MESA Manufacturing Operation Management Maturity Assessment Tool

MESA MOM/CMM (Manufacturing Operations Management / Capability Maturity Model) Assessment Tool is a questionnaire-based tool designed to help evaluate maturity and readiness of manufacturing enterprises from the factory operation management perspective. Based on level 3 of ISA-95: Part 1 MOM processes, MOM/CMM defines evaluation criteria for four operational areas namely, productions operations management, quality operations management, inventory operations management and maintenance operations management. Each operational area consists of a set of activities including detailed scheduling, dispatching, execution management, resource management, definition management, data collection and tracking and performance analysis. With the tool, users can assess their maturity level (0 to 5) of each activity independently, i.e., they can pick and choose activities and operational areas they would like to assess in any order.

The tool provides two assessment modes – Comprehensive and Quick. The quick assessment model allows the user to obtain the maturity level value quicker, while the assessment detail may not be available because not all questions are answered. It can be useful for scanning through maturities of all activities to identify troubling areas before performing the comprehensive assessment.

In the “comprehensive assessment” mode, the user essentially answers all the questions. It will take longer to arrive at the maturity level for each activity but detailed results are available at the end. There are, however, two options to go through the comprehensive assessment – 1) via multiple-choice questions and 2) via YES / NO questions. The users will encounter fewer questions in the multiple-choice format and should be able to complete the questionnaire quicker than via the YES / NO format. On the other hand, the questions in the YES /NO format are very discrete and clearly grouped by each maturity level. The user will see exactly what is going on in the assessment using the YES / NO format.

The “quick assessment” has the same number of questions as the “YES / NO Questions”, however, it has a conditional assessment logic that enables the user to obtain the maturity level value two time faster. However, this reduction in the assessment time is at the expense of the detailed results. In other words, the users will not get a complete reason why a maturity level is low.

One of the strategies to use the tool is to do quick assessments on activities and then do comprehensive assessments on the activities with low maturity. In this way, the user can save time while not losing the details.

The tool is self-guided. It is a Microsoft Excel Macro. The user simply opens the spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel. Click the “Launch Evaluation Tool” usa-button. Select the evaluation mode described above. Then select the operational area and activities to evaluate. Click the Start Evaluation usa-button and all the necessary questionnaires will be presented. 

Another complimentary tool is the NIST Smart Manufacturing Readiness Level Assessment Tool.