Industrial Transformation Blog

As 2022 kicks off, most significant industrial organizations are well into their Industrial Transformation (IX) journeys and have been for at least several years. Those that aren’t are scrambling to catch up if they intend to remain viable. Even as IX advances as the strategic framework for competitive differentiation, industrials must deal with two rapidly emerging secular trends: the rise of Sustainability and the challenges posed by the Future of Industrial Work.

It’s that time again…each year, LNS Research puts forth predictions around the key trends in the Industrial Transformation (IX) topics where we focus our research. In the case of Asset Performance Management (APM 4.0), our 2021 forecast focused on multiple definitions of Digital Twins, the shift of APM 4.0 to a broader view in terms of Operational Excellence (OE 4.0) and Operation Risk Management (ORM), the Connected Worker (CW), now called the Connected Frontline Workforce (CFW), and the Open Process Automation (OPA) pilots and related progress. Two additional trends are that the path to autonomy flows through Operational Excellence, a concept that requires redefinition and reimagining compared to past approaches; and second, the scale and depth of what it will take to be autonomous is not yet well understood.

In my recent The M&A Rumble in the Jungle blog, I highlighted my 2021 number two prediction that "the focus on APM 4.0 will shift to a broader view in terms of Operational Excellence (OE 4.0) and Operational Risk Management (ORM). This will lead to increasing friction, and at the same time opportunity, between APM and EHS, and quality too...competitors will begin to react in 2021, and we'll see more partnerships and M&A ramping up." We said that the trend has been for both EHS and APM vendors to expand into each other’s territory, in most cases bypassing EAM, since APM solutions can drive whatever EAM is in place. While EAM vendors have a solid business, they risk being squeezed out of the running in the battle over Operational Risk Management (ORM), a key objective of what LNS Research calls Operational Excellence 4.0 (OpEx 4.0). Here, LNS Research refers to the fight between EHS and APM where ORM software straddles the divide between APM vendors' asset reliability, integrity, inspection, and maintenance focus, and the process safety management, incident management, and worker risk assessment functionality of EHS vendors.

Four recent M&A announcements have prompted us to catch up on our view of where the industry is heading and follow up on our earlier predictions for 2021. They are:

Recent moves by some of the market's major players are beginning to confirm what LNS previously identified as a trend toward renewed interest in and a fresh approach to what LNS calls Operational Excellence 4.0 (OE 4.0). We are seeing new partnerships as well as M&A between suppliers of APM, EHS, Quality, and Connected Worker applications.

When we last visited with IBM in April 2019 at their first annual IoT Exchange event, we came away with renewed confidence that IBM was stepping up their game, freshly re-organized into a dedicated ISV-like unit, and investing heavily in Maximo, TRIRIGA, and the Engineering Lifecycle Suite to catch up to, if not outright out-innovate their competition.

AWS recently launched a new set of services called “AWS for Industrial” designed to make it easier for industrial customers to innovate, automate, and scale industrial workloads on AWS through purpose-built services, solutions, and the widest ecosystem of partners. AWS for Industrial features new and existing services and solutions built specifically for developers, engineers, and operators at industrial companies. AWS for Industrial claims to simplify the process for customers to build or deploy innovative Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), analytics, and edge solutions to achieve step-change improvements in operational efficiency, quality, and agility.

Every year, LNS Research puts forth predictions around the key trends in the Industrial Transformation (IX) topics where we focus our research. In the case of Asset Performance Management (APM 4.0), our 2020 forecast focused on Digital Twins, closing the APM 4.0 loop, the consolidation in the advanced analytics market, the battle for the OT Ecosystem, and the evolution of the OPA market.

Every year, LNS Research puts forth predictions around the key trends in the Industrial Transformation (IX) topics where we focus our research. In the case of Asset Performance Management (APM) 4.0, our 2020 forecast focused on Digital Twins, closing the APM 4.0 loop, the consolidation in the advanced analytics market, the battle for the OT Ecosystem, and the evolution of the OPA market. How did we do? Let’s do our self-evaluation to compare.

LNS has long focused on Operational Excellence (OE) as part of our Digital Transformation (DX) Framework, now Industrial Transformation (IX). In 2013 and 2014, we talked about Operational Excellence as a journey and stated that people, processes, and technology are the underpinnings of Operational Excellence initiatives.