Why this time round the Smart Strategies (plants, airports etc.) have a chance to succeed!

Too often as a technologist and presenter of where operational systems are going, people come up to me afterwards and ask are you grounded? We have seen people talk about Intelligent, smart manufacturing strategies before but they have failed.

Yes we have had a number of significant attempts with technology and “lights out manufacturing” and various levels of MES/ operational systems, including the rollout of significant ERP programs. But there are some key walk away learnings. 20 / 20 vision is a good reflection:

Since 1995, projects have failed because:

• They started as technology projects
• They were implemented as technology roadmaps
•  Insufficient organization change management
•  Insufficient innovation
• Insufficient integration of people, process, strategy and technology
•  Innovation fatigue

The key with above observation is that too often these programs have been lead from within and based upon applying a technology, expecting the technology to transform the company. The technology goes in often not driven from operations but from automation engineering, or IT, and really it does not have buy in from the plant or “edge” operational people.

Since 1995, projects have succeeded because:

• They started as work transformation projects
• They were implemented as holistic combinations of people, process, strategy and technology
• Senior management actively sponsors the “new way of doing work”
• The Covey “high performing organization” based on their “4 disciplines of execution” are applied

The success of these programs is that they “operational improvement/ transformation driven” but leverage the latest technologies and processes to implement. With this comes the cultural evolution, the buy in from all levels especially “edge operational workers”. There are clear “wild” goals on a direction improvement, and measures put in place to make sure the direction is moving correctly. These are also not projects they are recognized as programs and journeys where assessment, tuning and cultural shift must happen.

 Is there a “silver Bullet” of technology that will take you through this transformation, I say NO, but due to many “planets lining up at the moment” around operational agility, the flat world and transformation of both the workforce and workspace. The operational transformation journey companies are on is been driven by operational requirement to change, and everyone recognizes this, and there are significant technologies with mobility, IOT, and cloud that enable different architectures and solutions to generated faster and aligned.

It is an exciting time of transformation, but always understand why you doing something, and you understand the measures to make sure you are on the correct path.