Digitisation helps businesses to make the most of the information in their business by working smarter. By collecting, analysing and visualising information, employees in all departments of the business can act on it. They can make the right decisions faster. Which in turn both increases efficiency and improves results. Below are five areas that may be worth focusing a little extra on to succeed with your digitisation.
1. The objective
The majority of manufacturing companies today are under great pressure to improve efficiency. That is, a standard to be competitive both in the way they work and in the quality they deliver. The pursuit of these efficiency pressures is often what drives digitalisation. It is important to think about how companies can achieve the high efficiency they are striving for by having clear goals for their digitisation efforts. Digitalisation has great potential to be a significant step in the development of a manufacturing company. However, achieving the desired effects requires having a clearly formulated problem to be solved or a clear improvement to be achieved.
2. Take a holistic approach
Successful digitisation is very much about companies daring to look at the big picture. Many companies are interested in digitalize but don't know where to start. A common mistake is that many digitisation projects are carried out as several, smaller initiatives. This means that the various initiatives do not always support each other and that it becomes difficult to achieve a flow and a whole. Questions should be asked from a holistic perspective, i.e. based on what you have and what your processes look like in order to adapt your business in the best way.
Furthermore, the possibility of using an upgraded version of existing systems should be investigated, as well as which processes you are willing to change. Finally, it is about looking at the possibility of adapting the whole business from a wider perspective.
3. Make your data available
In order to drive effective digitisation work, data availability is needed, from many different parts of the business, which is achieved by retrieving data from equipment and systems. Furthermore, these need to be stored in a logical way. For example, an advanced planning system, where with a direct overview of the whole chain, production plans can be created and changes can be seen in real time. This makes the data available to everyone in the different business areas, which can be a revolutionary solution. Getting the right information at the right time instead of having information scattered in different islands of information with missing or incomplete integration between the islands. This can be a critical solution to overcoming your challenges, which is why it's important to dare to dream big too!
4. Meet data collection requirements with digitisation strategy
In production and manufacturing operations, there are requirements to save and collect their data, which can range from environmental to regulatory requirements. However, good data collection is not just about archiving information, but also how diverse information can be linked between different segments of the business. Often, the reality for companies is a complex process; with multiple production lines and equipment that must interact in an optimal way to maintain and improve quality and delivery reliability. A good digitisation strategy can meet these requirements, which many companies operating in regulatory environments need.
5. The journey of change
Without a clear picture, it is more difficult to verify the benefits of an investment in digitisation and thus more difficult to implement the change journey that digitisation entails. People need to change the way they work in order to benefit from digital tools. It is therefore of the utmost importance to get all employees on board.
While a good goal for the change journey is to embrace change as a whole, there is no general advice that applies to all companies, depending on organisation, experience and much else. Therefore, one should dare to see digitalisation as a change journey for the whole company, i.e. to permeate the whole line between management and operators and let the different projects interact to a large extent. When digitisation efforts are made to work together, the change leads to the desired effects for all groups and employees.
Working smart and efficiently encompasses many different parameters such as digitisation, cloud computing, machine learning and automation, etc. These five general, yet crucial points are about being able to steer the digitisation work to achieve the best effect with our exciting and new technologies. A strong trend today shows that one step to take is to follow the global digitisation trend and also dare to do it in a big way, not just small initiatives. Digitisation does not just involve the benefit of having less paper to keep track of. It creates a great opportunity to make information accessible, to leverage skills regardless of geographical location, and to improve availability and efficiency in production.
In summary: Remember to set clear goals, dare to see the digitisation work as a whole, collect data, involve all employees and use skills regardless of location.
