spotlight / panel discussion
Sharing his insights, Jayakumar Mohanachandran, Head of IT at Precision Group, U.A.E discussed that the manufacturing industry should and can look at digital transformation only via a modular approach. “we see a lot of advantages in integrating our shop floor with the softwares we use. this is important to get real time information which will help decision making. A manufacturer cannot go for digital transformation all at once. It can only be done in phases. But it is important to stay in the race, else the company will be left far behind the competition.” He elaborate that how his company has done is to initiate a digital transformation program and as a first step have gone in for cloud environment that sets the pace to go in for digital transformation. Thereafter, they are now ready to look at adopting IoT, AI etc in phases.
Hesham El Komy, Senior Director, International Channel, Epicor elaborates that the speed with which transformation is unfolding, the first mover advantage will be huge and the advantages will be felt across the board. He also cautioned that the digital transformation advantages may not be the same for everyone and needs to be undertaken with sufficient strategic planning. “We are entering what is popularly now known as the 4th industry revolution. Businesses need to have a good understanding of what they are trying to do, where they are trying to get to and the benefits that they will get; not everyone might benefit from digital transformation in the same way at the same time. Due diligence needs to be done of how the advantage of new technologies coming into play can be leveraged before embarking on digital transformation initiatives.” Hesham further highlighted that the shift of people to more productive roles is happening in manufacturing as robots come in to fill in the menial automated functions.
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Dr. Mohammad Khaled, Government Expert and Futurist opined that in the midst of all the transformation initiatives, data claassificati and security will remain a key concern and needs to be addressed with vigilance.
Deniz Usluoglu, PTC – IoT Sales Manager MEA opined that while digital transformation is a broad concept, IoT and VR technologies are indeed reshaping the manufacturing industry. He said that VR technologies for instance give the manufacturing companies the advantage of being able to design , simulate and analyse the usage of their products before getting to even producing a physical prototype of the product.
SMART SMB | OCTOBER 2018