WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation

A detailed study of machine intelligence in industrial and manufacturing operations reveals the surprisingly different paths companies can take. But a group of leaders shares similar characteristics.

Virage numérique : l’économie québécoise est-elle dans le coup?
À l’aube de 2022, nous vous offrons un regard prospectif sur des changements et défis à venir pour les entreprises et la société québécoises.

As B2B buyers become more digitally savvy, they prefer less human interaction and expect more from their digital interaction. COVID-19 has accelerated this expectation. B2B buyers expect a similar shopping experience to B2C buyers. This means B2B buyers expect the digital commerce platform to understand them and anticipate their needs as a sales representative might do. They expect better tools for researching and comparing products. They want to engage with organizations digitally without having to resort to a call or email to get a quick response and a good deal.

A hype free guide to an all channel approach to selling your brand direct to consumer.

Learn what circular impact means and how you can measure it for your business! It's important to translate your strategy into tangible KPIs and measurable targets.

At an early stage, apparel was identified as the starting point for Xunxi – a sector in which the lengthy production cycles and high inventory levels have long been a problem for small and large players alike. Powered by new technologies such as real-time resourcing, process and cost planning, automated in-house logistics and Xunxi’s manufacturing operating system, the factory is able to produce small-batch orders at reasonable costs and with shorter delivery times, consequently increasing manufacturing efficiency from 25% to an average of 55%.

D2C brands can scale tremendously fast by capitalizing on
technology, shifts in consumer buying patterns and behaviors,
social engagement, and the experience economy.
D2C industry trailblazers have mastered the art of storytelling,
experiential in-store testing and showrooming, consumer
engagement, and creative digital advertising.
Once you have established a sound D2C operation, you should
build a holistic Amazon strategy to generate incremental
product exposure, demand, sales, and profits.

Every Western institution was unprepared for the coronavirus pandemic, despite many prior warnings. This monumental failure of institutional effectiveness will reverberate for the rest of the decade, but it's not too early to ask why, and what we need to do about it... Our nation and our civilization were built on production, on building. We built roads and trains, farms and factories, then the computer, the microchip, the smartphone, and uncounted thousands of other things that we now take for granted, that are all around us, that define our lives and provide for our well-being. There is only one way to create the future we want for our own children and grandchildren, and that's to build.

The coronavirus outbreak will continue to propel funding, acquisitions, partnerships, and experimentation by brands and retailers as they are forced to grapple with global supply challenges posed by our increasingly interdependent world.

Regardless of the coronavirus’s impact on the global economy, we will surely face a similar situation in the future; brands, retailers, and their supply chains will need to be prepared.

Watch this webinar featuring Unity and special guests from Taqtile — Co-Founder & CTO John Tomizuka and VP Kelly Malone — to learn more about innovative AR and VR use cases across the industrial sector.

TrainAR features include:

• Create, edit and deploy training modules quickly and easily
• Included templates implement best practices for world-class AR content creation
• Create modules for overviews, step-by-step lessons, and certification testing
• Set up new trainees, issue and manage digital certifications
• Real time data viewer tracks and displays key training metrics on the monitor
• Collect and retain detailed records of training experiences

The golden era of AI is here. But how can organizations best harness the technology and integrate it seamlessly into their CRM? This MIT report explores the next-gen powers of AI for CRM. Download the whitepaper for a deep dive on how Salesforce Platform, embedded with Einstein, turns customer data into predictive insights to deliver the most personalized, intelligent experiences for both customers and employees.

We present the first computational approach that can transform 3D meshes, created by traditional modeling programs, directly into instructions for a computer-controlled knitting machine. Knitting machines are able to robustly and repeatably form knitted 3D surfaces from yarn, but have many constraints on what they can fabricate. Given user-defined starting and ending points on an input mesh, our system incrementally builds a helix-free, quad-dominant mesh with uniform edge lengths, runs a tracing procedure over this mesh to generate a knitting path, and schedules the knitting instructions for this path in a way that is compatible with machine constraints. We demonstrate our approach on a wide range of 3D meshes.

Light Guide Systems, an augmented reality tool that is transforming manual assembly and manufacturing processes for companies worldwide, is working with HP Inc., to launch a new technology tool—Light Guide Systems PRO. Utilizing the immersive computing platform Sprout PRO by HP, Light Guide Systems PRO modernizes manual assembly processes in commercial and education applications.

Introducing the Light Guide PRO™

Light Guide Systems helps reduce errors and radically improves manufacturing assembly processes by projecting directly onto a predefined and established operating “canvas” designed for small parts while providing audio and visual prompts, guidance, pacing and direction. Light Guide Systems PRO™ takes the tool to the next level by incorporating its proprietary software into the powerful yet compact Sprout PRO PC platform to deliver a clean and compact package that is portable, flexible and affordable.

Cutting-edge technology gives a glimpse into the future of how things will get made, and what manufacturers must do to stay relevant.

Once prospective partners in the ecosystem have been identified, there are a variety of ways to work with them, ranging from collaborations that involve a limited financial commitment to outright acquisitions.

The digital center of competence (DCoC) is responsible for setting direction and ensuring that learning is widely shared. In this structure, the competence center does not have P&L responsibilities, but it does have its own budget, and each business unit (BU) owns its own internal digital initiatives. The DCoC assumes three important functions to develop products and services, build skills across BUs, and create external networks.

L’avènement de l’industrie 4.0 modifie les façons de faire des entreprises. Le numérique vient non seulement transformer les systèmes et les processus, mais apporte aussi des changements au sein des différentes fonctions de gestion d’entreprise. Afin de rester concurrentielles, tant les PME que les grandes organisations doivent se tourner vers les nouvelles technologies.

In our experience, businesses are most successful in pushing through a digital transformation by organizing around one of three primary archetypes.

In our experience working with automotive suppliers, we have learned that successful digital transformations should be well designed and soundly executed across six core areas (Exhibit 1). Central to the success of the transformation is being clear about the impact each of the six areas has on the others and understanding the key dependencies across all of them.

As digital technology erodes profit and revenue growth, why aren’t companies responding with bold strategies?

Many of the companies I work with are undergoing some form of a “Digital Transformation” to ensure they stay competitive and relevant into the future. These big, transformational changes are very hard and require far more than an investment in new technologies. They require a clear and solid strategy for how technology can be used to transform the business and provide better customer experiences, a culture that embraces change and collaborates heavily, and the technology capabilities to execute the strategy quickly and efficiently. Otherwise, these digital transformation initiatives will end up just like the failed ERP projects of the past we’ve all heard about or been a part of.

Innovation is critical for established companies to stay relevant in the face of disruption. Here's our list of corporate innovation labs.

In the 2018 Digital Business Report, MIT SMR and Deloitte find that digitally maturing organizations encourage distributed leadership and a healthy appetite for experimentation.

A new video series from MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte Insights follows the creation of an aviation part as it moves along the “digital thread,” creating a growing knowledge base of data and feedback as it evolves from design to final testing.