November 2021 Edition: Rapid Advancements in Digital Transformation

The IIC's Journal of Innovation - the initiative of our Thought Leadership Task Group - highlights the innovative ideas, approaches, products and services emerging within the industrial internet.

In the November 2021 edition of the IIC Journal of Innovation, authors from our IoT community give us access to crucial ongoing research under the theme "Rapid Advancements in Digital Transformation.".

IIC is a well-respected thought leader on digital transformation and the articles in this Journal of Innovation issue explore the issues and provide real-world examples of digital transformation efforts in the market. We have working groups active in digital transformation, and many of our member companies are enjoying success with their digital transformation efforts. We believe edge computing will grow in importance in the coming decade, achieving similar stature to today's cloud computing deployments for critical Internet of Things and Digital Transformation applications.

We would like to thank the authors and editors of this content, and hope you find it a valuable resource as you consider the application of digital transformation techniques in your organization. As always, your comments are very welcome.

Table of Contents

• Letter From the Chairs: A Short Introduction to Digital Transformation
  Authos: Bassam Zarkout, Marcellus Buchheit
• The New Innovation Process of Undergoing Digital Transformation in Industries
  A firm undergoing Digital Transformation in industry faces a challenge of achieving fat and customer centric innovation process of the firm in which "test fat, learn fat, scale fat" matters. It is difficult to use frameworks originally developed for the software world, for example lean startup, agile DevOps and others, as tools for changing existing innovation processes. However, these frameworks have limited usefulness in industry given the constraints and complexity of IT/OT integration. This article defines commonly appearing features of innovation processes in industry (BizOps for Digital Transformation in Industry or BDXI). It also identifies the conflicts between BDXI processes and management systems and highlights various IIC initiatives related to the design BDXI processes.
  Author: Chaisung Lim
• The Digital Transformation Journey in the Enterprise and its Leadership
  The article discusses the terms digitization, digitalization, and digital transformation, and how they relate, when the focus of the transformation is a particular process and when the focus is the whole enterprise. The article also describes the Digital Transformation journey and its various stakeholders (including executive officers, department managers, plant managers, operational staff, IT staff, security staff, and possibly other groups). The article also discusses the diverse views of stakeholders and how these views can be harmonized and integrated within the context of a unified DX Program. The article provides a description of the structure, mission and mandate DX Program, its stakeholder composition, and the type of leadership (the DX Tsar) that is needed to drive the transformation strategy and guide its execution towards achieving the set objectives, with examples.
  Author: Bassam Zarkout
• A Continuous Improvement (Kaizen) Driven Approach for Realistic Digital Transformation in Smart Manufacturing
  Digital transformation is fostering the evolution of the manufacturing industry entering a new era of smart manufacturing. Manufacturers face challenges in organizing the integration of systems across manufacturing hierarchy, domain boundaries and lifecycle phases. To benefit from the full potential of smart manufacturing, it is vital to take a realistic and stepped approach for manufacturing improvements. It is equally important to improve the ROI and make smart manufacturing happen with an applicable implementation roadmap. The article illustrates the interconnecting process in smart manufacturing and introducing the Smart Manufacturing Kaizen Level (SMKL) to build up the capability at various stages of implementation of DX. The article also provides actual lessons learned case studies, example empowering workers productivity and integrating OT and IT, to show the effectiveness of utilizing maturity performance management and capture the values in smart manufacturing.
  Authors: Nicole Shonan Otoki, Ph.D., Hajime Sugiyama, Mitsushiro Fujishima
• Digital Transformation in Practice: Learning from IIC Deployments
  IIC testbed and test drive results include observations and learnings about DX. IIC testbeds are projects and platforms for experimentation that represent real-world deployments. IIC test drives are solutions deployed as pilots in real-world environments. This article represents valuable learnings about digital transformation in practice from select IIC deployments; testbeds and test drives.
  Authors: Jennifer Bortchen, Dr. Xinxin Fan, Florian Frick, Dirar Hakeem, Dr. James J. Hunt, Hail Jung, Chaisung Lim, Jung-Ywn Park, Dr. Kym Watson.
• Digital Transformation in Steel Inspection: Toshiba MetalSpector Customer Case Study
  Toshiba has been selling MetalSpector, a leading-edge steel inspection equipment, to several major steel companies for the past few years. In 2020, Toshiba released a new steel grade evaluation service, designed to reduce steel inspector's workload while assuring data integrity of the steel grading process. The key approach is to understand how the inspection equipment is used rather than just how it works. By transforming the steel inspection equipment offering into a Software-as-a-Service model, the latest AI technology can be continually deployed to assist in the inspection accuracy, speed, and verification. The service provides traceability and automated logging to protect against unauthorized access and data fraud. The service also offers operator training for new as well as veteran inspectors, enabling critical knowledge transfer to new inspectors and maintaining a consistent skill level for all inspectors.
  Authors: Hiroshi Yamamoto, Daniel Young.

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