Digital Transformation potential and pitfalls

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In this article, part four of our 6-part Digital Transformation Series, we delve deeper into the digital transformation potential and pitfalls and provide six questions you can ask yourself to help you avoid failure.

Digital transformation potential

According to a report commissioned by METS Ignited and National Energy Resources Australia (NERA), embracing new technologies in the resources industries could add $74 billion to the Australian economy by 2030. Former Federal Minister for Industry, Science and Technology Karen Andrews said the use of analytics and robotics provided significant safety and environmental benefits, while rapidly increasing job opportunities.

Common digital transformation pitfalls

While there have been some notable failures when it comes to digital transformation in mining, these are often caused by a top-down approach, the methodology employed or the human and cultural features of the organisation, rather than the failure of new digital technologies like automated decision enablement, machine learning or process automation.

Typically, the problem starts with the idea that it has to be transformation rather than an evolution and the fact that greater emphasis is placed on technology’s impact than technology’s adoption.

Minerals processing is a capital-intensive industry that relies on metallurgical processes that can take decades to evolve into effective, efficient and viable solutions. Many processes remain fundamentally unchanged for generations. When evolving these processes to take advantage of new digital technologies, it is easy to think too big, too soon.

The job of a solutions salesperson is often to sell the Board and the CEO on a vision that a comprehensive re-engineering will deliver a satisfactory return on the investment. However, large scale re-engineering projects can lead to elaborate new solutions that do not represent a positive cost/benefit trade-off while ignoring problems that exist at a more fundamental, operational level. This can translate to wasted money and little incremental improvement on the plant floor. For example, getting the right information to the right worker in the right context is still a problem, and failing to take your staff on the digital transformation journey is an oft quoted contributor to failure.

Indeed, in unsuccessful projects, the most common pitfalls include:

  • a lack of employee engagement
  • inadequate management support
  • poor or non-existent cross-functional collaboration, and
  • a lack of accountability

Furthermore, sustaining a transformation’s impact typically requires a major reset in mindsets and behaviours – something that few leaders know how to achieve.

So how do you avoid failure?

Here are six key questions to ask yourself that can help you avoid failure: 

  1. Where are you now and what is your ambition? What is your plan to close the gap considering your timeline and budget? Digital transformation is an enabler to creating value – not the goal.
  2. Is the problem insufficient advanced analytics capability or insufficient enabling infrastructure preventing you from obtaining hindsight, insight, foresight and control of your operation?
  3. Does your plan focus on unlocking the system bottleneck then redeploying that value to consistently shift the bottleneck downstream via small successive improvements?
  4. Are your partners technology independent with a history of co-operation and capable of collaborating with other vendors to deliver a holistic solution that unlocks value for redeployment?
  5. Is your workforce engaged and are staff culture, behaviours, daily practices and mindsets aligned to your organisational purpose? Have you allocated appropriate project ownership and change leadership resources?
  6. Have you ensured your workforce is enabled and equipped to maximise the value of digital innovations? Have they been provided sufficient upskilling opportunities, such as eLearning?

For help on assessing your operation’s level of digital maturity, get in touch with our team of experts.

Download our digital transformation whitepaper

Click on the link below to download our full Digital Transformation whitepaper.

In this whitepaper, you will learn about the challenges facing miners in the post-COVID world and the impact of digital technologies in unlocking new levels of prosperity for both industry and society.

 

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