Starting your Digital Factory Initiative? Avoid these pitfalls for a successful journey!
Published on : Sunday 08-08-2021
Building a Smart Factory is a journey that requires detailed planning, identification and prioritisation of areas of intervention, says Nitin Kalothia.
Digital technologies have had a profound impact on the way products are manufactured and sold, and there is no argument. Many manufacturing companies in India have either just begun the journey or aspire to initiate, very few organisations have inched ahead in the race. Many global researches indicate that Digital Transformation is one of the top 3 agenda for most CXOs, and the confidence on the role of Industry 4.0 is quite high. Still, many organisations are yet to capitalise on the power of I4.0 technologies.
A LinkedIn survey indicated that not being able to justify the RoI and a clear value creation are the biggest constraint to Industry 4.0 adoption.
In our experience, organisations should plan to navigate through the following challenges that are encountered by most companies during their digital transformation journey.
1. It’s the process first and tool next and not otherwise! We often get overwhelmed by the power of a technology and start implementing it in our environment. While it seems very exciting to begin with, without a thoughtful and validated business case, the value creation and business impact is often not significant enough to move beyond the pilot phase. Identify and prioritise business problems that need to be solved and choose the right technology to address it. Many organisations that have digitised shop floor operations using MES or IIoT solution have challenges expanding beyond the first factory or manufacturing line, because the impact of the deployment cannot be justified.
2. Digital Technologies are not a magic wand that will vanish all your problems! Technology is an enabler that will help reduce or eliminate manufacturing problems and achieve operational goals, provided the deployed technology is used by the employees effectively. While the deployment can be accelerated, training employees, enabling them to use it effectively for problem solving and implementing the preventive actions will follow the process and requires time. It is important to set the right expectations while starting the transformation journey.
3. Compliment Long Term Digital Roadmap with short sprint-based plans! One of the biggest pitfalls is to start deploying a technology solution without considering its scalability, product roadmap, integration with other IT platforms and its fitment to the long-term IT roadmap. Building a long-term digital transformation plan that follows a platform strategy and can fund itself over a period of time is crucial to the success of the initiative. Short sprints should help in quick value realisation, so that the financial gains can be reinvested for continuing the transformation journey and the platform approach should enable the scalability, flexibility and integration capabilities.
4. People Strategy is as important as the Hardware & Software Strategy! Digital Transformation roadmaps clearly outline the infrastructure requirements, equipment level automation want and OT & IT layer integration process. However, most roadmaps fail to plan for the ‘People’ layer which is crucial to the success of this journey. Training employees on new skills for effectively using the new technology, change management for their on-boarding, considering end-users concerns and requirements during solution development are some important aspects that often get missed out at the planning stage.
In summary, building a ‘Smart Factory’ is a journey that requires detailed planning, identification and prioritisation of areas of intervention, careful choice of technology platforms, a strong business case, and employee onboarding and participation. Most successful programs have been aligned to the vision of the organisation that delivers consistent business benefits and are able to fund itself over a period of time to ensure long term sustenance.
Kaizen Hansei is a strategic partner of Kaizen Institute, India with the larger objective to facilitate and expedite the transformational journeys of clients towards organisational excellence. Recognition programs by Kaizen Hansei provide the intellectual stimulus for the organisations to benchmark best practices, learn, implement and thus excel.
To learn about Smart Manufacturing framework, visit: https://imexi.org/smart-manufacturer/
Nitin Kalothia has over 18 years of industry experience in Manufacturing, Consulting & Technology. In his past roles, he has led manufacturing consulting practices in large organisations and driven the scale up. He has been responsible for conceptualising and building differentiated solutions for the manufacturing industry by leveraging domain and technical knowledge. He has launched many new programs like Global Performance Benchmarking, Technical due diligence for investment decisions, Smart Factory program, and Business Excellence Frameworks.
Nitin has 15+ Publications to his credit till date, focused on IT in Manufacturing, Operational Excellence, Supply Chain, Innovation, Sustainability and Green Manufacturing practices.
