The digitalization of industrial processes, why and how?

If you ask the Internet what digitalization means, the most frequent answers can be summarized as follows: Digitization is the transition from paper to digital format.. The idea is relatively clear but not precise enough for the following discussion.

When we try to be more specific and talk about digitization of a jobThe following definition comes out here: the digitalisation of a business involves the use of digital solutions that allow us to support the protocols (or processes) of a business so that employees can concentrate on operations with higher added value. We keep the notion of digitizing documentation and add a notion ofoptimization for a given task, it's better.

Specialized sites add to these notions the standardization of the different processes in order to better manage them throughout the organization: concretely here, what we are told is that digitalization will make it possible to implement a common language, which materializes in the form of data, between all the employees of the same organization. This common language will enable the organisation to improve its various jobs thanks to the analysis of the data obtained through the digitization of jobs.

The notion of Know-How is a central notion at Spectral TMS, which says central, says that we will not have the opportunity to develop the idea in this article. In a few words, and to facilitate the understanding of the rest of the article, here is an explanation of a know-how, according to Spectral TMS.

Know-how can materialize in a wide variety of forms:

• Knowing where such a switch is located
• Which fault is associated with which noise on an engine?
• If I touch this sluice gate, what part of the plant is impacted?
• …

Know-how is ultimately knowledge, good practice, etc. that can be exchanged between members of the same organization.

Why digitize its industrial protocols?

The industrial world, like other sectors, is today confronted with a twofold observation: on the one hand, more and more employees are being brought to retireThere is no need to seek explanations for this observation, it is the natural course of our society. On the other hand, for several years now, we have been hearing about this new generation which enters the labour market without showing an interest in staying with the same company for the rest of his or her life.

These findings are real and will continue to be so in the future. Rather than wondering why these situations arise, we will instead seek to find out what changes are involved for industrial companies and why it is interesting to seek to digitizebusiness procedurenow.

Whether we are talking about retirements or new employees who wish to change companies, we are talking about the movement of people. During the time these people are in the company, they store up know-how, as soon as they leave the company, they leave with this know-how, a know-how sometimes accumulated over several decades. At Spectral TMS, what we offer our customers is the capture and hand over of know-how through Augmented Reality.

For us, it's essential to create a database for your company today, bringing together as many of your business procedure as possible. In concrete terms, we are talking about digitizing a rather colossal quantity of business procedure, we are talking about several decades of know-how accumulated over several trades. Now that you have started to create this common database of your organization's know-how, it's not over yet. You will have to find an optimal way to spread this know-how to all the people who could benefit from it.

The benefits for your organization are multiple:

• You gain an advantage over your main competitors by thinking about these transformations now.
• You are able to standardize the skill level of your employees, regardless of their location across the globe.
• Digitization gives you access to previously unknown data, once analysed this data will allow you to implement improvements, especially improvements in business procedure.

How to digitize its industrial processes?

How to do a daily round (preventive maintenance for example) correctly on a site is a know how, the fact to know which bolt to use when repairing a given machine is too. One quickly realizes that the amount of work to be done is quite haunting, especially if you combine all this with :

• Number of sites that make up your company
• The various skilled trades that the company needs
• The different references of machines used daily
• …

Today, there are many digital solutions available that will allow you to carry out part of your digitization. With regard to the capture as well as the hand over of know-how, we can rely on a solution in Augmented Reality. The interest of Augmented Reality is to add in the field of vision of a user digital information that can be of any kind. At Spectral TMSWe have adapted this technology to meet industrial needs, whether they are related to format changeovers (of production lines), preventive maintenance rounds or the training of newcomers to a team.

Test the digitalization of your industrial processes for FREE with Augmented Reality. Ask for the brochure!

The difficulty that many of our clients, and a number of industrial companies wanting to test Augmented Reality, face is the creation of content. Indeed, among the different solutions on the market, many require you to have in-house resources with specific skills in IT development (IT developers for example) so that you can generate new content, or to edit it. The problem is that people with these types of skills are: rare on the market today, they are also very often far from your company's core business, and above all, these people very rarely have any affinity with your activity in the field (at least initially, when they join your company), which implies constant back and forth with your field teams in order to obtain content that is as relevant as possible for the users concerned, i.e. your employees in the field (in production, maintenance, etc.).

To meet this challenge, Spectral TMS has developed a solution that is simple to use and easy to adopt by the teams concerned. Our solution is divided into two elements :

• Spectral Studiothe web platform, available from any web browser, allowing you to generate or edit your content. The idea here is to have a content creation interface that can be used without any specific computer development skills. We can even go further by specifying that the creation of what is called a scenario (i.e. the equivalent of the digitized version of an industrial protocol) is as simple as using a word processor.

• Spectral ViewThe software embedded in Augmented Reality glasses allows you to read the content created on Spectral Studio. Spectral Viewallows you to locate yourself in the space while showing you the way to get to a given place. Once you are in the right place, you can easily consult different media (photo, video, pdf, etc.); these media allow you to access the right information at the right time.

As we have seen previously, digitalization should make it possible to lighten the company's industrial processes so as to simplify the daily life of the teams concerned, which is why it is necessary to think carefully about which solution to adopt for such and such an operation, while keeping in mind that the notion of acceptance of the solution by your teams is a key notion to be integrated into your digitization strategy.

What about Industry 4.0 in all this?

The digitalization of industrial processes is a central issue for (almost) all organizations. However, it does not have to be done just anyhow. Digitization must be part of a more global strategy, a strategy that we find today under the term "digitalization". digital transformation.

In the industry, digital transformation is also known as Industry 4.0. Good digitization is the key, or at least an essential part for a successful move into Industry 4.0. Now that your organization has set up tools allowing the digitization of your industrial protocols, it is possible to go further by integrating your Information System to these different tools. The objective behind this integration is to enable you to ensure a Digital ContinuityIndustry 4.0 is a new way of providing your employees with access to up-to-date documents in just a few clicks.

Finally, the digitalization of your industrial processes will not happen overnight. However, once you have put this notion at the heart of your thinking, you will be able to see very quickly a saving in time in the creation and sharing of information throughout your company. These gains will have multiple positive impacts for your company such as: the end of paper support or an optimization of your industrial processes but also and especially an equal distribution of the level of competences for all your employees.