Representative End User Clients
Representative Automation Clients
Representative Software Clients
Overview
In an increasingly complex global competitive environment, real-time information is vital to help people at both the plant and enterprise levels make decisions that improve efficiency and effectiveness. This means being prepared to embrace disruptive 
technologies to acquire the needed information, even if it can potentially cause radical changes to current manufacturing processes.
Recent examples of “disruptive” technologies don’t seem all that new anymore. Industrial organizations are already using IIoT, cloud computing, mobile devices, social networks, advanced search engines, and Big Data analytics to create the information-driven enterprise. However, many companies still struggle to manage and fully leverage this abundance of data and information. This is especially true for those that have embraced some of the recent disruptive technologies and realized a step change in the volume of data and analyzed information now at their disposal.
ARC Advisory Group believes that this problem of how to best leverage and utilize this abundance of data and analyzed information is partly because most manufacturing business models are still designed around well-established technologies that have been around for decades, rather than the newer disruptive technologies.
Technological Innovations Reshaping Manufacturing
Today’s increasingly open automation technologies are becoming more capable; easier to use; and less expensive to purchase, deploy, and maintain. Measurement devices are becoming smarter, smaller, less expensive, and more connected. Advanced process control and optimization software continue to gain acceptance and grow its installed base.
At the same time, disruptive technologies are impacting industrial organizations in a big way. Key manufacturing functions, such as 
material and energy procurement, product quality, and production management, are being performed through software-as-a service (SaaS) provided and supported by third-parties. Virtualization technologies are reducing computing hardware, software, and IT support costs along with energy consumption. Manufacturing is taking advantage of Big Data analytics to convert data into actionable business intelligence. With IT/OT convergence, enterprise-level IT providers are offering integrated families of business applications that capture and analyze both real-time and transactional data using in-memory platforms.
And with more manufacturers allowing employees to “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD), mobile computing has become the normal use-case for enterprise IT and OT HMI/visualization, rather than the exception, with more operators, supervisors, and managers monitoring plant- and factory-floor performance using their own mobile devices. Finally, social networks are being used to create virtual user groups both within the plant, between plants, and between the plants and their automation and information technology suppliers.
Manufacturing Must Recognize Disruptive Technologies Needed
Many of these innovations represent disruptive, rather than sustaining technologies. Sustaining technology relies on incremental improvements to an established technology. As Professor Clayton M. Christenson points out in his book, “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” large corporations are designed to work with sustaining technologies. They have mechanisms in place to develop existing technology. Conversely, they have trouble capitalizing on the potential efficiencies, cost-savings, or new opportunities created by lower cost disruptive technologies.
Many industrial enterprises have a long history of being slow to replace their existing installed base of automation technology until new technology has matured. This is based on the belief that this reduces deployment risk. However, ARC believes that the risk of being a late adopter now exceeds the risk of being an early adopter.
Successfully adopting disruptive technologies can challenge traditional manufacturing enterprises. It is not unusual for big corporations to dismiss the value of a disruptive technology because it does not reinforce the cur- rent company business model. For example, it took almost 40 years after the development of electricity for businesses to figure out how to redesign their factories and 
processes to take advantage of this new technology. To- day’s industrial enterprises cannot afford to wait to adapt their manufacturing and business processes to take advantage of the latest control, connectivity, and information innovations.
Manufacturers must also start thinking about how the next wave of disruptive technologies will affect their businesses and how they can be best leveraged in the shortest period of time. With machine learning, augmented reality, virtual reality, and other disruptive technologies making their way into the consumer world, it is just a matter of time before they each become mainstream in manufacturing.
Manufacturers must strive to be “disruptive ready,” embracing disruptive technologies rather than fearing them, and planning how these can be best leveraged to increase productivity and profitability in an uber-competitive, flat world.
Recommendations
Disruptive technologies are being developed and deployed at an increasingly rapid pace. Manufacturers and other industrial organizations must recognize this as a major challenge to their businesses and become early adopters. ARC offers the following recommendations:
Utilize third parties as needed to help identify and understand new technology and how it could impact business.
Identify and define the business issues any new technology could help solve (or create).
Define the way in which to change manufacturing operations and business processes. Utilize recognized business improvement specialists.
A number of sessions at the upcoming ARC Industry Forum in Orlando, Florida, Feb. 6-9, 2017 will feature end user presentations on these and related issues. Plan to attend to find out what your peers are doing to leverage disruptive technologies in a positive manner.
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Keywords: Digital Enterprise, Real-Time Information, IIoT, Information-Driven Manufacturing, Disruptive Technology, ARC Advisory Group.