The Business Case for Digital Transformation: The Shop Floor Perspective

Tim Stuart from Visual Decisions, looked at the same question — creating value frm digital transformation — from the perspective of the shop floor. Some of his key points: 

  • Is there one department that is driving digital transformation? There are many different places to start the digital transformation journey. 
  • Are you doing a digital transformation of the enterprise or a digital solution to an immediate problem? Think about:
    • Value and time-to-value
    • Use case selection: there are hundreds of places to start. Am I focused on a narrow focus or am I designing a digtal transformation for the business
  • Resources: What are the time constraints? Can I bring in external resources? 
  • Readiness: Is my network ready? Do I have cybersecurity in place? Do people on the shop floor have the skills and behavior flexibility? 
  • Impact on production: How disruptive will your digital initiative be?
  • Focus on ease of implementation. Don’t start with an initiative that requires a huge effort. Focus on small initiatives that can scale. 

You will not get the performance you want unless you also focus on the changing skills, behaviors, and routines needed to suppoort the digital change. 

“Just buying a FitBit will not make you lose weight.” 

You can get access to Tim’s video and slides by joining our open community: ManuFuture Today: Leveraging AI for Small and Mid-Sized Manufacturers.

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The Business Case for Digital Transformation: The CEO Perspective

On December 14, we conducted the next in our series of workshops to accelerate the digital transformation of manufacturing. We explored two different dimensions. The first is the CEO perspective. How do you present digital transformation to the C-Suite?

Mike King of LHP Analytics presented some useful frameworks to make the case. Some key points:

  • Provide a visual framework and continuously focus on key questions: It’s easy to get lost.
  • Two primary objectives for digital transformation: Where is your focus?
    •  Solve problems
    • Drive improvements
  • Figure out where you are on a digital maturty level: Where are we? It’s all part of establishing your baseline. 
  • Five key questions from the C-Suite perspective:
    •  What is the problem?
    • What caused the problem?
    • What are we doing to fix the problem?
    • When do we recover? 
    • How does this impact earnings? 
    • What help do you need to answert these questions?
  •  Once you have this framework in place, answer the question: “How will digital help”?

For more on Mike’s presentation, including his slides and a video of his presentation, join our ManuFuture Today learning community: Leveraging AI for Small and Mid-sized Manufacturers. It’s free. Click here to join.