This is to share a group project on a case study of a SIRI (Smart Industry Readiness Index) assessment report on an aviation component MRO factory in Singapore. For group project, we are asked to pick a digital transformation(DT) related topic by ourselves. The topic can be a published digital transformation by a company, a government initiative project or a use case of a company DT program etc. We shall give our recommendation to analyse what are the do and don't of the DT, and what shall be the proposed recommendations. While most of other groups choose the corporate or government macro level DT reports as their topics, our group preferred a granular scale level DT as is will be more to the actual actions to most of working levels and learn the most of execution of DT at our work place. The project report in PDF file as uploaded to this repository.

Looking into the S&P 500 largest capitalisation companies, today almost 70% are the technology and digital companies, compared to 15 years ago it was 70% by the traditional industries companies. The main drives the traditional industries companies to transform themselves to adopt technologies into their products and operations are:

• Customer or market trend that expecting the new products or services that can improve their productivity or business willing to pay more. Traditional business is diminishing the revenue and profit margin over time.
• With the internet and information and knowledge are abundant and obtained at ease. Product to market with innovation move faster than last decades.
• New incoming innovative start up companies mushrooming with fast and nimble business models disrupt the traditional business long rooted model. How the Uber disrupt the taxi company. How EV with AI disrupt the hundred-year-old internal combustion engines and petroleum business etc.

Forbes reported that till 2018, USD1.3 trillion spent on DT, and over 70% of these efforts will fail to reach their stated goals. While on the other hand, Couchbase conducted a survey on 2017 stated that 84% of DT project been cancelled, delayed or reduced in scope (source: Digital Deaf, Stone 2019). From the failures there are lot to learn from there for example Forbes 2019 and Harvard Business Review, Discovery Driven Digital Transformation. The main reasons of digital transformation failure is the misconception of Digitisation vs Digitalisation. The are many large companies identify the threat of new digital economy, by implement the technologies to workplace and product design without rethinking the evolvement of the business model needs and the organisation culture and processes change to adopt the technologies. One example shared by our classmate:

‘’’ We implemented robotic arms and AGVs at the shop floor but they are now become white elephants. The shop floor operators feedback, they can be faster than the robotic arms and the AGV not really helpful as giving more problem and blocking the walkways, to certain extend both can be safety hazards.‘’’

Further understanding from him, the production plant is a relatively small size factory which handling small parts and low volume. This is an example of implementation of technologies without good understanding of the business needs. The management and DT team keep pushing the implementation of technologies where perceived of smart factory, without getting the user(shop floor) involvement. Digitalisation is only about technologies, it’s a thorough business wide re-thinking of organisation, customers, business model etc. Below shown how the digitisation as part of the digitalisation in the Forrester’s The Digital Maturity Model and the detail description of 5 level of maturity to help gauging the route to DT.

Assa Abloy is a traditional door lock company, the parent company of the Yale lock. To modernised their business into digital age, they acquired a small company, August of smart lock product. The acquired of technologies not only help Assa Abloy transformed their product line into smart locks, also change the business from a sole hardware provider into service provider company. With the smart lock digital connectivity, the company explored into other service like the security and property management.

DT is process to maintain a company competitative edge. To ensure the DT successfuly, the company need to start with the how the business model based on the customer needs, organsisation processes and capablity from top to bottom involvement, before what put in the required technology.