3 minute read
MobilOps - Digitization
Paul Plauché
MobilOps General Manager
Digitization is the ‘Next Normal’ of Industry 4.0
Four Practical Steps You Can Take to Get Ready Now
If you would have asked me in January what I would be doing on June 15th, I would have told you I would be sitting in an uncomfortable chair listening to a presentation at a conference in Houston on how we will run our plants from a mobile phone. Today, I am sitting in my living room (again) switching between webinars and Outlook trying to make sense of a new world with a new strategy and a new (lower) budget.
We are faced with a “next normal,” and there is no changing that. What we can change is how we do business. This is an opportunity to rethink the way we work. One of the bright sides of COVID-19 has been the “forced adoption” of digital and remote work. While we have changed the way we embrace technology, we also have changed our expectation of what can get done this year.
Let’s face it, budgets have been slashed. We don’t know who is in or out of the office today. How can you possibly “move to the plant of the future” when you are just trying to keep up? As I see it, there are four steps you can take to keep things moving without having to go backwards:
1. Don’t boil the ocean, start with a cup.
No, you might not be able to do the $10MM transformation project, but can you do the groundwork needed to start the change? What was the first part of that project? The multidisciplinary work environment of the industry is tough enough to make changes by changing the culture.
Pick an area, group, or process that is foundational to the major transformation and start there. Maybe it’s converting safety rounds from paper to digital and analyzing that data. Find something that is a “quick win” that fits in your budget. The success of that project can pave the way for greener pastures in 2021 (fingers crossed).
2. Rethink how work can be done. What can be done remotely?
Even the most technology-savvy employees were surprised with how much they were able to get done on a laptop on the dining room table. Are there any parts of your major transformation that you overlooked when you were focused on the bigger picture? Take a moment to rethink each of the areas you planned to address and look at them with our new mindset (while it’s still fresh). Maybe you can address an area differently than you have before? Maybe risk assessments can be done in the field and supervision remotely approves it.
3. Do more with less.
Doing more with less has become the slogan of the information age. Just when you think you can’t get any tighter, you get squeezed again and find a new way to make things work.
Sometimes these “force majeure” scenarios have a way of forcing us to do things we would not have done voluntarily. If your budget has been cut, now is the time to rethink processes. Can you outsource a service? By centralizing information, could it support overhead reduction?
Even if you aren’t cutting expenses, you can often increase productivity by centralizing information or work processes. I have seen how just putting in a tool checkout system reduces the check in/check out time of tools from 2.5 minutes to 1 min. This cuts down the line and improves wrench time in the field.
4. Consolidate platforms.
No matter how many times you clean out your closet or your attic, you always seem to find things that you realize you don’t need to keep anymore (we probably all did this during quarantine).
The same goes for software that your organization has accumulated over the years. Now is a perfect time to take a fresh look and rethink which ones you need to keep, upgrade or replace. Maybe some standalone applications can be replaced by a suite of applications from one vendor? This would allow you to achieve step 1,2,3 and 4 in one project!
If I can be of any assistance, or if you just want to chat about how to move forward in a positive direction during this “next normal,” do not hesitate to reach out to me.
