Why the Need for Digitalization in Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) Sector?
The fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector is India’s fourth-largest sector, with household and personal care products accounting for 50% of the sales in the industry, healthcare accounting for 31-32% and food and beverage accounting for the remaining 18-19% of FMCG sales. Growing awareness, easier access and changing lifestyles have been key growth drivers for the sector. The urban segment that accounts for a revenue share of around 55 percent is the largest contributor to the overall revenue generated by the FMCG sector in India.
According to the India Brand Equity Foundation, the retail market in India is estimated to reach US$ 1.1 trillion in 2020, up from US$ 840 billion in 2017, with modern trade expected to grow at 20-25 percent per annum, which is likely to boost revenue of FMCG companies.
Challenges in the FMCG sector
FMCG companies have the challenge of having to be the trusted and loyal brand for their consumer. This is no easy feat to be achieved as it requires consistency of products that are produced in large quantities in regular batches, while complying with international food and safety standards.
The above challenge also brings in the opportunity for the FMCG companies to look for ways to be more innovative and agile in adopting technology and automation. The sector needs to first accept the role of digital technology and transformation; digitalization is the only way for the industry to adapt to the customers’ changing buying patterns. The ability to respond to the requirements quickly will propel the companies on the path of faster growth. The ability to digitalize fast will also be a significant differentiator between competitive organizations as they transform themselves to suit the need of the hour.
Many of the key digital transformation strategies include having a ‘digital twin’ of their physical asset along with a proper ‘digital shift excellence’.
Why a Digital Twin?
The goal of a digital twin is to increase asset efficiency and offer a digital representation of current and historic plant configurations, along with related performance information. A digital twin makes it easy to begin using engineering information and provides easy access to the relevant information for operation and maintenance activity for the FMCG plant owners.
The first stage of a digital twin starts with a basic set of structured data and documents defining the facility configuration, designed by engineering teams in the project twin. For companies near the beginning of their digital transformation roadmap, this is an excellent start, empowering better decision making from more intelligent data and improving engineering-to-operations handover processes.
The second stage of connecting this intelligent data to 2D schematics, 3D models or laser scans allows for more intuitive viewing and navigation. It begins to unlock the benefits of weaving engineering, operations, and maintenance information in an Operational Twin.
The third stage further enhances the operational twin with increased interoperability by exchanging information and providing links to other information sources in the operations landscape, such as asset performance, data historian, maintenance management, and real-time data solutions.
The fourth stage is where the major digital transformation business benefits will be realized, as the asset owners and operators can leverage a digital twin to manage value-added work processes, such as human procedures, inspections, integrated safe systems of work and management of change. This ongoing value addition can also include advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning and predictive and prescriptive analytics to reduce downtime.
To help companies achieve digital twin benefits, Hexagon provides integrated project twin, operational twin and situational awareness solutions. The overall digital twin is the glue that connects these enterprise solutions and their data on one platform, enabling the ‘single version of truth.’
Why Digital Shift Excellence?
A key aspect of achieving this goal is to have shift reports made with accurate data, combined with effective communication while simplifying the routine tasks for shift personnel.
In the real world, the shift handover process and reports suffer from opaque, incomplete and siloed handovers. The operations logbooks and log sheets, either in physical or spreadsheet format, deny the opportunity for an easily accessible single source of truth for shift information.
Shift Excellence can be achieved by digitizing operations to reduce risk and improve compliance. Some of the areas the companies can look into for digitization are:
• Shift handover
• Manual and automatic logbook entries
• Daily work instructions
• Operational orders
With these transformations from paper and spreadsheets, the companies will improve continuity throughout shift changes and break down traditional departmental silos to operate the plant as one team with high visibility, leading to a higher accountability.
With Hexagon’s digital shift excellence solution, FMCG companies can automate logging of events to drive action and send updates in real-time. Operators can digitally record and track events from the plant with mobile devices. Supervisors and managers have a nearly real-time view of the plant status and can escalate hazardous conditions to react faster, leading to much safer and agile plant operations.
With the proper implementation of the digital technologies, FMCG companies can reduce risk and facilitate compliance by closing the gaps between the definition of quality and safety policies and the execution of these policies.
Want to know more about our Digital Twin Solutions? Please contact us.