Industrial Transformation Blog

We recently attended HxGN Live 2019, Hexagon’s annual digital solutions conference, in Las Vegas Nevada. Three thousand attendees were there to dive into nine different keynotes and over 500 sessions, many with hands-on training. The firm is a global leader in sensor, software, and autonomous solutions headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, with 2018 revenue reaching €3,760.7 million (approximately $4.234 billion USD). Its business includes industrial enterprise solutions with €1.941 million in revenue serving the electronics, manufacturing, energy and power, automotive, and aerospace and defense segments. They are known in the manufacturing world for 3D design and simulation technologies (predominantly for process assets), positioning and location identification mapping capabilities, metrology equipment, and an array of other sensors. The event included a bevy of new product launches across every major division of Hexagon.

LNS Research recently attended HPE Discover 2019 event in Las Vegas, hosted by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). The company had $30.88 billion in revenue in 2018, and is focused on Edge, hybrid cloud, and intelligent data. The conference was a well-executed event with well over 9,000 attendees and 8% growth over last year. The highlights were demonstrations and presentations on cool use cases in exciting topic areas:

As we study Industrial Transformation (IX) at the macro level, we seek leaders among industrial companies for further insights. We recently interviewed one of those leaders, ABB’s Chief Digital Officer, Guido Jouret, who reinforced our best practices findings from the recent IX survey.

At the recent ABB Customer World event, we had the opportunity to participate in a technology tour and a several meetings that gave us a good sense of ABB’s overall direction, new organization, and strategic partnerships. Further, we joined in on a detailed briefing on ABB Ability, focusing on the company’s Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and corporate partnership strategies.

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

LNS recently attended the Oracle Modern Business Experience in Las Vegas, Nevada.  Over 6,000 people attended this “unified” event as it was the first time that Oracle had co-located the Supply Chain, HR and ERP Customer summits.  Additionally, the Modern Business Experience was co-located with their Modern Customer Experience events making for complicated meeting logistics.  Oracle is now over $40 Billion in FY 2018 revenues, and they position themselves as the #1 supplier of business software. The scope and scale of their product and solution offerings were on display in exhibitions and a plethora of sessions. 

Commitment matters, whether it is in a romantic comedy, real-life dating, or Industrial Transformation (IX). In a relationship, it is imperative that there is a “real commitment” for the relationship to progress and succeed. To make romance hard, romantic comedies and scuttlebutt tell us that determining if your partner is committed to the relationship can be difficult. Despite their pronouncements of love, “real commitment” can be elusive.

On Wednesday, March 13, LNS Research hosted the webcast “Digital Readiness for Industrial Transformation: Success Lessons from Real-World Leaders.” The presentation covered the scope, scale, strategy, budget, and organization of Industrial Transformation (IX) programs globally. The session also investigated the technology choices made in the IX programs, and how these new technology choices balance against Operational Technology (OT) and Information Technology (IT).

We recently conducted a global survey on Industrial Transformation (IX) and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).  These are topics that we have been studying for quite a while.  In fact, LNS Research was the first to coin the term “IIoT” in the 2014 report, “What is an IIoT Platform?”  This new report examines the year-over-year trends in industrial corporations’ plans, projects and outcomes around IX generally and IIoT specifically.  The research and trendlines demonstrate the continually growing interest in and maturity of the IIoT and IX markets.

Forty-five percent of companies globally are executing an Industrial Transformation (IX) program, according to recent LNS Research survey data.  Before we can really understand the journey companies undertake, we need to know where they’re headed.  That requires a solid definition: what is Industrial Transformation, and how should companies execute it?  LNS Research defines Industrial Transformation simply as:

A proactive and coordinated approach to leverage digital technologies to create step-change improvement in industrial operations.