Will Digitization Work For Everyone?

More than half of the companies are dissatisfied with their PdM/CBM programs because they aren’t ready for change and don’t start with a key-assets-versus- technologies matrix.

There has been much recent coverage of the CrowdStrike issue, with many articles asking, “How can one company error cause so many global disruptions?”

For me it was minor, just preventing hotel check out. For many others it affected airlines, television/entertainment outlets, hospitals, and emergency and law-enforcement services.

This single event has shown us how fragile the infrastructure is and that the strength of broad interconnectivity is also its greatest weakness. Similarly, weaknesses in supply chains (single points of failure of software and logistics) were also made extremely apparent during the pandemic and the overall system still hasn’t recovered.

According to a Splunk Report on techrepublic.com, Downtime Costs Large Companies $400 Billion a Year, “Downtime incidents experienced by large companies can be placed in one of two categories: security incidents (phishing attacks) or application or infrastructure issues (software failures). The average Global 2000 firm experiences 466 hr. of cybersecurity-related downtime and 456 hr. of application or infrastructure-related downtime, according to the report.

The biggest cause of downtime incidents cited by the report respondents was cybersecurity-related human errors, such as clicking a phishing link. This was followed by ITOps-related human errors (infrastructure misconfigurations, capacity issues, and application code errors). It takes an average of 18 hr. until downtime or service degradation, caused by human error, is detected and an additional 67 to 76 hr. to recover.”

References such as this point to human error and insufficient plant floor understanding and support of the digital technologies and processes. Without the correct processes in place and team-member involvement, digitization will not fix the plant problems.

Many companies buy technologies and then set up predictive maintenance routes (PdM) or use condition-based monitoring (CBM) sensors. So why are more than half of the companies dissatisfied with their PdM/CBM programs? It typically stems from not objectively evaluating whether they are ready for change, and not starting with a key-assets-versus-technologies matrix, that selects appropriate technologies and applications. This has not improved for a decade.

Similarly, the level of reactive maintenance in North America (on average) has not improved and most likely will not, unless organizations improve/transform their plant-floor cultures. How aligned is your current business model with where you need to go to be successful?

Digitizing everything is going to present at least as many difficulties (I anticipate more) without much more focus on human interaction and technology. The non-stop bombardment of data causes increased stress, which usually shows up as increased absenteeism and burnout.

As further evidence of this concern, respondents from a study, Stories From Experts About the Impact of Digital Life, Pew Research Center stated:

• “Digital technologies have made it more difficult for me to stay on task and devote sustained attention. This interferes with my work productivity.”

• “I can’t get my brain to calm down and focus. It is all over the place. I can’t seem to concentrate. I just start thinking about what I’m going to do next.”

• “Increased isolation is a negative effect I feel in my life; the time I spend using digital technologies could well be spent in other more creative and productive ways.”

• “I am becoming increasingly aware of the way constant access to digital forms of communication can be overwhelming.”

• “It has become an ever-present overhang on all aspects of life. There is no escape.”

• “Digital technology radically increases expectations for instantaneous responses. This is unhealthy.”

• “It has become harder to take your eyes off a screen to enjoy life as it’s happening.”

• “We don’t understand what we can trust anymore.”

I’ve often said that more than 70% of large implementations in lean, reliability, and maintenance technologies fail, i.e., deliver less than 50% of expected benefits, are not sustainable, or never get off the ground. The transformation to digital systems will be at least as challenging. A sampling of things that can cause roadblocks includes:

• Lack of support from plant floor because many previous attempts to change were only temporarily supported.

• Insufficient planning and readiness assessment (culture and infrastructure) before implementation.

• Reliability is a journey that will never be completely finished. Not having a clearly defined end state for such a large and long initiative makes goals/progress ambiguous. By identifying smaller steps and their specific end states you can better monitor progress and celebrate wins. Only do it as fast as you can do it well.

• Perform a risk assessment on cultural readiness for change and get buy-in. Management may be charging ahead with Industry 4.0 initiatives, but too many people don’t see (or aren’t convinced) that the outcome will make their job better.

• Lack of a digital mindset; it’s an intertwined issue of knowledge, trust, and clear believable shared vision with an achievable first step. Most employees are too busy surviving daily production goals, so it becomes just another thing for which they don’t have time.

• Lack of computer skills; too many employees don’t have sufficient computer skills to perform their current job and now they are being told things will get more digital. If your workforce isn’t upskilled, plant-floor resistance and errors will increase.

• Not communicating plant-wide benefits. Do all the departments see the new technology as a positive step?

• Lack of good data; too much is inaccurate, missing, not linkable, or not easily accessed.

• Instill workable processes before going digital in everything.

• Involve all plant departments to properly support the initiative.

• Systems too often are over-budget, under-perform, and not as user friendly as promoted. After all these years, less than 30% of computerized maintenance management systems are utilized (team members usually tell me it’s closer to 20%).

Today, technologies and new systems get easier and some less costly to implement. However, if you don’t have trustworthy data, you still don’t have what you need to make the tough decisions.

Note that most digitization challenges are people and culture related. Industry 4.0 is a bag full of tools and techniques. It’s up to you to put together a plan that best fits your processes and cultural maturity.  EP

Based in Knoxville, Dr. Klaus M. Blache is director of the Reliability & Maintainability Center at the Univ. of Tennessee, and a research professor in the College of Engineering. Contact him at kblache@utk.edu.