Part 2 of 3: Key drivers for digital transformation

In the first blog in this series, we discussed the increased need for digital transformation in the process and manufacturing industry – and why so many transformation projects ultimately fail. But, we also touched on the reasons some succeed.

At Royal HaskoningDHV Digital, we believe a synergy between operations and IT is integral to the success of any digital project, but that’s not the only factor. In this blog, we’ll focus on the importance of the existing capabilities within your organisation, and why having clearly defined business goals is key.

Formulating your business goals

The key to any successful transformation is having clearly defined business goals from the outset. Identifying your organisation’s desired end state is necessary for you to guide meaningful change.

At Royal HaskoningDHV, we always emphasise the importance of this to our clients, primarily because these goals act as a vital benchmark for defining the success of all transformation efforts. But there are other important benefits too.

Clearly defined business goals can:

1. Provide crucial direction on what needs to be done to achieve desired end states, allowing for better decision making
2. Outline the ways you want to differentiate from competitors, and how your transformation can enable that
3. Provide the ability to measure progress and prioritise projects based on their impact on overall business strategy

When working with our clients, we have several tools that can help them formulate the right business goals for their specific situation.

We begin by conducting a digital assessment of the company, and combine our findings from that with the latest information about market trends, both within and outside the relevant industry. This helps to establish the right direction for future developments.

Then we drill down, formulating specific use cases to make these strategies more detailed. By defining specific requirements and actions for each of your digital investments – all of which must add to your organisation’s strategic goals – it becomes easier to prioritise which projects to pursue.

You can then translate the most relevant use cases into a business case to support your decision-making process and get buy-in from stakeholders.

Identifying your enabling organisational capabilities

To achieve these business goals, you of course need the right capabilities within your organisation. This includes your assets, people, processes, and data.

For organisations working in a manufacturing or other industry setting, assets are particularly important. Their capacity, performance, and throughput have a huge impact on operations.

At manufacturing companies, key assets are generally things like equipment, parts, production lines, and the plant buildings themselves. And it’s vital to continually plan, optimise, and control these assets to minimise costs while maximising availability and performance.

To embrace the full possibilities digital industry (including the benefits of Industry 4.0), digitalising asset management and performance activities is essential. This involves turning sensor-based machine data into real-time actionable intelligence, and gives valuable insights to enable better decision-making and increased productivity and profitability.

However, this form of digitalisation requires vital input and coordination from three other aspects of your organisation: people, processes, and data. These elements will determine the success or failure of your transformation efforts.

People

The way you manage your people will be a major factor in the success of your digital transformation efforts.

The talent within your organisation will provide the competencies, skills, and abilities needed to transform, implement, and operate your smart manufacturing and digital industry-related systems. And that means these skills have to be updated at the same pace as your technology.

To ensure this is the case, it’s important to work with your employees to determine strategies that develop digital competencies in line with transformation strategies. Learn more.

Processes

The goal of digitalising your processes is to achieve a complete integration between planning, scheduling, quality management, cost control, material movement, and shop floor operations.

Transforming these processes requires a high level of insight into how each one works, so you can highlight bottlenecks and weaknesses in workflows, identify opportunities for cost reductions, and set clear goals for digital improvements.

Data

High-quality data is the foundation of any digital transformation initiative.

Therefore, every digital transformation project should be based on collecting relevant data, and knowing how to turn that into meaningful information to support decision making and across your wider organisation.

How Royal HaskoningDHV Digital can help

Our in-depth technical knowledge of assets, people, processes, and data – and our expertise in strategic consulting and technical engineering – allows us to help our clients take a structured approach to their digitalisation initiatives.

We’ll support you for every step of the journey from conception to completion, with the following key services.

We enable digital transformation through strategic consulting

We’ll help you define the right strategies and roadmaps to create value using digital technologies. We combine our understanding of the physical world with digital transformation expertise to help you raise awareness, identify relevant use cases, and make a transformational difference.

We optimise assets, process, and data through technical engineering

We help you to design and deploy the right software solutions to meet your requirements and create maximum value from your data. Our approach to smart maintenance and advanced process control provides increased consistency, availability, and performance.

We provide digital capabilities for industry

We develop and provide digital skills programs for industry, at sector level, and for individual companies. We also partner with universities and vocational institutes to help streamline knowledge transfer and improve the results of innovation industrywide.

The benefits of a greenfield situation in action

At Royal HaskoningDHV Digital, we have helped countless organisations to drive successful digital transformation projects. When we look at an organisation’s enabling capabilities, it’s clear that greenfield situations provide a great opportunity to integrate the physical and digital world. When the company’s digital ambitions are included in a factory’s design phase, the organisational capabilities can be structured to the desired target state from the start.
Although it is tempting to build on past experiences, there is more value in responding to future possibilities.

For example, we worked with an international operating company that had plans to relocate one of its fertiliser plants, and saw this as an opportunity to implement new, digital capabilities.

After a pre-feasibility study was conducted, the company chose Royal HaskoningDHV to carry out the physical and digital design of the factory at the same time. This ensured that new technologies could be integrated at an early stage, reducing the amount of rework required compared to planning sequentially.

The company sought to exploit the opportunities Industry 4.0 can provide, including:

1. Integrated monitoring
2. Greater process control to improve quality
3. A foundation for digital twins
4. Advanced safety systems, cyber security, and energy management

The design for the new facility therefore incorporated automation and the latest technologies from the outset. And we were able to structure the enabling capabilities so the company could quickly achieve its goals.