Increasing productivity and competitiveness are still major challenges for companies. One approach for performance improvement are maturity models. Their main principle is an objective performance evaluation and improvement that can be applied on different topics (e.g. innovation management, virtual prototyping & simulation). To simplify the application of the principle on new topics, this paper presents a framework that allows an efficient and standardised development of a maturity model that can be conducted as a self-assessment. The framework consists of a standardised architecture for the maturity model, a procedure model for its development and a software-tool. The application of the framework on the topic of Virtual Prototyping & Simulation resulted in the VPS-Benchmark, which serves as an example for a maturity based self-assessment throughout this paper. The paper concludes with an outlook on a future application of the framework in the course of the leading edge cluster it\'s OWL Intelligent Technical Systems OstWestfalenLippe. Here a maturity based self-assessment will be provided to qualify the cluster partners for developing intelligent technical systems.