Intelligent Operations During a Pandemic Hosted by Peter Reynolds

Industrial manufacturers of all sizes have been forced to change their future priorities significantly. With the increased volatility and uncertainty with staffing and resources due to Covid-19,  the need to maintain an intelligent approach to Operations Management is critical. Operations Management Systems provide the foundation for a company’s standard for operations, enhanced compliance assurance, the conduct of operations, workforce competency, and asset performance management.

For many companies- "COVID 19 is a wake-up call " and How quickly an enterprise recover from the pandemic will expose what transformational advantages have been achieved through digitalization of Operations." 

Transcript

Peter Reynolds : 0:04

Industrial manufacturers of all sizes have been forced to change their future priorities significantly with the increased volatility and uncertainty staffing and resources to COVID-19 need to maintain an intelligent approach to operations management is critical, operations management systems provide the foundation for a company standard for operations, enhanced compliance assurance conduct of operations workforce competency and asset performance management for many companies COVID-19 is a wake up call. How quickly, an enterprise recovers from the pandemic looks both what transformational advantages through digitalization of operations. I'm Peter Reynolds senior analyst and this is the digital transformation viewpoints podcast brought to you by air sea advisory group. In each episode we'll ask the big questions of our industry is adopting emerging technologies and practices for sustainable manufacturing for better operational and engineering processes to blockchain. Today, however, our focus is managing resilience and operations and intelligent operations management. So here with me today is David Drerup, CEO of Operational Sustainability LLC. David for manufacturers to survive in the market today guarantee any profitability, especially in light of what's happening with coronavirus. We think it's essential that industrial organizations capture value quickly and are able to change direction, according to customer demand with products, and also doing so organizations can maximize the use of industrial data to act on these market developments. It really seems like interoperability of operations management systems have been a bit of an issue, and still companies are struggling to find value in data. And often, many companies are using spreadsheets as a tool to collect and share data. So David, what do you what do you think is the current situation today and from your experience of working with asset owners.

David Drerup : 2:05

Operations Management Systems you're referring to have morphed into a platform we call intelligent operations. The current IP landscape for many organizations is a confusing combination of spreadsheets homegrown applications and siloed disparate systems. Most of these systems seem to be focused on tactical compartmentalised information right and they can't really ask for integrated aggregated insight. So since the main centers for profit process industries, barring reduced incidences gains and production efficiency and operational effectiveness, it only kind of to us anyway it makes sense to focus on operations as a way to capture value and, frankly, to be responsive to market and customer demands.

Peter Reynolds : 2:56

So, what about COVID-19 Let's talk about that for a minute so today. Obviously, so many people are working remotely. And, you know, after hear about the digital customer experience and this is perhaps becoming a little bit more important companies say it takes weeks or even months, sometimes to make changes to evolving either operational or production needs some leaders are breaking this paradigm. So what do you think about this and why are some leaders, moving ahead of others.

David Drerup : 3:27

Our mind company who already headed down the path of interoperable data driven operations have had an easier time with this transition over companies who weren't necessarily in the business leaders today, tend to view change as difficult and challenging and use these perceived difficulties as reasons to resist necessary change. Now, also however the current situation is proven in companies can move as fast as they have to when you know the outcome is important enough anyway. And then finally, I guess, understanding the underpinnings of and integrations possible with a data driven system is essentially a critical step in implementing one as painlessly as you can possibly do.

Peter Reynolds : 4:16

So you mentioned about silos and I think this is an interesting point - breaking down silos between either operations, or other departments such as maintenance reliability or human resources in the supply chain and breaking down these silos is really essential and really delivering those reliable and agile products. Yet, the majority of these roles are now essentially working from home with pandemic in full swing. So it seems to me that as a technology component, to all this. There's a lot of the systems may be you know plant centric or they're not able to be shared outside of the, of the plants. So what's happening to the technology from your view?

David Drerup : 5:00

What we're seeing in our customers who are using an interoperable platform in this kind of remote work environment. And if where it doenst damage the integrity of the data and answers one outcome and the team is part of the outcome right and in some companies. We've had a distributed network of information on a really strong one today. Even after the coronavirus is under control we think that companies are going to have to face reality as being kind of a semi permanent thing. And it will be time with competitive advantages to a company's new concept and also employees who now know how to work effectively remotely will want that option in smart businesses who want to keep talented employees, lack of that to do that, the right technology and systems doesn't make a huge difference in how effective that you know move to remote working is right. And if you get a little further to think about it, larger organizations with multiple facilities and thousands of employees today. Across all their facilities are already dealing with the situation under normal operation so think the question is how do you effectively share information leverage the learnings and use the data analysis to streamline better manage operations across many facilities in particular our software platform, obviously is a platform, specifically designed to create that interoperable distributed data driven network of information that effectively is the backbone of remote information sharing. In particular, we elevate solutions like environment health and safety and asset performance management to transcend departmental barriers and become part of something much larger. So in summary intelligent operations eliminates the siloed systems from five to six departments today, bringing them into an integrated holistic view of the organization.

Peter Reynolds : 7:00

So you know I can think about some use cases what I think that there's the effect of breaking down silos, but even, you know there's just, you know, how do you get work done, you know with with, you know, COVID-19, you know, threats to operations. One thing we often hear about is, you know, a virtual handover because operations, perhaps are using face to face handover and they're, they're traditionally that operators would see eye to eye before they actually change shifts. But I suppose there's a lot of other other use cases that that you perhaps can take out so. So, can you tell me about some use cases where you've deployed with all the suite or components of the platform.

David Drerup : 7:46

So, we have a current customer in the chemical sector is following the intelligent operations pathway and achieve a better switching outcomes thus far they've been able to respond more quickly, while adapting to issues during the pandemic and today they use OESuite to manage their asset performance management operational risk EHS compliance workforce and conduct of operations need so that's really the whole combined intelligent operations platform, and some of the specific areas of focus that we're currently working on with them include management change, risk-based inspection asset health monitoring, asset strategy, operator rounds, ommissions management so when you have a depth of insight that reaches across departmental silos, you can make better more informed decisions, much faster so intelligent operations enables businesses to move at the speed of change in today's world.

Peter Reynolds : 8:44

Okay, so it can't be easy, but when some of the challenges acid owners might face in achieving the benefits of the intelligent operations platform, and how are companies overcoming these these challenges?

David Drerup : 8:58

Because intelligent operations is driven by interoperability value realization comes from multiple degrees in the company. Most of less concerns of technology, don't offer that kind of value so OS offers multiple pathways to jumpstart that process via content like policies, procedures, technical standards, field guides or industry knowledge and best practices, and really all that, which ends up, up in showing the wrong line for implementation. But the first step in overcoming the challenge is making a commitment to that and embrace technology.

Peter Reynolds : 9:36

Right, okay. So David, we're coming to the close of the podcast, do you have any last thoughts for our audience today.

David Drerup : 9:42

So this is a really complex topic and it's hard to cover in depth in one conversation. Though I think you asked the right questions Peter, for people that want to explore it further, we have a variety of resources available for free on our website. www.DrivingOE.comm and those resources include white papers, short videos, articles, webinars that invite anyone listening to check from David thanks for being with me today. Thank you.

Peter Reynolds : 10:14

That's all the time we have today thanks David Drerup, CEO with Operational Sustainability. For more information and insights on the topic or to learn best practices to accelerate transformation. See the ARC Advisory group website at www.arcweb.com, please do subscribe to this podcast, so you don't miss an episode and while you're there, leave us a review. In the meantime, thank you for listening.