Digital Transformation is not about the use of technologies.

Forward looking leaders understand the need to take the lead in digitization, by transforming its operations in a manner that drives interoperability, information transparency, technical support, and de-centralized decision making – all these and more as the organization shifts its modern industrial vision into Smart Manufacturing.

Digital Transformation revolutionizes manufacturing operations for improved performance, agility and regulatory compliance, thus transforming how companies manage their assets, improving asset utilization and reducing downtime, resulting in improved throughput, quality, compliance and energy management. Digital Transformation represents an alignment of the use of the technologies across the business to provide both operational and business improvement.

However, Digital Transformation is not about the use of technologies.

Business leader who wants to start on Digital Transformation to enhance on the business performance, must be guided by broader business strategy on how Digital Transformation can delivers values to the people, process and assets of their business. The best combination of the technologies to be deployed for a given organisation will vary from one business strategy to another.

Typical steps that business organization can take for their digital transformation journey are:

1. Each business organization leader must set their overall Business Objectives which they want to attain as well as the vision on how these objectives will help to transform the overall business.
2. The next activity should be focused on understanding the gap of the current workflow against the business expectations and demands. Identify the areas that need to be enhanced and improved.
3.  From the study, establish realistic goals or business KPI to achieve
4. Evaluating on the technologies tool to adopt after establishing the goals. Finalize the activities plan and timeline to implement those tools. Set the project.

Singapore Smart Industry Readiness Index (SIRI)

For the businesses to evaluate on their current gaps and deciding on the areas to focus, the Singapore Smart Industry Readiness Index (SIRI) is a deliberate attempt to help the business organizations.

The index is comprised of three layers. The top layers are: Process, Technology and Organization that must be considered for any business organization in its transformation strategy.

Underpinning these 3 building blocks are eight key pillars which represent critical areas that companies must focus on to drive more improvement:

• ​Technology building block: 3 Pillars
  • Automation, Connectivity and Intelligence
• Process building block: 3 Pillars
  • Operations, Supply Chain, Product Lifecycle
• Organization building block: 2 Pillars
  • Talent Readiness, Structure and Management

The 3 building blocks and 8 pillars just described map onto 16 dimensions, which can help the business organization asses the current readiness of their facilities. Out of these 16 dimensions, there are 9 in the technology block where the Automation, Connectivity and Intelligence pillars are assessed into three difference layers:

• At the lower band the shop floor layer where the production and management of goods is carried out
• At the higher band is the Enterprise layer where administrative tasks are carried out
• The top band is the Facility which is the physical entity or premises where production takes place

Hence the 9 dimensions to assess the Technology readiness are:

• Automation technology readiness in the Shopfloor, Enterprise and Facility
• Connectivity readiness in the Shopfloor, Enterprise and Facility
• Intelligence readiness in the Shopfloor, Enterprise and Facility

All the Automation, Connectivity and Intelligence dimensions of the technology block not only evaluate the degree and flexibility of the respective readiness in the Shopfloor, Enterprise and Facility layers, it also accessing the extend of the overall integration across these multiple layers.

For example, if automation is introduced in the Shopfloor layer, its flexibility will then allow processes to be reconfigured and machines to be re-tasked at production planning layer which then allow the whole plant or company to manufacture a greater variety of products with shorter turnaround times. In other words, through implementation of technologies tool across all the three layers will converge and interact dynamically with one another as a single integrated whole to bring overall business benefits.

The approach outlined above helps the business organization to assess their current readiness, understand the existing gap in order to plan out their approach for their digital journey as well as the technology tools to adopt. This journey should not stop at drawing up the strategy but should also look beyond and consider the standardization roadmap onwards to sustain the continuous improvement in order to drive evolution in their business.

Our Approach

We are leading digital transformation with its platform technologies, driving across the asset and operational life cycle, to deliver improved profitability and operational excellence and maximize return on capital. Three key functions in our offerings which are in line with SIRI approach for technologies readiness dimensions across the Shopfloor, Enterprise and Plant layers can be shown in the following:

These offerings ensure complete coverage across the manufacturing values chain: from Shopfloor in the plants to the whole enterprise planning and supply chain integration. The offerings utilize the technologies which readily available today such as Cloud, Mobility, IIOT, Big Data and AI for the business imperatives required by customer to face with the challenges in today volatile market environment. 

Some notable values that we are delivering from the above offerings are as follows:

• Improve overall asset performance by implementing condition monitoring as well as predictive maintenance and risk base maintenance strategy
• Shift from periodic reporting to real-time performance management
• Speed up the process of data collection and reduce TCO for engineering and maintaining the connectivity and integration with disparate data sources
• Create one absolute version of truth in terms of all process and production data from all the plants with improved visibility
• Eliminate the risks of error in encoding or falsification of data
• Built custom reports and dashboards for plant managers and other key stakeholders
• Empower the users with access to process or production data via desktops, lab tops, tablets and mobile devices anytime from anywhere
• Produce real time analytics and status of operations where real time information from the plant to monitor production performance, analyse production loss, measure Overall Equipment Efficiency, increase production throughput and improve manufacturing service levels
• Integrate the operation system with higher level business IT systems
• Improve reaction times during process upsets 
• Reduce costs and rationalization in resources management
• Continuously improvement through Manufacturing Intelligence by consistently applying performance metrics across the entire enterprise for driving long term sustainability