Where Does My Digitalization Begin?

Where does my digitalization begin? Many people ask themselves that question. But where does the truth lie? In most of the industrial companies I have been a guest at, a great deal of attention was always paid to production. Everything there had to be automated; every last system, however small, had to be connected to the in-house — and incidentally self-developed — “service bus”. New machines were bought that could work faster, more effectively and more autonomously. And finally the poor operator was hung with electronics meant to support them at work. All of these steps are important and justified. The critical question to ask now is: why do so many of these companies start their digitalization at the back rather than at the front? Over time, every large and midsize company has introduced new processes. In many cases these started on paper or by email. But sooner or later came the point where the process could no longer be controlled, monitored or evaluated. In the second evolutionary stage, people often tried to solve the process with Excel files. Some were stored centrally, access to them was controlled somehow, and rules were made for exactly how the information had to flow. Excel is a wonderful tool with which you can build a great many wonderful things. What it cannot do is map complete processes with many participants over the long run.

You could of course counter that you simply have to implement your requirements in the Excel sheet with “VBA” and everything will be fine. But here I would like to raise the objection of usability. An Excel file is a spreadsheet and always will be. That is why every “program” developed in Excel is a spreadsheet. Tables can be useful inside software, but in most cases they are not. Another point I want to raise: after a certain time of using an Excel file, more and more is added, and suddenly columns named GJ or ADE are in use. Users have to scroll a very long way, employees become increasingly dissatisfied and ask for an alternative that is better than Excel. Unfortunately I have then very often heard the following sentence:

“I would like the Excel file as an application that scrolls better.”

And for me this is exactly where digitalization has to begin — in the offices! Excel files like these (or other mini process tools) have to be analyzed precisely and transferred into a stable application tailored to the process, one that represents that process reliably and can feed an automated production line with data. That is why, in my view, it is just as important to digitize the processes that surround production and to make them available to the outside world through services.

The second benefit would be that production can be adapted gently to whatever customers bring to you. Please do not misunderstand this as an argument for investing nothing at all in a more modern production line. The shortage of workers and the advancing technologies for modern, better production methods play a major role in holding your own on the world market. But you do take the pressure off production to make everything happen automatically.

The Digital Office

A digital office would not only mean that production can be supplied with better data — it would raise the efficiency of the entire company. You would also be able to see much faster which areas of production need support and which can carry on as they are for now. Another aspect is a far better opportunity to enter the “IoT market”. Success there would require all processes to be connected. On top of that, it would relieve your own staff and reduce the constant demand for new workers who, as of 2020, are simply not available.