7 Things You Must Do to Prepare for Digital Transformation

Industry 4.0 promises enormous benefits to manufacturing companies, but it can be difficult to implement. Digital transformation is much more than a technology project. It requires organizational, process, behavioral, and even cultural change.

If you’re just getting started or are struggling with digital transformation, here is some advice from our expert panel at our recent Connected Worker conference in Houston.

#1: Ensure Connectivity

It perhaps goes without saying that you need to enough bandwidth to support all the different devices and systems that you expect to run. But it does need saying because it’s easy to underestimate the challenge.

At Chevron Philips Chemical company, for instance, Jason Gislason, Chief Digital Officer, says that the technological advances of the past couple of years means that more and more bandwidth is needed. That makes connectivity one of their big challenges. He says that Chevron Philips is looking at private LTE networks and 5G to help to support the variety of devices that they use.

At EDF Renewables, on the other hand, Remi Raphael, VP of Digital Transformation, says that remote sites pose a particular challenge. It’s no use sending out an engineer with a connected device if the nearest internet connection is miles away.

Fast and reliable connectivity is an important prerequisite for any digital transformation program.

READ: 8 Technologies Manufacturers Need to Prepare for Recovery and Build Resilience

#2: Evaluate the Readiness of your Organization AND Technical Systems

Once connectivity is available, the next question is whether your organization and systems are ready for the change. Does the organization believe in the change? Are they asking for it? Are they ready to commit dedicated resources to it?

If not, it will be an uphill struggle to implement any digital device. Users will feel that it has been imposed upon them. Without dedicated resources from the business, the applications that IT develops will not be as relevant and useful to business users.

Similarly, legacy IT systems can pose big challenges to new projects. You need to take an honest look at your company’s technical capabilities before launching into a new project. Chevron’s Gislason says that he will deprioritize projects if the technical capability isn’t in place first. He will also put projects on hold if the business is not ready to commit resources to it.

“If the business isn’t willing to dedicate full-time employees, then we’re not going to do it. If it’s not a good use of their resources, then it’s not a good use of our resources and it’s not in the best interest of the organization,” he explains.

#3: Prioritize

Digital isn’t something that you can do on the side. Nor can you tackle everything at once. It takes dedicated focus to deliver a successful digital transformation. Where will you get the biggest bang for your buck?

“You can’t do a digital project when it’s one of 20 other priorities,” says Julie Thyne, Global Improvement Director at Dow Chemicals. “You have to set aside that resource group.”

At EDF Renewables, Raphael explains that he would rather focus on a small number of projects and deliver them to a high quality. The biggest metric of success, he says, is not the number of projects you complete but your user adoption.  By prioritizing your efforts and going after the biggest wins first, you’re most likely to see user uptake.

READ: Industry 4.0 in a World Turned Upside Down - A Manufacturers Guide

#4: Get your Processes in Order

While implementing technology can seem like a step forward for any process, the truth is that sometimes technology merely speeds up inefficient processes.

Digital transformation is an opportunity to do things differently by understanding and improving the underlying processes.

“Probably one of the worst things you can do is solidify a bad process,” says Jason Gislason.

In fact, digital transformation can even make bad processes worse. EDF’s Raphael recounts a story of how his company digitized a paper form and made all the fields mandatory without looking at what was truly necessary from a process perspective. Users resoundingly rejected the “improvement” because the paper form was faster to fill out and allowed you to leave irrelevant fields blank.

#5: Talk to Your Frontline Workers

Who knows best the challenges that workers currently face? That’s right, your workers.

Frontline workers can have decades of experience and can offer valuable insight into both the challenges they face and possible solutions. They’re also the people who ultimately will use (or not) the digital tools that you develop. Talk to them. They’re critical to your success.

LEARN MORE: WEBINAR: Preparing your Workforce for the Digital Future 

#6: Walk Before You Run

Michelengelo didn't learn how to paint the Sistine Chapel in a day. If your organization is still in the digital equivalent of doing cave drawings, you might want to look at small steps that inch you closer to your masterpiece. Aiming too high before you’re ready is a sure-fire way to fail and create disillusionment in your organization.

Digital is a skill that takes practice and time to develop.

“Right now, you can’t even conceptualize what we’ll be doing differently,” says Jason Gislason. “Once we get to that point, we’ll be able to see opportunities we never saw before. It’s not always immediate.”

#7: Prepare for a (Long) Journey

As technologies continue to evolve and change, digital capabilities will need to changeto keep pace. You can’t expect that you’ll digitally transform once and be onto the next big thing. Digital transformation is a journey that will continue to unfold, and each organization must find its own way through the technology jungle.  

“Don’t feel discouraged if your organization is not there yet,” advises EDF’s Raphael. “It’s a journey to transform this whole world around us about how workers are interacting with their work and improving efficiencies in the field.”

“There is always resistance; don’t let it get you down,” says Chevron’s Jason Gislason. “That means you’re actually doing something. You’re looking for that point where you’ve got just enough resistance to feel like you’re changing the organization.”

Interested in learning more about this topic?

Join over 200 industry leaders at The Connected Manufacturing Worker on 28-29 June 2022 in London and learn how to build a connected workforce to improve resilience, agility, and growth in a recovering economy. Read the agenda here.