In a digital transformation, people matter every bit as much as technology, says Victoria van Camp, CTO and president, innovation and business development, SKF.
Regardless of their sector, size or history companies, are recognising that the recent improvements in connectivity, control and analytical capabilities have the potential to unlock significant improvements in the cost, quality and productivity of their operations. More fundamentally, digital technology is enabling entirely new product and service offerings, and underpinning the creation of new business models.
Digital transformation involves cultural change
You do not have to look far to see this process in action. SKF has been designing and making bearings, seals and related products for more than a century. Today, however, SKF is a digital business too. It now offers a wide range of technologies – both hardware and software – that improve customers’ rotating equipment performance.
Digital technology is changing internal activities too. Engineers now create new products or solve customer problems through a portfolio of advanced design optimisation and simulation tools. The company has also made significant investments in flexible, automated manufacturing sites and connected logistics networks, which are helping to cut delivery lead times and tailor products more precisely to customer requirements.
Yet, despite all the progress made so far, few organisations can claim to have mastered the digitalisation challenge. The gap between the potential application of digital technologies and what most companies have integrated into their everyday operations remains wide.
If the rewards of the digital revolution are so significant, what is holding companies back? Technology is certainly part of the story. Some digital approaches have not yet reached the level of maturity required for large scale use. At SKF, work is ongoing into the use of new artificial intelligence technologies to predict asset performance and failures, but the approach is still in its infancy, even if it is developing quickly.
But there is also another force at work. There are plenty of technologies that are mature, robust and inexpensive enough to be applied far more widely than they are today. That suggests that barriers to adoption are not technical, but cultural. There is plenty of evidence to support this hypothesis. When consultancy Capgemini Invent surveyed more than 1700 business leaders, for example, 62 percent of them said that their own corporate culture was the biggest obstacle to digital transformation.
Perhaps that should not be surprising. Moving to a digital world can be an unsettling experience. There are the requirements to work in new ways, and with new tools, for example. In some cases, staff may fear a loss of autonomy. Increased transparency also means there is nowhere to hide if things are not going well.
The bad news, according to Capgemini’s research, is that companies in the mechanical and plant engineering sectors are late adopters when it comes to the creation of a true digital culture.
“The discipline of engineering strongly focuses on the technical side of its products and services,” notes Yvette Zzauer of Capgemini Invent. “This impacts the corporate culture, which tends to be more technology than human-centred. While this means engineering businesses tend to be more comfortable than other sectors about adopting technological advances, it can mean they pay insufficient attention to the human side of digitalisation.”
Digital transformation involves employees at all levels
Fortunately, there are things companies can do to promote cultural change. In the past, corporate culture was broadly and intangibly defined by shared values, attitudes, standards, and beliefs that characterise the members of an organisation and define its nature. However, digital culture is more tangible, concrete and explicit.
For SKF, building a digital culture is a long-term change management effort requiring sustained attention from the top of the organisation. Digital change cannot be achieved as a purely top-down effort as employees need to be involved throughout the process. Starting with smaller initiatives, it is worth testing and trialling these and then rolling them out to the organisation. Furthermore, digital transformation needs to go hand in hand with the organisation’s strategy and be enabled by organisational structures, allowing digitalisation to be driven throughout the organisation.
For more information contact Samantha Joubert, SKF South Africa, +27 11 821 3500, [email protected], www.skf.com
| Tel: | +27 11 821 3500 |
| Fax: | +27 11 821 3505 |
| Email: | [email protected] |
| www: | www.skf.co.za |
| Articles: | More information and articles about SKF South Africa |
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