Management Perspectives

Unconventional times need innovative solutions to address confronting business issues. In the present times, energy transition, digitisation, decarbonisation, and Industry 4.0, in general, are changing the landscape of industrial manufacturing faster than ever before. It means that the changes that occur in the development process across various sectors which took 40 to 50 years for a giant leap in the past, now take less than a decade and happen almost simultaneously in different parts of the world. The Covid-19 crisis and its aftermath illustrate this point most vividly. Most intriguing disruptions occurred in the areas of technology development and applications, material use, communications, retail, healthcare systems and services, and financial transactions.

Rules of business also changed, to the extent that we saw collaboration and alignment working even among competitors and unrelated entities. Manufacturing and service industries are undergoing a major shift—traditional mode of operation and method of business are giving way to new paradigms enabled by front-running and emerging technologies and management practices incorporating advanced reliability and ease of doing business. Digital empowerment catalysed by AI is an outperforming enabler fostering disruptive innovation.

Disruptive innovation (a term coined by Harvard professor Clayton Christensen) refers to a process in which an underrated product or service starts to become popular enough to replace, or displace, a conventional product or service. In the disruptive new industry world, professionals aspiring to lead future enterprises shall have marked attributes towards innovation, collaboration, urge towards continuous learning and updating, and shall exhibit enhanced problem-solving capabilities. His strengths shall include cross-functional skills including IT capability, data analysis, supply chain management and the outlook shall be sustainable conduct of the business.

The skillsets transcend conventional management vision and mission leading to competition and profitability. Once sustainability in operations and professional ethics in management become essential elements of private sector business, the border line between public and private sectors tends to blur and wax out. A great deal of reskilling is also required in management institutions and master class coaching towards curriculum development, updating and analysis of case studies. The effective functioning of industries involves tremendous planning and scheduling regarding procurement, production, quality control, safety, and environmental care, off sites and utilities, marketing, and logistics besides ensuring optimal use of raw materials, energy, and manpower. Aspect specific systems and tools are used to address optimisation in each of these areas for prudent decision making.

Digital transformation envisages the application of information technology (IT) or IT enabled technologies to advance existing business operations, processes, models, and strategies with the intent of making the company more productive, environmentally sustainable, competitive, and profitable. Industry segments such as manufacturing, power generation, oil and gas, aviation, transportation etc., are taking advantage of the new industrial internet of things (IIoT) opportunity to unearth additional value from their operations. Voluminous data is produced from various performance management and process optimisation tools employed in the facility. Unlike in the past, it is now possible to holistically review the big data and optimise performance, enhance sustainability, and advance safety at the enterprise level. Earlier, the lack of a trusted platform to collate, segregate and analyse data was a major hurdle.

The emergence of IIoT resolved this situation and it has become handy to harness plant data through sensors and derive benefits including operational excellence, better manpower deployment and utilisation, cost reduction, product quality enhancement and better safety and environmental standards. Digital twins are used in the manufacturing industry offering to increase utilisation of capacities, improve product quality and output, forecasting deviations from the designer’s intent regarding processes and operating parameters, reduce specific consumptions of energy and feedstock, improve bottom lines, and better workplace safety and achieve environmental targets. A digital twin is a virtual model of an asset or process that uses IoT sensors to monitor and capture data from physical objects, process it in real time in combination with historical data to provide an elaborate view on the performance of manufacturing equipment and plants. These models are combined with advanced visualisation technologies and data analytics to fast-track troubleshooting, forecast imminent failures, and innovate equipment and retrofit the same in an existing facility.

Often, a low turn down ratio arising out of overdesign in size and capacity of the equipment is a generic problem associated with design. These data driven models in the virtual environment also provide the requisite inputs to better future designs. Maintenance strategies are also undergoing major transformation. The shift from reactive (‘run to failure’) to reliability centered maintenance (RCM) was gradual and avoided costly equipment failures. Today’s pro-active or predictive maintenance programs use AI-based analytics to identify the predominant factors and monitor parameters to fix variations leading to failures—abrupt or incipient. Industry managers also confront issues related to data security.

While current operating data is relevant for day-to-day business, historical data is useful for policy formulation and prediction of price and market trends. Maintaining the confidentiality and integrity of the data and control over its access are important from the security point of view. Digitisation and encryption help to protect the organisation’s electronic information systems from attack of hawkers and prevent unauthorised access. Organisations with good governance processes practice security-by-design—building systems and processes able to respond to unexpected risks and emerging dangers.

Employee awareness is also a crucial frontline defense, building cybersecurity consciousness and password discipline to protect against the relentless malware and phishing campaigns. Turnarounds in industrial facilities are testing times for managers. Completion of turnarounds without time and cost overruns is dependent on ensuring that the right and necessary information, supplies, equipment, and manpower at the right time are made available.

Therefore, a lot of planning and scheduling is to be done before shutting down a productive plant or equipment for purposes of inspection of vessel internals, catalyst change, equipment replacement, cleaning of fouled equipment or hooking up retrofit systems to ensure reliability of plant assets and ward off unexpected failures. Most often turnarounds incur time and cost overruns due to faulty projections based on inadequate and primitive information about the condition of equipment, delivery schedule of critical supplies, assessment of quantum of work involved and manpower accounted.

Today, with the use of artificial intelligence, real time modelling, maintenance and turnarounds, debottlenecking and troubleshooting have become handy and the targets could be achieved almost within the schedule. Industrial labour and rules governing employment are getting adapted to the new situation. Digital workplace services combining cutting-edge technology and best-in class support services enable the workforce to work from anywhere, anytime and in a secured environment. Effective coordination of the workforce at all levels with the objective of achieving greater productivity is a daunting task. Moreover, their safety and well being (physical and mental) are also a concern. Digital communication enabled workforce solutions, planning, and prioritising daily work flows with mobile wearables,

IOT and automated AI technologies encourages collaboration among supervisors and workmen and facilitates proactive problem solving. People often ask why are Indian industrial MSMEs and other small businesses are not competitive and why they are dependent on imports from neighbouring countries? Indians successfully lead global business outside the country, but not in India, where it is wholly left to mediocrity. Is it due to, as some people claim, that the ground is left to unthinking bureaucrats and dumb politicians who cannot see beyond their noses? The ongoing disruption may probably answer them that the governance of public missions shall be left to visionary political bosses and carrying out the mission shall be entrusted with the professional administrators. Such an ecosystem will nurture confident managers with a clear perception and understanding, excellent drive, initiative and risk-taking capable of implementing the vision engraved in the Viksit Bharat by 2047.