Industrial Transformation Blog

In our last blog on Operational Excellence, we defined OE 4.0 as “sustainable value creation through a holistic approach, supported by an enabling execution platform.” We said that with OE 4.0, we shift away from safety, compliance, and Continuous Improvement (CI) to comprehensive risk management, moving beyond mere EHS & PSM compliance to a proactive, integrated operations system. Of course, we don’t leave CI behind as incremental progress is always welcome, but OE 4.0 seeks a permanent and continuing step-change in performance.

Quality management has been one of the earliest areas of research for us here at LNS Research, and we have been closely monitoring the space for several years now. Our recent research on Quality 4.0 Readiness shows that Quality 4.0 programs have been gaining steady momentum and have become an important piece of the Industrial Transformation puzzle today’s manufacturing companies are trying to solve; so much so that the Quality 4.0 adoption rate has jumped from 16% to 27% in just two years.

Technology spending is a given. Especially today, when Digital Transformation is a fact-of-life in nearly every industry. Executives know they need to invest in technology to remain competitive. Industry leaders have tied their Industrial Transformation (IX) strategy to making the right technology investments. It is more than consultant-speak or media hype to say that companies that don’t invest in technology won’t be able to attract or retain top talent, and that technology drives global competitiveness.

Several of my observations have been fairly consistent over the past few decades of working in quality, technology, and as a quality research analyst and thought leader. Four stand out as primary reasons why quality, and often the industrial organization at large isn't able to transform as quickly or successfully as they'd like.

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.

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. 

Despite years of acquisitions and private equity investment, the environment, health and safety (EHS) software market is still fragmented, even at the top. A crowd of significant players compete for market leadership, or to at least deliver the returns expected by their financial backers. Although most will likely survive for the foreseeable future in one form or another, relatively fewer are likely to thrive long-term with a breakout performance.

It was a pleasure to attend the recent Hart Energy 2019 Influential Women in Energy Luncheon in Houston. In its second year, the event had almost 1000 attendees, double that of last year, and honored 25 outstanding women across the energy industry.  The pinnacle award recipient was M. Katherine Banks, Ph.D. currently Vice-Chancellor of Engineering and National Laboratories, and Dean of Engineering at Texas A&M University.

A January ritual for the high-tech industry is the Consumer Technology Association’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. It’s where nearly every company in the consumer sector debuts its latest wares, from the latest TVs to wireless headphones and AR/VR hardware for gamers, to the latest smart home providers. They all trek to Sin City to show how their company is pushing the tech envelope. Many manufacturers pay little attention to CES since it is, after all, a consumer electronics event. If your company is stamping out metal parts for file cabinets, mixing up adhesives used to bond materials in the construction industry, or a state or local agency doing road maintenance, you might think CES isn’t relevant to you; you are wrong.

On December 11, Dassault Systèmes (3DS) announced the acquisition of mid-size manufacturing ERP vendor IQMS for $425 million. While this seems like a high price, the fit for 3DS is strong, and it will considerably extend the offerings 3DS can make to their midsize discrete manufacturing clients.