Many companies stop at the first step — digital firefighting — because it offers quick increases in stability and productivity without broader change.
Unfortunately, these firms miss out on even bigger gains made possible by the free flow of contextual, flexible information from production devices to the enterprise.
This stream of insights can be leveraged by scalable analytics to improve day-to-day decision-making, develop improved processes, and innovate new business models.
As your company travels along this path to digital transformation, strategic milestones (in the form of questions) will appear:
- Do we have controls and sensors that can deliver reliable data?
- Is our network infrastructure capable of securely moving data to those who need it?
- Do we have productions systems (e.g., MES) to leverage data to improve performance?
- Do we have enterprise systems that accept plant data for business analytics?
- Do we have the talent to deploy data for deeper insights and improved decision-making?
The key to successful digital transformation is not where you start, but where you go.
Fortunately, in the years since the emergence of the “Industrial Internet of Things,” as well as “Smart Manufacturing,” “Industrie 4.0,” etc., the journey has gotten much easier thanks to technologies and tools that put intelligence into facilities both old and new.
Where is your company on the road to digital transformation?
We will showcase technologies that can help companies successfully take advantage of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) at Hannover Messe 2017, April 24-28 in Hannover, Germany.