The #MondayMusings Industrial Transformation blog series provides insight and analysis for executives from the previous week’s briefings, events, and publications @LNSResearch.

On July 18, advanced industrial analytics vendor Seeq announced $23 Million in series B funding. Seeq was founded in 2013 with an initial series A funding of $6 Million led by Second Avenue Partners. The second round of funding included previous as well as new strategic investors like Altira Group with participation from Chevron Technology Ventures and next47, the Siemens backed global venture firm.

LNS Research has published our Analytics That Matter research report (previously titled Metrics That Matter) for several years, with the original research appearing almost a dozen years ago. The 2018 report breaks new ground by moving from a discussion of metrics to a focus on advanced analytics, and putting analytics into LNS Digital Transformation Framework, backed by our recommendations on Operational Architecture.

The #MondayMusings Industrial Transformation blog series provides insight and analysis for executives from the previous week’s briefings, events, and publications @LNSResearch.

Dassault Systèmes (3DS), a leading European software company providing 3D design and engineering software recently held its two-day event, 3DEXPERIENCE FORUM in Vélizy, France. The event gathered industry analysts and shared the company’s vision with deep dives into products and industries. As always, Bernard Charlès, Deputy Chairman and CEO of 3DS, gave the opening address and update about 3DS strategy. Bernard was in top form, starting with a moving and personal tribute to the late Serge Dassault, Chairman, and CEO of Dassault Group. Serge supported Bernard in his long-term view of how 3DS should develop, and helped 3DS become the innovative and successful company it is today.

Asset performance management (APM) 4.0 is a strategy and an approach to maintain and operate manufacturing assets, it’s not an APM 4.0 package that companies can buy “to do APM 4.0.” The APM market is still quite fragmented with few suppliers offering enterprise asset management (EAM) only, others providing just predictive maintenance analytics, while some suppliers offer multiple elements of the APM landscape as integrated and stand-alone solutions. As asset care evolves to allow manufacturers and asset-intensive industries to take advantage of Smart Manufacturing or Industrie 4.0 based digital technologies, businesses need to think about how they are going to maintain these Smart Connected Assets. Big Data analytics, the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), augmented reality / virtual reality (AR/VR), and the Digital Twin are critical to future maintenance systems. Trying to categorize all the vendors that provide these technologies can be a daunting task. Pick the wrong set of partners, and you may never realize the benefits of Digital Transformation. Pick the right partners, and you could well outperform the competition. Understanding how to make the right choice of partners is the first step towards APM 4.0.

The #MondayMusings Industrial Transformation blog series provides insight and analysis for executives from the previous week’s briefings, events, and publications @LNSResearch.

Wolters Kluwer | Enablon recently hosted the Sustainable Performance Forum (SPF) in Chicago for its customers, partners, and solution experts. The event was part of the environment, health, and safety (EHS), risk, and sustainability software vendor’s global series of customer conferences.

More so than ever, the environment, health, and safety (EHS) business function is expected to contribute to sustainable, profitable growth of the enterprise. This is part of the natural evolution of the goals for EHS management over recent decades. Leading companies have shifted their focus away from mere compliance to proactive risk mitigation, Operational Excellence, and shareholder value.

On Wednesday, June 20, LNS Research co-presented the webcast, “Smart Maintenance: Using APM 4.0 to Drive Better Business Results” with AVEVA, an engineering and industrial software provider. The presentation explained why leading manufacturers use APM 4.0 to achieve balance between maintenance performance and overall economic performance. The discussion included an examination of which industries are prime candidates for APM 4.0, where to begin, and how to assess results.

Many quality leaders have recognized that imbuing a culture of quality is critical to achieving quality objectives and desired outcomes. In fact, LNS Research identifies that 37% of quality leaders (n=1198) cite a lack of quality culture as the top roadblock to achieving quality objectives. Naturally, culture initiatives are common and emphasize that the corporation must transition to a more proactive quality approach. One critical element to culture initiatives is early and effective engagement in new product introduction (NPI). However, most of the market lacks early and effective engagement of quality processes, insights, and competencies within NPI, and quality teams often struggle to justify a change .

On Wednesday, June 13, LNS Research co-presented the webcast, “The Connected Worker: Modernize Safety Risk Management” with Gensuite, a Cloud-based EHS management software provider. The presentation examined how safety and health leaders can use digital innovations to enable the connected worker, improve safety, and mitigate risk.

A few weeks ago, I attended PowerPlex, Plex Systems’ (Plex) annual user conference. The event was held in the heart of Detroit, fitting given Plex’s strong presence in the automotive supply chain and discrete manufacturing. The PowerPlex event continued to grow this year, reflecting Plex’s strong year-over year growth in users (expanded usage in 294 existing customers) and customers (65 new customers). The strength of the Plex platform is a vital growth enabler and differentiator. The platform delivered 1.7 T transactions, 779M web service calls, and 99.9998% uptime in 2017, all with better than 500ms response rate on its multitenant Cloud platform.