Why operational transformation is crucial for manufacturers

A recent Capgemini study into operational analytics adoption has highlighted urgency among many manufacturers to shift to transformative digital business models.

More than 70% of respondents now put more emphasis on operations analytics initiatives than on customer-focused processes. However, only 18% had extensively integrated their analytics initiatives across business operations and successfully realized their objectives.

Because digitization has been so transformative for customer relationships and engagement, many organisations have focused efforts on digital transformation in front-end customer experience. The Capgemini study found that only 26% of initiatives were focused on operational transformation through analytics. However, focus is gradually shifting with many organisations in US, Europe and China now putting more emphasis on operations than customer analytics. Over 80% of respondents agreed that analytics in operations plays a pivotal role in driving profits or creating competitive advantage.

In light of the study, Capgemini have announced the launch of new Digital Manufacturing Services, bringing together their established industry expertise to help manufacturing clients to realise lead-time reduction and productivity gains through building smart connected plants and products as well as new digital business models.

“Too many manufacturers are thinking of ‘digital’ in terms of either the factory floor or customer not both. Only by looking at digitizing and connecting both the customer and smart operations can manufacturers truly realize the optimization and disruptive capabilities of digital to drive growth,” comments Jean-Pierre Petit, Global Head of Digital Manufacturing, Capgemini Group.

“Capgemini’s capacity to connect the physical and virtual worlds is unique in the market. Our ability to not only connect physical assets to business systems while also leveraging customer insights as an integral part of digital transformation initiatives, has proven its value to manufacturing clients across the world, in their quest to successfully transform their businesses for the digital age.”

Services will be delivered through a digital manufacturing Center of Excellence in Mumbai and 3 digital manufacturing hubs located in North America, France and Germany. Capgemini’s rapidly growing Digital Manufacturing Services combine its strong consulting, technology and engineering capabilities to help customers with digital strategy, transformation planning and implementation.

From product and asset conception to full production, digital technologies are transforming the manufacturing business. New customer expectations, such as mass customization and product-as-a-service, further accentuate the need to embrace digitization across the manufacturing value-chain.

Smart, connected products, assets and operations offer the potential for time to market reduction, productivity gains, cost savings, new revenue streams and new business models. However, digital transformation demands new thinking, skills and ways of working as the Internet of Things, operations and information technology converge.

Capgemini’s Digital Manufacturing Services help clients improve their digital maturity across smart product and services development, product and asset lifecycle management, industrial cyber security, on-site and remote operations management, Industrial IoT and Big Data, and complex system simulation.

Through its Digital Manufacturing Services offer Capgemini enables companies within manufacturing industries such as Aerospace & Defense, Automotive, Chemicals, Consumer Products, Energy and Utilities, High Tech, Industrial Products, Life Sciences and Resources to embrace digital transformation.

Siemens Building Technologies are working with Capgemini to further develop its Internet of Things cloud based services platform, Navigator, for building and real estate automation. It is now providing additional analytics capabilities for digital services to real estate customers, to harness the data generated by buildings for predictive and preventative maintenance, sustainability and energy management.

Capgemini’s Digital Manufacturing Services cover the secure creation and management of:

Smart Connected products: enable companies to achieve digitalized product development, change management and expanded collaboration based on a unique 3D model of products and plants. Capgemini facilitates smooth simulation of complex systems thereby avoiding the need for physical prototypes and testing helping to develop product usage based innovation to fuel growth.

Smart Connected Plants: that are digitally managed, monitored and operated in real-time. Capgemini helps organizations transform to increase enterprise performance with digital technologies that support seamless and real-time solutions, and accelerate from plant conception to full production and reduce time-to-market. With platforms as a service, Capgemini helps drive efficiency and asset integrity while simulating manufacturing flows and processes. Efficiencies are also optimized through preventative and predictive maintenance and product quality. Furthermore, Capgemini helps organizations to enable and manage the operators in a safe environment complying with industry regulations to become truly digitally integrated, while securing the assets and production with industrial cybersecurity services.

New Business Models: enable and support the transformation and evolution of global manufacturers to digital providers while addressing dynamic customer expectations, by adapting models such as mass customization, product as a service or taking care on customer of customer needs. Capgemini helps organizations to embrace digital manufacturing platforms and services to gain sustainable competitive advantage from their investments into digital capabilities.

Get more information about Capgemini’s Digital Manufacturing Services