What if there were a map that leads straight to the goal, helping to avoid failed investments and wrong decisions? A map that, like road signs, would contain all the necessary initiatives you need to take in order to step by step transform your manufacturing plant into a modern Factory 4.0?
Does such a map exist? Not yet. But we can create one specifically for you. See how the Digital Transformation Roadmap building process works according to ImFactory, and decide whether you’d like us to prepare one for your company too.
Work on building the Digital Transformation Roadmap begins with getting to know the company. First, we want the company to introduce itself – to tell us about its goals, challenges and ways of operating.
An important element of this stage is the ADMA (Advanced Manufacturing) assessment. The main goal of this survey is to determine the digital maturity of the company, based on the organization’s self-assessment.
ADMA allows the placement of a given company at one of five levels, where the threshold to the factory of the future – Industry 4.0 – is at level four. The assessment is based on 7 areas of Digital Transformation:
Transformation 1: Advanced Manufacturing Technologies
Transformation 2: Digital Factory
Transformation 3: ECO Factory
Transformation 4: Customer-oriented Engineering (end-to-end)
Transformation 5: Human-centered Organization
Transformation 6: Smart Manufacturing
Transformation 7: Open Factory, oriented towards the value chain
Looking at these transformation names, they can be assigned to three main areas: hardware (e.g. advanced manufacturing technologies), software digitization (digital factory, smart manufacturing) and human (human-centered organization, end-to-end). Additionally, ADMA provides much valuable information, such as the ability to compare your company with other companies that participated in the study.
It is worth emphasizing that ADMA is a subjective assessment of the organization, made by its employees, and this is the only evaluative assessment in the entire process of preparing the Digital Transformation Roadmap.
Note: the ADMA assessment can also be completed independently, without engaging ImFactory’s consulting services.
The second stage involves audit work, which typically covers the following areas: representative production processes, production preparation, warehousing, logistics, planning, purchasing, controlling, and IT (including ERP teams).
It is worth emphasizing that we usually examine only representative processes, indicated by the Client – preferably those that generate the greatest value for the company, or cause the most problems. This approach is often the best option, as going through all processes in an organization would take too much time.
The preliminary assessment is carried out in the following parts:
Gemba – we start by going to the process, i.e., to where the work and production take place. We speak with operators, team leaders, area managers, and of course management, and where possible the board. Conversations take place both in larger groups and one-on-one, because we want to gather as much information as possible and have the opportunity to compare and confront some of it.
Observations – we observe processes and record what we noticed. These can be both positive observations and those that in our opinion have potential for improvement.
Diagnosis – based on observations, we try to make a diagnosis, i.e., determine what causes the processes to work the way they do, looking for the root causes of a given state of affairs.
Suggestions – after gathering and initially analyzing the information, the first ideas for what could be changed begin to emerge.
Consensus – this is the most important part, which should close Stage II. Our auditors sit down for joint discussions with the Commissioning Party and verify that both sides agree on how the process works – what its strengths and weaknesses are. We try to discuss all elements, establish what the reality is, and arrive at a single, agreed opinion. This is very important, because only when we speak with one voice are we able to propose a solution to the Client that will not meet resistance and will be possible to implement.
It is important to emphasize that the assessment carried out by our auditors is not an evaluative assessment. Unlike, for example, ISO audits, the question here is not whether something is done well or poorly, but rather about finding potential for change. The product of this stage is the so-called Process Observations Report, which summarizes the jointly developed findings.
The third stage is the core analysis – this is where the final results of our work begin to appear, and the main product will be the initiatives, i.e., those projects that will appear on the Digital Transformation Roadmap. In order to position them appropriately, they still require prioritization. For this purpose, we use the Pain-Gain analysis tool.
We use a chart that has time to completion on one axis and costs on the other. We also assess the impact of a given initiative on the organization – the greater it is, the more valuable the initiative will be.
Positioning individual initiatives on such a chart allows us to distinguish three basic groups:
Low-hanging fruits – initiatives that deliver value at low cost. We can implement them quickly, cheaply, and start reaping the benefits almost immediately. It is worth starting with such projects, because they are excellent for getting the Digital Transformation rolling.
Mid-term goals – balanced initiatives where the Pain-to-Gain ratio is at a similar level.
Long-term goals – long-term initiatives that often have the greatest impact on the organization, making them very significant, however they have a long implementation time, high costs, or both. They are therefore usually planned for later, and earlier initiatives are arranged on the Roadmap so as to lead step by step towards them.
In addition to establishing individual initiatives and their prioritization, the product of this stage is the actual Digital Transformation Roadmap. This is a network of connections between the aforementioned initiatives, along with an additional description. From such a Roadmap, one can read the milestones and see the paths to achieving them. We can see which initiative group a given project belongs to, what its costs and implementation time are, its impact on the organization, what larger business goals it supports, and which ADMA transformation axis will benefit from the implementation of a given initiative.
The fourth and final stage is optional. Our work can conclude at Stage III, with the preparation of the Digital Transformation Roadmap, and subsequent activities will be assigned to a separate project.
However, if the Client wants something more, we can prepare a concept for implementing the first initiative or even several of them. This can also be a technical project, which is the most advanced form of preparation for certain activities. We then indicate specific directions for implementing individual initiatives, such as certain classes of systems, types of solutions, and functionalities that should be present. We do not, however, specify particular products, unless the Client explicitly requests it.
The Digital Transformation Roadmap from ImFactory is characterized by being independent of products from our own offering. As a result, at subsequent stages of its implementation, the Client is not bound by so-called vendor lock-in, meaning they do not have to implement the Roadmap with the same company that created it.
What might Digital Transformation Roadmaps prepared by us look like? They can vary greatly, depending on what were the most important goals of a given organization and the structure of the Roadmap itself. Let’s look at a few examples:
Example 1 is a Roadmap whose most important goal was to show future project managers and business owners activities along five main transformation axes: robotization, transparent factory, business processes, business model support, and operational planning.
Example 2 is a Roadmap focused on showing the digitization process of a representative production line. The initiatives were arranged on it according to priorities and lead to achieving successive milestones. Additionally, functionalities were mapped to ISA-95 levels.
Example 3 is a case of a smaller, more focused Roadmap, covering a narrower area. It was prepared for an organization that had a very specific goal it wanted to focus on.
Example 4 is the opposite of Example 3. It is a large, interdisciplinary Roadmap that was prepared simultaneously for two closely cooperating plants. We can see many connections and nesting of individual initiatives within one another, so that they lead to achieving common goals.
The Digital Transformation Roadmap is a process. It must live within the organization, and its preparation is merely an introduction to that. How then can we assess whether the preparation project was successful? We can look at this from both a short-term and long-term perspective:
Short-term success – we can assess this already during the preparation of the Roadmap. We consider the project successful if we gain the engagement of stakeholders and spark discussions among them about what can be changed and how development can be supported. The result of these discussions should be reaching certain conclusions and initiating changes.
Long-term success – we can speak of this if the organization actually undertakes certain initiatives, and after some time continues to evolve its roadmap, returns to what has been achieved, and successive initiatives continue to be implemented. The Roadmap can also be updated.
Are you considering creating a Digital Transformation Roadmap? We invite you to contact us! Call us or fill in the contact form and schedule a consultation with our expert. The first meeting is free of charge and is intended to establish how we can help you. It usually takes place remotely and lasts up to 1 hour.
Want to learn more? Visit our Knowledge Base, where you'll find articles and webinars by experts to expand your knowledge.
