Digital transformation (DX) is a broad business strategy, applicable across all industries, to solve traditional business challenges and create new opportunities using technology. It requires acceptance of entirely new ways of working and delivering value to customers.
Industrial companies must improve growth and profitability with a portfolio of innovative digital solutions that work together to transform how physical products are engineered, manufactured, and serviced.
- Reduce Cost
The good news is when businesses start here, there are usually other measurable benefits as well.If you’re able to run a more efficient factory floor, then you can avoid costs stemming from inefficient energy use, prolonged downtime, and more. If you’re able to address service issues with customers. - Improve Product Quality and Services
By driving quality improvements with software like product lifecycle management (PLM), businesses can streamline product development processes, while providing stakeholders across the enterprise (or product lifecycle) with access to the most accurate data relevant to their role.Product and service quality is a clear differentiator in any market, regardless of industry. - Improve time-to-Market
Development of a digital thread can help on both counts by establishing an authoritative source of product and process truth across the enterprise, and can extend to suppliers, customers, and field service. In creating data continuity with a digital thread, businesses can ensure accurate product and process information is available to the right person, at the right time, in the right context.
Agile methodologies and tools are being adopted to further drive innovation and shorten time-to-market. Using collaborative tools that allow for flexible and agile product development is key; software like Onshape and Arena leverage a cloud-native infrastructure that allows for simplified access for users, eliminates bottlenecks earlier, and streamlines collaboration. -
Improve time-to-Market
Development of a digital thread can help on both counts by establishing an authoritative source of product and process truth across the enterprise, and can extend to suppliers, customers, and field service. In creating data continuity with a digital thread, businesses can ensure accurate product and process information is available to the right person, at the right time, in the right context. -
Drive growth
Often tied to product innovation, growth initiatives have transformative potential for a business. Digital transformation isn’t necessarily about incremental improvements to existing products and processes; it’s focused on identifying new avenues for profit within the business. This may take the form of new products, new business models or revenue streams, or additional throughput and yield. -
Improve the Customer experience
Often digital transformation headlines are about internal benefits but, ultimately, companies need to consider (and prioritize) how their efforts will transform the customer experience. How will the transformative changes made within the business impact the customer – better service? Improved quality? More innovative products or features? Faster delivery? These are just a few of the possible outcomes. By looking at customer pain points and feedback, businesses can identify a solid starting point for digital transformation initiatives. -
Enhance Company Culture
Being a part of a company that is not stagnant but is continually looking for ways to improve their ways of doing business is inspiring. Plus, in many DX efforts, the daily tasks of employees are often improved, streamlined, or enhanced. It also can offer employees more flexibility in their day-to-day roles, including working remotely. -
Drive Sustainability Efforts
Digital tools are being called upon to support a more sustainable future, which starts in the design and engineering of products. There are two key areas where digital transformation is having an impact.First, decisions in engineering lock in carbon footprint impacts downstream in manufacturing, use, service, and disposal. Sustainable by design means engineers are more carefully considering materials, processes, and logistics – using digital technologies like CAD, simulation, PLM, IoT, and more. And Second, there is increasing efforts on sustainable manufacturing and service – how can companies reduce emissions across business operations? With technology like IoT and digital performance management, companies are getting greater insights into inefficiencies, and making data-driven decisions that optimize operations and improve resource utilization. -
Improve collaboration Within And Across Functions
There are many digital transformation strategies and technologies that improve collaboration within teams, across teams, and with partners and vendors.Siloed organizations (and data) have a host of negative impacts: inefficiency, stymied growth, increased risk of error, and reduced competitiveness in a fast-changing market. There are many digital transformation strategies and technologies that improve collaboration within teams, across teams, and with partners and vendors. Another way to improve collaboration with digital transformation is through the adoption of cloud-based tools specifically designed to enable more frequent and flexible communication. SaaS solutions are more easily accessible by distributed and remote teams, enable real-time collaboration, and reduce friction between departments. -
Improve Compliance
Regulatory compliance is increasing for makers across multiple industries. It should be associated with greenhouse emissions, safety, quality, distribution, or different industry-specific laws.
Because of this, corporations want larger visibility and access to information around their product, processes, and performance. There are 2 key technologies to support this sort of transformation: PLM for hardware and application lifecycle management (ALM) for software systems; they’re the backbone of development methods for achieving regulatory compliance. -
Make Data-Driven Decisions
Better information – information that’s a lot of complete, a lot of correct, a lot of discourse — will inform all functions of the business and lead to improved decision-making. Usually in DX, corporations are trying to not solely recover analytical insights from their information, however additionally deliver closed-loop product lifecycle feedback across the enterprise.
Digital transformation makes organizations more agile. Borrowing from the world of software development, businesses can increase their agility with digital transformation to improve speed-to-market and adopt Continuous Improvement (CI) strategies.