The potential value of digital transformation initiatives is undeniable, and many organizations are moving full steam ahead with their digital manufacturing projects. However, other organizations are unable to achieve impact at scale in a timely manner. This roadblock is often known as scale purgatory. 

Yes, rolling out your digital manufacturing initiatives across the production network is a serious endeavor, but enterprise-scale success is achievable. Fortunately, with the incredible advancement of IIoT and growth fueled by Industry 4.0, there has been no better time than now for the availability of innovative, state-of-the art technologies, resources, and opportunities for digital transformation.

PTC's ThingWorx IoT Solutions Platform is designed to reduce these barriers enabling manufacturers go from pilots to enterprise-scale solutions, using pre-built applications,  developer tools or pre-built solutions. A pioneer in IIoT, PTC has spent years identifying trends and usage patterns among industrial enterprises that define the most common use cases for IIoT solutions. PTC leverages this insight to continually hone its IIoT platform architecture to enable enterprises to create, scale, customize, and implement solutions that meet their requirements and achieve their objectives. The ThingWorx architecture incorporates modular functionality that simplifies development and includes pre-built applications and solutions for fast, easy implementation of IIoT solutions for common use cases in various industries...solutions like PTC’s Thingworx Digital Performance Management (DPM) can deliver the insights you need to make seamless digital transformation across the enterprise possible.

What are the common roadblocks standing in the way of double-digit business value? What are the actionable steps your organization should take to avoid those roadblocks and roll out your digital transformation efforts at an enterprise scale?

Accelerate Your Digital Manufacturing Initiatives 

Traditional systems often lack a way to make comparisons across the machine, line, and plant level. Without consistency and visibility, manufacturers can delay transformational impact at scale. This can also make it difficult to identify, prioritize, and resolve bottlenecks—and how well your digital manufacturing efforts are making an impact. With a digital performance management solution, organizations can systemically identify bottlenecks, prioritize actions for improvement, and learn how well these improvements are working.

Achieve Impact at Scale with Digital Performance Management 

When manufacturers take a technology-first approach, it’s easy to get caught up in the trial-and-error process. This often means manufacturers are running many pilots at a time. It’s important to keep enterprise-wide impact top-of-mind when building and testing your business case. Once your pilot proves value, your executives will be able to clearly visualize the potential impact of a full adoption. Digital performance management can help you understand the progress of the technology pilot and next steps to take, so you can easily identify, prioritize, and act on the opportunities with the greatest financial and business impact.

Standardization Across Facilities

Digital performance management allows organizations to evaluate machine performance and productivity using the universal measure of lost time. By identifying critical labor and asset bottlenecks that demand focus, organizations can unlock additional capacity to drive high-impact performance metrics.

Solution Central

Not all production sites are created equal. Whether the factory is gained from a merger or acquisition—or it’s simply an older location with legacy equipment—expanding technology pilots across multiple production sites can be challenging. With a cloud-based Solution Central, organizations can distribute customizable templates that help standardize quality and efficiency across sites—even when those sites are relatively unique. Using PTC’s Thingworx DPM platform, organizations can also reuse work where it’s appropriate to do so, shortening time to value.

Clear Vision 

Without advance understanding of a pilot’s potential impact at enterprise scale, it can be easy for an organization to lose sight of its goals. While a pilot can create pockets of value, a lack of enterprise impact is likely to lose traction with the C-Suite, causing them to shift their focus to other priorities. PTC’s ThingWorx DPM solution provides a hyper-focused lens on where to direct resources and how well you’re driving a measurable and scalable financial impact. This big picture view of success will help engage the C-Suite as manufacturers realize value across the enterprise.

Data Governance

Siloed data from plant to plant creates a disconnect between performance reporting, which can stagnate the rate of progress. Digital performance management breaks down these barriers, replacing the fragmented approach to digital transformation with a universal measure of time loss. This approach lets you grab data from the system of record where it’s created and pull it into a system of authority. From there, the data drives timely insights with an emphasis on the opportunities and bottlenecks that carry the most financial impact. 

Putting Strategy into Action

To start scaling your digital manufacturing initiatives at scale, here are five critical steps to follow:

• Plan Value: Set priorities around high-impact use cases and gain executive buy-in.
• Program Design: Create an Enterprise Program Playbook including IT, OT, and Operations stakeholders to adopt priority use cases.
• Prove Value: Demonstrate real-world impact with appropriate KPIs that communicate early successes.
• Scale Value: Adapt agile methods and parallel workstreams and develop an enterprise architecture that will continuously scale value across production sites in a timely manner.
• Program Governance: Set up your organization for ongoing success with standardized implementation tracking and benchmarking metrics.

Deliver Impact at Scale with Digital Performance Management

With a laser-focused approach that leverages digital performance management, you will improve critical bottlenecks and scale a company-wide digital transformation. Discover how Danish brewing company Carlsberg transformed its facilities—propelling its digital manufacturing initiatives forward.