What should you know about implementing technological innovations?
In general, a strategy is nothing more than a long term commitment to a set of coherent behaviors which focus on achieving specific, competitive goals for an organization. Good strategies promote alignment among diverse groups within a company, clarify priorities and help focus efforts around them. Yet, despite the growing adoption of sophisticated analytical tools, many companies still have an internal bug to take a broad brush approach to running complex innovation implementation projects that result in missed profits and unneeded expenses. The most common explanation of this lack of success is that business does not have expertise and practical experience giving an opportunity to drill down to understand the impact of individual consequences within each stage of an implementation. By this, I mean that companies prepare, design and involve plenty of human resources and tools without understanding how an innovation project might be more or less successful or how to lead this project effectively.
This is why a strategy plays a critical role in running a business where ever it is located. Business strategy is being driven by the Industrial Revolution, long after the factories that used to be the primary sources of competitive advantage on the global and continuously more demanding market. Companies still organize around their products as business success is measured in terms of produced units. Production-related activities are honed to maximize productivity. Definitely, businesses know what it takes to make and move stuff. The problem is, so what drives business today?
Customers and the market — not a factory, product or a service — now are the number one priority of business. This new concept of business on demand requires a rethink of long term pillars of company strategies making knowledge and experience the core business pillars rather than catching up to competitors. To put it simply, the center of gravity for most companies has not tilted downstream which is no longer about having the better product — now the focus is on the customer’s needs and a business position relative to their purchase criteria. To achieve this unique and challenging aim, companies have to start investing their profits into innovation. But the question is, so does everybody have to do it?
Despite massive investments of management, time and money, technological implementations still remain a challenging pursuit in many companies. Technological innovation ideas usually fail and successful innovators have a hard time maintaining their performance. It’s not a secret that the most optimal solution for implementing innovative technological solutions would be to find a good business partner who has expertise and presents all possible technological designs and solutions to us. However, business is challenging. Without a long-term strategy a factory is not able to use robots and software systems in proper ways as some updates or other maintenance services are needed from time to time to maintain their high performance.
In the current market conditions, keeping and improving a leading position on the market requires realization of strategic moves ahead based on effective and innovate activities which do not only include internal business potential but also take into consideration environmental factors running around. Implementing process innovation, especially within the so-called smart factory concept, is often highly problematic and generates significant costs subjected to risk (high risk investments). To implement a smart factory, business has to address important challenges and develop internal capabilities. As a result of deep analysis, a company can discover, identify and cultivate digital people, introduce agile methodologies and configure modular technologies to manage the complexity of digital systems and robots or machines.
Within people, processes and technologies as the strategic foundation of innovative strategy, we are able to underpin the development of smart factory capabilities. The first stage of technological maturity is highly connected with understanding the technical requirements for a new world factory concept by involving the workforce in developing this vision. A good example of this would be preparing a roadmap and explaining to a company’s employees what a smart factory is for. This vision approach enables essential groundwork and creates the foundation for a smart factory deployment. To further stimulate digital implementation and manage some deficits of relevant competences, a company can also consider acquiring human resources from the market. As a result, there is a chance a company will access the full potential of the data and automation streams.
When it comes to talking about the second step of building a new technological assembly line, we have to structure gathering data and methods to share them both internally and externally in effective ways. It’s also important to revise the production employees to proactive initiatives for coordinating digital insights and knowledge sharing. In terms of new business processes which will appear together with a technological change, there is a need to set up specialized insight mining processes to support information collection across an organization. Indeed, the clearer the business process, the more transparent the dataflow across departments and brands within a company. Thus, companies need to build cross functional digitalization networks to enable rapid knowledge sharing.
Of course there are critical elements of the data gathering process. The information overflow can cause significant damages inside the system e.g. full data storage or a system bug which starts sharing much more data across an organization than it should, making all inbox folders full. There are also some technological challenges which should be taken into account before implementing new technological solutions e.g., BI software systems have to be integrated with the infrastructure for storing, sharing and classifying data.
The final step of the entire implantation is to prepare proper real time analytics and optimization tools. On this level, to capture key knowledge, making sessions with all stakeholders is required in order to benefit from their competencies. Another way to engage with this process is to create routines for using both historical and real time data analytics in the work process. Of course, after this, it’s possible to create technological twins of products, equipment and even entire production lines and plant infrastructure.
The implementation of new projects happens in three main steps: evaluation of the existing technology, prototype testing in a learning line and a roll out in serial production. There is one thing we can be sure about future companies: they will have smart business processes. Moving beyond the basic automation of factories of the past, smart processes will integrate technology into every part of the manufacturing process. The key ingredients to the implementation process will include — generating ideas, screening, testing and analysis. To get results in innovation, a structured, repeatable process is essential from start to finish. A new innovative model will make use of technologies such as AI, VR, AR and IoT which will be integrated with people and processes. With decreased labor costs, increased efficiency and reduced waste, business services of the future will be cheaper and more environmental friendly. Improved quality control as a result of automation will also ensure that superior products come off the production line. It will benefit both customers who want to buy cheap, feature-rich and good quality products, and companies which aim to deliver items and have profits from these services.
There is a huge demand for transformation in research, development and operation elements of industry. There are also areas of industries which are really challenging in order to implement any technological innovation. To benefit from exponential industrial growth, business needs to organize around digital power, combine assets, gain better knowledge about markets and customer preferences. To do this, companies have to unlock their substantial value.
Written by Lukasz Kudlak
