As we saw in the last blog Predictive Maintenance offers significant benefits to adopters’ businesses along several dimensions. These include – improved productivity, reduced need for highly skilled maintenance crew, lower spare parts inventory and longer equipment life – among other benefits. One would think that users would be clamoring to adopt this technology. So, what comes in the way of organizations taking the plunge and implementing Industry 4.0 in general and Predictive Maintenance in particular? Why is it that only a few elite manufacturers are leading the charge? What follows are my observations based on the numerous conversations we have been having with manufacturers over the last one year.
- Decline of Manufacturing: The strategic importance of manufacturing has been declining across industries as the trend towards contract manufacturing especially from China and the move towards ODM’s (Original Design Manufacturers) has taken over. This has seen value added from manufacturing drop and consequently leaders tend to spend less time on this dimension of their business.
- Absence of Leadership Involvement: Organizations tend to see Industry 4.0 or Predictive Maintenance as standalone projects rather than an integral part of business transformation to enhance competitiveness. Transformations like Industry 4.0 require business leaders to include them in the overall Organization’s vision and strategy. That in turn ensures leadership support via: a) Appointing a senior leader for the project; b) Personally leading regular progress reviews and, c) Resolving issues and helping the Organization make the changes needed. Getting leadership support in turn requires that the project benefits are clearly articulated and quantified. The project scope needs to be clearly defined and a governance structure put in place.
- Fear of Change: Adopting and embracing new technology requires a change in ways of working as well as the need to pick up new skills. There is also the fear of losing one’s job or at least a downsizing of one’s organization. In traditional organizations this is clearly perceived as a loss of power. Each of these barriers requires that the implementation team develop an action plan to overcome them. For instance a significant rollout of training to reskill the users as well as moving those who have a challenge in making the change or whose roles have been rendered redundant to alternate roles.
- Cost and Efficiency Challenge: Implementing the entire project requires considerable upfront investment in technology and implementation resources. The entire implementation can also take a long time leading to a loss of focus from the implementing team as well as leadership among the numerous other priorities demanding attention. It is therefore critical for the Organization to have a few leaders willing to act as champions. It is equally critical that the entire project is broken down into chunks that simplify implementation.
- Talent Scarcity: Hiring top quality talent who has the understanding of manufacturing operations, technology in machinery as well as digital technologies like Machine Learning is asking a lot from anyone however talented. Getting them to also have the skill to operate within the organizational structures of traditional organization and exert influence up and down the organization seems an unrealistic ask. This means for many organizations bringing in consultants with the credibility and resources to engage in this task becomes an inevitable part of implementation.
In the next article we will discuss steps to enable successful implementation. Until then, Take the plunge! Make a break away from the past! Predict the Unpredictable!!!
Author
Milind is a Chemical Engineer from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay with an MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. He has over forty years of business experience in Sales, Marketing and Operations at Fortune Global 50 Corporations like Procter & Gamble, and Dell Technologies.
