Diligent and cautious approach needed for Digitalization

Diligent and cautious approach needed for Digitalization

Every continual improvement (CI) professional understands the significance of having a stable process before driving a process capability improvement initiative. Interestingly, I find this analogy apt to the contemporary OpEx industry wherein the organizations ignore the fallacies of the existing OpEx culture and ride the digital transformation bandwagon across their global footprint. The end-result would be amplified chinks in the digital armour. 

Let me pose few questions that would stir the idea:

• How many organizations measure the effectiveness of Quality standard certifications through a correlation with business growth?

• How many of the operational leaders relate the term ‘Quality’ to a process measure/metric quality instead of the definition ‘conforming to customer requirements’?

• How many operational excellence programs are effective in truly institutionalizing continuous improvement projects as against transforming an existing one posthumously?

I am sure the above would resonate with many industry leaders. These are few challenges that are not specific to the individuals or the processes or the Quality Management System but to the facets of the OpEx culture ingrained in last two decades. Let us understand few more hurdles. Click here to read more Articles on The Global State of Operational Excellence: Critical Challenges & Future Trends - Research Report 2018/19.

Measuring Success

One of the most pondered aspect at Executive level is the return on investment on an OpEx program. Management reviews carry cost savings agenda typically measured in terms of hard and potential soft savings corroborating the ROI. However, the mechanisms deployed for validating the savings are replete with deficiencies leading to skewed numbers. Water tight measurement and monitoring linked to key responsible areas of middle management and finance team vetting the commercials helps reflect true ROI.

Skills & Competencies

The knowledge DNA of the OpEx personnel is not proportionally expanding with the sophistication in the standards, tools and techniques (e.g. Quality Circle -> TQMS -> Six Sigma -> Lean -> Robotic Process Automation -> Machine Learning and Artifical Intelligence). In addition, there is a gaping hole emerging between the existing capabilities and market expectations in terms of service and solution maturity.

Unfortunately, this challenge is not confined to one specific industry. Hence, CI professionals should not only expand capabilities on the present-day quality concepts continuously, but also possess the domain specific insight to stay relevant to the customer ideologies. (E.g. a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt experienced working with Utility domain is seldom found inadequate to extend expertise to the Banking and Finances)

Click here to read the full Survey Report 2018/19. 

Inclusivity

OpEx programs lose steam if proper sustenance measures are institutionalized. This includes investment in establishing an unbiased function that initially reigns in and markets the program across the organization through achieving various business results. And then stretch the coverage by creating extended bandwidth viz. the representation from delivery and functions personnel (like Hub & spoke model). If the operations accountability is not ensured, the ball stops rolling.

Leadership Commitment

...is an aspect that is beaten to death in the Quality standards as well as OpEx programs, but very many leaders fail to understand that this does not mean just a circular / some corpus fund allocable initiative. Commitment is to be demonstrated in defining key responsibilities, reviewing the rigor, evaluating effectiveness and business growth and finally investing in industry-trending technologies.

Driving the point home - the shortcomings in the existing OpEx programs have clandestine impact on the digitalization and hence demand sustainable actions.

Changing face of Process Excellence

In the present industry, looking at the ginormous availability of data and the mind- boggling application of the big data analytics it is easy to deduce that we are on the verge of a paradigm shift. And this digital transformation journey is taking the OpEx to a next level wherein the routines are driven by space bots, machine learning and artificial intelligence. We need to blur the lines of innovation while taking giant strides in progressing the CI program on digital platform. Open question...how do we upgrade the current industrial CI tools and techniques into the current mix of digitalization overcoming the fallacies.