Digitalization Exposed

Apr 22, 2020   Written by Stephen George, Chief Economist; Mark Routt, Chief Economist Americas

In the midst of this global coronavirus pandemic, it is hard to make predictions about what the world will look like once we emerge from current lockdowns. It is safe to say, though, the way the world works will never be the same again. The challenges of remote, distributed working have already taught us much about virtual collaboration, as well as the limitations of our current technology.

Internally at KBC, global operations have been well-supported by exceptional IT support, networking tools and reliable bandwidth. But that hasn’t been the case everywhere and certainly not for many of our customers. We think this experience points to an increased awareness of digitalization in individuals and their businesses. Similarly, we see the pace of the digital agenda also accelerating following the lessons learned from the shared COVID-19 experience.

Virtual board rooms around the world have now seen the increased importance and urgency of their digitalization strategy. “Digital Twins” have abruptly become far more important, a core to business success rather than a development project. These models drive operational excellence and provide a single point of “truth” for what the organization produces. With a distributed or separated workforce, that clarity has taken on even more importance.

But Digital Twin value for the business is also found in:

  • INSIGHT: Real-time Enterprise-wide balanced scorecards for corporate situational awareness
  • CAPABILITY ASSURANCE: Minimize learning curves and change management support
  • ADVANCED PRODUCTION: Operations continuously at optimum constraints in closed loop
  • VALUE CHAIN OPTIMIZATION: Resilient and operational flexible production
  • AUTOMATION AND CONTROL INTEGRITY: Digital operations with ‘living’ automation algorithms
  • INSTRUMENTATION AND EQUIPMENT PRODUCTIVITY: Advanced prediction of field device health
  • ADVANCED CHEMISTRY: Adaptive duty requirements throughout the production lifecycle
  • PLANT PROCESSES OPTIMIZATION: Optimized yields, flow assurance, energy efficiency improvement, enhanced reliability and operator capability assurance

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the critical need for robust and reliable business processes. At the heart of that is a digital model, the digital twin of the manufacturing process. Large companies can be challenged to move fast enough; smaller companies may not have the resources or expertise to execute and companies of either size may not even have a complete corporate digital strategy.

Committing to the digital transformation elements of people, process and technology is key. Those that embrace the future will be best positioned to create a stronger, more agile, and profitable future. KBC wants to collaborate with you to achieve that vision. Let us show how we can help—and today that can mean either a phone call, or a video conference.