After the recession in 2010, manufacturing companies had to look beyond mere survival towards a new period of sustained growth. This growth will not be easy going forward because it will require innovative products and potentially new ways of doing business. Manufacturers will have to adapt new strategies that take into account a vastly changed global outlook. Unless they are assured of a cost leadership position, many will have to move away from production of bulk commodities to offering customised, personalised products and services. The growth strategies will most likely require investments into new products and services that are targeted at an increasingly diverse, informed and sophisticated global customer. Good understanding of this customer will in turn require data that when analysed provides a detailed and personalised forecast of each customer’s needs and future buying patterns.
Industrial process control and automation systems have in the past evolved to ensure plants run reliably and optimally. The focus has historically been on optimising the plant itself (within the factory boundary). Later, as IT business systems matured, companies were able to link plant floor information with business information (in ERP systems) to gain new insights. These integration projects resulted in connected systems that allowed for better and more responsive decision making. ERP systems were capable of including supplier and customer data, allowing business decisions to be based on the total value chain.
At the same time the underlying IT platform also matured to make it relatively easy to connect plant sensors to external systems, making it accessible, for example to apps on mobile devices. Having chosen the right platform and wired the systems up, companies then discovered that this alone was no longer a real source of competitiveness. It is now fairly common to have a fully integrated IT system that connects business and plant data in a way that provides visibility and insight into the operation from the boardroom, the office, at the customer, or even from home.
So where to next for manufacturing IT?
Businesses are now acutely aware that an inward focus on operations is not enough. Competitive pressures continue to demand that companies innovate outside the factory boundary. Whether it is the introduction of new products, entering into new markets or diversifying across sectors, the goalposts will keep moving. At the same time, regulatory pressures will continue to tighten, making compliance a real challenge for companies seeking to grow into new countries and across sectors. In this environment traditional integrated process automation and IT systems are necessary, but not sufficient.
In order to stay relevant in their future careers, technical specialists such as process engineers, control and automation specialists and so on should be continuing to develop new skills to position themselves for the new challenges.
But where should the focus be?
The good news is that technical specialists working in industrial environments probably already have the underlying skills and natural curiosity needed to solve complex technological problems. This is a good base to grow from into the broader world of IT.
I want to highlight four specific ‘next generation’ manufacturing technology skills that I feel are very accessible to technical specialists and will be very useful going forward in manufacturing companies. These four areas are:
1. Corporate performance management.
2. Data analytics.
3. Supply chain optimisation.
4. Customer service management.
Corporate performance management is the discipline that monitors business performance against key performance indicators (KPIs). This typically involves using data analytics and business intelligence techniques. For a technical specialist this is not entirely new territory, many plant engineers have built robust dashboards that monitor plant performance. This is a skill which can relatively easily be applied to the higher level business functions. All that is really needed is the inclusion and processing of new sources of information, for example data from ERP, external web based services, and so on.
Data analytics skills such as data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence will also be more relevant to manufacturing in future. Engineers and process control specialists already have many of the conceptual skills needed to relatively quickly become competent in many of these techniques. A relatively short bridging course might be all that is required to develop your skills to master the new technologies.
Supply chain optimisation skills will be necessary to support a companies' growth into a more competitive, volatile and geographically disperse environment. Again practicing engineers and process control specialists already have a good understanding of plant planning, co-ordination/scheduling and supply and distribution networks. These skills can be built on to embrace the total value chain. Together with the data analytics techniques mentioned above it will become possible to not just optimise materials flow but improve overall business forecasting.
Customer service management is another area where business data can be used to provide a more personalised and responsive experience for customers. This will drive loyalty, differentiate your business and increase satisfaction. Understanding how to leverage the data in an ERP or CRM system to gain better customer insights and correlating this back to the actual manufacturing process is something that a technical specialist should be able to readily master.
There are of course many other areas where technical specialists can contribute towards future manufacturing. Many of these will require other skills, for example strategic thinking and cross discipline (integral) problem solving. Process control specialists, engineers and other technical professionals with the right mindset already have a truly unique perspective on the business, and many will during their careers have the opportunity to contribute as business leaders. All that might be required is a little prompting to challenge the status quo.
Gavin Halse is a chemical process engineer who has been involved in the manufacturing sector since mid-1980. He founded a software business in 1999 which grew to develop specialised applications for mining, energy and process manufacturing in several countries. Gavin is most interested in the effective use of IT in industrial environments and now consults part time to manufacturing and software companies around the effective use of IT to achieve business results.
For more information contact Gavin Halse, Absolute Perspectives, +27 (0)83 274 7180, gavin@gavinhalse.com, www.absoluteperspectives.com
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