Digital Transformation

According to the 2021 State of Marketing to Engineers report, 96% of engineers watch videos weekly for work, and over 50% listen to podcasts regularly for work.  According to these insights, Engineers need to appeal to outside sources to strengthen their work performances, which suggests critical information within the workplace isn't easily attainable.

The chasm between engineers and information impedes operation performance and, therefore, operational efficiency.  Fortunately, this chasm is easily filled with digital transformation.  In this post, we outline a four-pillar framework to help you short-cut the benefits of digital transformation and improve the availability of information critical to capital project success.

A Framework for Accelerating Digital Transformation

Pillar 1: Digitize the Operational Process

There are two primary components to digitization - digital twin creation and the digital thread link.

A digital twin is a digital representation of a product or system that mimics a company's conditions based on real-time data to aid decision-making through real-time simulations.

While a digital twin is a current representation of a product or system that mimics a company's machines, controls, workflows, and procedures, a digital thread is a record of a product or system's lifetime, from creation to removal.

Digital twins can help key stakeholders gain end-to-end transparency on all sides of an organization to overcome expected and unexpected challenges.  They ensure asset information integrity, increase plant availability, and reduce operational risks.

On the other hand, a digital thread is a continuous stream of data that flows throughout the product development lifecycle. Digital threads enable businesses to look beyond narrow, function-specific definitions and towards more date-driven sources. They allow companies to pursue much larger goals such as cost and risk reduction, efficiency, and flexibility to increase sustainability.

The goal of digital threads is to represent digitization and traceability throughout a product's lifecycle. They connect all of the capabilities of the digital twins, such as the designs, performance data, product data, supply chain data, and software used to create the product.

A digital transformation strategy is predicated on a foundation of digital twins and digital threads.  Together, digital twins and digital threads make it possible for engineers to evaluate practices, processes, and product concepts much faster by removing the workflow obstacles caused by information unavailability.

Pillar 2: Connect Operational Data

This pillar entails connecting operational data via digital thread to improve visibility and efficiency.  Connecting operational data optimizes decision-making processes, reduces errors, and increases collaboration, allowing agile cross-functional teams to be realized. The types of operational data required in the lifecycle of an asset included those that enable effective supply chain optimization, such a planning, procurement or acquisition, use, maintenance, and disposal.

A high-performing supply chain enables business efficiency and responsiveness, ensuring that customers get what they want when they want it through the most profitable process.

Pillar 3: Protect Your Digital Investments

Digital transformation expands the attack surface, giving cybercriminals more entry options into a private network. These vulnerabilities facilitate unauthorized access to intellectual property, and personal employee information, jeopardizing the safety of your most critical company assets.

Establishing and maintaining digital trust is an increasingly important component of a successful digital investment. A cybersecurity solution should operate harmoniously with digital transformation initiatives to achieve digital trust with customers and potential partners.

Pillar 4: Promoting Collaboration

Internal communication is essential for inter-team collaboration, but, unfortunately, 60% of companies don't have a long-term internal communication strategy. Many organizations experience operational bottlenecks as a result of this.

This highlights the importance of measuring how communication affects an organization's performance regularly in order to expand its operational benefits.

By connecting all teams to a single digital thread running across the breadth of an organization, communication barriers between internal teams, stakeholders and assets are completely removed, resulting in enhanced collaboration in all communication directions, including:

• Internal upward
• Internal downward
• Internal lateral
• External lateral

Final Thoughts

The many operational benefits accompanying digital transformation makes the strategy too profitable to ignore. By implementing this four-pillar digitization framework it's possible to accelerate an enterprise-wide adoption of digital transformation and the competitive advantages that follow.

Hexagon is the only solution provider that understands the challenges of asset management across complex capital projects. To discuss digital transformation options that suit your unique asset lifecycle requirements, contact us today.