Digitisation definitely does not only mean new IT systems, but more to digitalize and develop the business model, streamline business processes, simplify work processes and find new structures and ways to interact with customers and the market. This will allow a better understanding of customers' needs and thus offer competitive products and services.
The list of reasons to digitalize your business can be long. In this article, we have chosen to highlight 5 reasons that we believe are some of the most important.
1. Develop production planning
Are you really using the machines and staff in the most efficient way today? Can you quickly adjust when new orders come in or material requirements change? If not, consider reviewing production planning first, which lays the foundations for efficient production. Often planners struggle with ERP systems and Excel without being able to take actual capacity into account to lay the most optimal plan.
Digitised production planning gives a production planner access to all the necessary information to make changes in real time and detect disruptions to prevent potential failures and downtime. This results in a better and more worry-free flow of production, easier control of material and labor status to meet delivery deadlines or prioritize urgent orders, and visualize and store data about changes in production processes.
2. Operating support - operational support
Operational support is about the various activities that take place within an organisation, and all the practical things that the company needs to run its business. This can include production, information management, logistics, finance and sales. These activities are vital for a company to be able to move its business forward, but more importantly to be able to deliver products and services. Therefore, it is very important for businesses to invest in digitising these operations in order to streamline their processes and thus save money, time and resources.
3. Material flows
Coordination of material flows can be complex and demanding depending on the size of an organisation. Successfully coordinating material flows requires good management of information flows, especially when there are many actors involved in a process or project.
To achieve this, information management and documentation need to be made more efficient through digitisation. Previous studies confirm a strong need for digitisation and digital technologies to create the conditions for business development of innovative and technological solutions and ways of working.
4. Data availability
Data availability is about products and services that enable and ensure that data remains available in the event of a disaster. Data availability is achieved through redundancy, which involves where data is stored and how it can be accessed. In the computer systems of large enterprises, computers typically access data via high-speed optical fibre connections to storage devices.
Data availability can be measured by how often the data is available and how much data can flow out. Ensuring security alongside data availability is absolutely essential as businesses share data, either internally or with a third party.
There is a great business case for investing in data availability, such as:
- Data is aggregated and accessible across the enterprise, between different departments and functional areas with different data centres This makes communication better, more efficient and clearer between different departments and stakeholders.
- A simplified process for collecting and cleansing data retrieved from different sources, consisting of many different types into a single consistent format.
- Saves time and costs compared to manually archiving and searching data.
- Cloud-based storage for large volumes of data for simplified on-demand access, no matter where an employee is or when they need to access data.
- Data is stored and protected in the event of a fire or disaster that could destroy important data and information.
5. Availability of information
A global trend today is to be independent of geographical Location and that Sweden has lagged behind this trend has been clear during the pandemic years. A digitalization pressure is not only digitalization in production, but also that you can actually collaborate across geographical distances. Hence, digitalization provides a huge opportunity to improve accessibility and to be able to utilize the competence that exists, regardless of where it is located.
A production plant is usually a complex process, with many different production lines that must interact in an optimal way, while higher demands are placed on these manufacturing companies to maintain their competitiveness in the market.
Operators get a better overview of what is going on, engineering and maintenance get more support from more advanced analytical tools to work proactively and predictively, quality management gets better decision support and a good traceability from raw material to finished product, and management gets an improved, comprehensive and long-term picture for strategic decisions.
Digitalisation is transformative. It changes the way businesses interact with their environment and usually has a positive impact on revenues. Digitisation brings many new opportunities for businesses, but the road there is lined with ups and downs. Therefore, it is super important to have a clear and confident strategy on how to achieve your specific digitisation goal and preferably use the help of experts in the field for a safe and professional transition to a modern and digitised business.