There’s a lot of talk on the market about connected digitalization, and understanding this concept is crucial for the successful digitalization and digital transformation of the company. Digitalization and digital transformation are stages that every successful company will have to overcome. Before the digitalization phase, it is crucial that the company chooses a technological infrastructure based on which it will introduce existing digital content from the market or build its own digital solutions. After the introduction and adoption of digital content in the digitalization phase, the company has the key predispositions to start the journey of digital transformation.
When choosing the technological infrastructure, caution is key. Because the wrong choice at this crucial moment on the path of digital transformation can later on cause insurmountable obstacles and premature consumption of funds and resources. Companies often mistakenly decide to purchase unconnected or "out of the box" solutions, or to buy solutions from too many different providers, who then merely focus on connect them, instead of actually focusing on digital transformation.
Figure 1: An environment with solutions from different providers, where the costs of integration (connection) via interfaces grow exponentially.
In the case of connected solutions, there are no integration costs via interfaces, as both solutions are optimally covered by one technological platform, via a single contractor. A good example are solutions for production and maintenance, which must be connected if we want to achieve a minimum response time for the intervention of maintenance personnel in case of severe downtimes. This connection can be achieved through the integration of TPM and MES solutions, or by introducing solutions that are already connected. It often happens that companies also want to connect accounting programs to other solutions they use in production, marketing, etc. As a result, costs and consumed resources can quickly and exponentially increase.
In order to achieve the goals of connected digitalization and digital transformation, the key steps therefore occur even before the project starts. Companies that want connected solutions and, as a result, connected departments, must be already careful in the digitization phase (choosing a technology platform) or they have to put aside more funds and resources to bridge the gap of unrelated solutions.
