ARCHITECT! Bridge the Gap (11 of 15)

Bridge the gap!

Be prepared. Be certain.

Recently I asked the CFO of an international mining company listed the New York Stock Exchange a question: “What’s your organization’s maintenance spend?”. After a significant pause, she said “I don’t know”. Seriously? Then she went into a bit of a rant, saying: “I don’t understand why it takes us 12 days to close out our month end!”. I do. It’s all about the data. The accountants used spreadsheets to report financial information to the NYSE. Spreadsheets have their place but have no integrity. They are not auditable. If an error is detected in the workflow to report financial results, the accountants have to go back to the beginning of their workflow and come forward again. It is indeed Spreadsheet Hell.

In a previous blog in this series, we concluded that an organization’s applications + data + technology must be driven by the needs of the business. To navigate the complex journey to Industry 4.0, asset-intensive organizations must address the need for IT-OT-ET integration. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE DATA! To be effective, efficient, and informed, an asset-intensive organization’s IT, OT and ET platforms must be integrated. These organizations must work diligently to eliminate silos, update legacy systems, and say “No!” to spreadsheets. This is a tall order. It’s going to take leadership, planning, determination, diligence, and time.

When I first heard about The Agile Organization, I said “No way could this be possible in an asset-intensive organization!”. Then I researched the classical definition of agility. Once again, it’s all about the data. Once the data is available, we can monitor it, measure it, analyze it, compare the results to our expectations and targets, then adjust the production process or business process to meet the targets. The feedback mechanism is the key to agility. I then understood how an asset-intensive organization could be agile.

What else is involved? DIGITAL TWINS. Yes, that’s plural. There’s more than one Digital Twin to consider. The Digital Twin of the Production Process is clear and obvious. More recent is the Digital Twin of the Organization (DTO), a concept and term coined by Gartner. The DTO is a virtual representation of the way an organization does business and is represented by its Business Process Architecture! Enablers of business processes are people in roles that have responsibilities and use technology … the three pillars that support an organization.

TWIN these Digital Twins! That’s a competitive key to an asset-intensive organization’s insights, power, and advantage.