manufacturing SMEs Industry 4.0 Maturity
## 4 Results-Theory Building
### Maturity Models Inputs and Outputs  
After an understanding of the proposed framework and its differences with the existing ones, the natural next step is to understand what kind of inputs and outputs this framework considers. Here, the fourth and last followed step of the ones proposed by [PERSON] et al. 2020 [PERSON] et al. (2020) is presented. This section includes an explanation of the types of inputs of this framework, which comes in the form of a questionnaire, where each question is related to a sub-dimension. It also entails a description of the two different outputs that this framework provides. Bearing in mind that the definition of a model stands for the transformation of a certain input into an output ([PERSON] et al., 2019), the combination of this framework with certain inputs and outputs engenders a model. These model's inputs are introduced in the proposed framework in the form of a questionnaire. Each question can be considered as an evaluating item that assesses the topic related to its respective sub-dimension. It should be noted that there might be different ways to ask the same question depending on the receiver, i.e., depending on the knowledge of I4.0 and the overall understanding of the company's business, the same question should be asked in different ways to different collaborators. Therefore, this work provides only the field/item (sub-dimension) upon which a question should be asked rather than the question itself. To ease the process of attributing a maturity level to each sub-dimension, each question comes along with six pre-defined answers, which can also help in the formulation of the question. Each answer represents a different maturity level in the sub-dimension related to the question, as can be appreciated in Figure 4.  
Although not presented in any of the research articles and models, when approaching professionals that have applied them, it was understood that contrary to what was thought at the beginning of this journey, the overall maturity level of I4.0 is not the most important information to extract from a maturity assessment. In fact, there are not many substantial outcomes to be obtained from an overall level of maturity (except, for example, sectorial benchmarking), in the sense that there is not any tangible step for an enterprise to take for it to become more involved in I4.0. After all, the overall maturity level is a combination of maturity levels from each dimension, thus not being very insightful. In fact, an average value might not be very representative of the performance of a multi-component system. In contrast, analyzing each of the system's components allows a more refined and accurate analysis to be executed. One way to overcome the above-mentioned issue is for the model to provide information about the maturity levels associated with each dimension instead of only delivering an overall maturity level. To illustrate this reasoning we present two exemplifying maturity levels (see Figure 5a,b). Figure 4: Three examples of sub-dimensions and respective answers (that correspond to maturity level). The first output of this model is a radar chart that presents the maturity level of each dimension (an example can be seen in Figure 5a); the second chart is the more insightful one. This second chart structure is the same as the previous one, but here it is possible to consult the sub-dimensions for maturity level. An example of this chart is shown in Figure 5b. It is possible to directly extract the maturity level of each sub-dimension instead of merely each dimension. As such, instead of merely presenting an aggregated value, the model's output directly provides each sub-dimension's maturity level. More evidence of the bigger relevance of the dimensions' values over the overall maturity level is that the models that propose the usual obstacles/hurdles that companies face as they try to achieve higher maturity levels associate each obstacle with each model's dimension (the readiness model from IMPULS published in 2016 is a very good example [3]).