Industrial Transformation Blog

In a recent blog post, our fearless leader, President and Principal Analyst Matthew Littlefield, noted that, “Although no one can argue with the technological innovation and productivity gains that lighthouse plants demonstrate, our data shows that including lighthouse plants as part of your Industrial Transformation (IX) program does not correlate to success.”  This post builds on that earlier post and drills into when lighthouse strategies can be effective and what is an alternative strategy more correlated to success.

We all know the reality of discrete and batch manufacturers. If you walk into virtually any manufacturing plant, you will find literally hundreds of manufacturing computing applications being utilized. A few of those applications, ERP most prominently, are generally supported by the corporate IT staff. A wider number of those applications, automation and MES, are typically supported by operations itself via the OT team or the “shadow IT” team (the manufacturing engineers, etc., that are providing day-to-day support to these systems). The vast majority of applications are custom – often built in Excel, Access, or Java – and are not well-supported and virtually impossible to deploy across sites. And, the picture gets worse: despite all these applications, operational personnel are still looking for more technology to help reduce manufacturing costs and improve quality.

Part of the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic has been a resurgence of the Environment, Health and Safety (EHS) business function. Anyone paying attention has seen that the management (or mismanagement) of EHS-related operational risks can directly impact business continuity, for better or worse. Now more than ever, license to operate, let alone profitable operations, depend on effective management of safety, health, and environmental risks.   

LNS Research first introduced the term Industrial Transformation (IX) in our research on Industrial Transformation Readiness in 2018. We chose the moniker to specifically distinguish from the existing Digital Transformation term as we see IX as an important but distinct subset of the broader Digital Transformation umbrella. Our definition of Industrial Transformation states that IX is a proactive and coordinated approach in leveraging digital technologies to create step-change improvement in industrial operations.

Since the advent of Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES, or MOM for those who prefer) in the late 1980s, life sciences, and especially pharmaceuticals finishing and packing, led the way in useful MES solutions. Some would argue that MES for pharma has reached maturity and there are few gains to be made. At LNS Research, we believe that change is just beginning and it is time for the pharma software industry to wake up or get severely disrupted by new players.

Many pharmaceutical companies, ranging from boutique startups to the global giants, have active Industrial Transformation (IX) programs that foresee structural changes in the way they operate. Existing pharma MES systems provide the necessary functionality for most operations but are hard to maintain, inflexible, and do not provide a data platform for other parts of the enterprise. Such integration will, inevitably, be a part of IX programs. 

In our 2021 Industrial Transformation (IX) Readiness research, we asked more than 300 industrial companies where they were on their IX journey. Since our 2019 study, the share of companies fully committed to the journey soared from 16% to 28% - crossing the proverbial chasm. Conversely, the share of companies “stuck in pilot purgatory” fell from 13% to 7%. 

LNS Research has been writing about Digital Twins for a number of years. We still find our manufacturing clients confused by the opportunities presented by Digital Twins and unclear on how to proceed. In face of this reality, we wanted to set up a simple framework for thinking about Digital Twin use cases and answer some of the most common questions we hear about these concepts.

Industrial Transformation (IX) continues to animate manufacturers worldwide. Our 2020 global survey shows that more than three-quarters of companies are executing, piloting, or planning on executing an Industrial Transformation (IX) program in the next 12 months despite a global pandemic. Industrial Transformation Platforms (IX Platforms) are a core component to the majority of IX Leaders who are three times more likely to be implementing an IX Platform as compared to Followers.

It’s been nearly three years since LNS Research initiated coverage of the digitally connected industrial worker space with the publication of our seminal research, “The Connected Worker: Mobilize and Empower People to Reduce Risk and Improve Safety”. Since then, we’ve continued to conduct research and develop our point of view on the topic while working closely with a variety of industrial organizations and technology vendors on their connected worker initiatives and solutions.

LNS Research’s initial work outlined the three architectural approaches to Industrial Transformation (IX). We also detailed the advantages and disadvantages for industrial users of each of these architectural paths and the underlying IX Infrastructure. We are now extending our research to advanced analytics. So, in this blog, we define Industrial Transformation (IX) Analytics and how LNS classifies its use.