‘Covid has enabled fast tracking the adaptation of digital technologies’
Published on : Thursday 01-07-2021
Amol Gandhi, Systems Engineer, SME and Innovation Evangelist for Industrial Automation and Control Solutions, Honeywell Process Solutions.
What are the factors that make companies wary about digitalisation in their plants?
Digital Transformation is not an option, but it is the way forward for achieving the next level of Availability and Reliability of Industrial Plants. In very simple terms, digital transformation is the process of adapting digital technologies to create new — or modify existing — business processes, culture, and customer experiences to meet changing business and market requirements. One of the concerns still being seen is around enhanced Cybersecurity for connected systems.
How can companies ensure their digital transformation succeeds? What measures do they need to put in place?
It is important to take a step wise approach to the digital transformation journey with clear actions and outcomes at each step of the journey.
Key steps of digital transformation:
• Identification of Data
• Enabling Connectivity
• Enabling Insights, what is happening and why is it happening?
• Predictions and Adaptability, and
• Outcome-based actions.
What are the common mistakes companies make while embracing Digital Transformation and how can these be avoided?
The most common mistake companies can avoid while embracing digital transformation is incorrect identification of use cases and inappropriate adaptations of digital technologies. These can be avoided by spending enough time in identification of the right problem statement followed by selection of the correct digital partner and technologies. Also, it is recommended to make incremental improvements and accelerate the progress with tangible benefits.
The world is now well into the second year of Covid disruption. How has Digital Transformation helped industries during this period?
Covid has enabled fast tracking the adaptation of digital technologies for business transformation in all aspects of running a successful industrial enterprise. Remote Operations with cybersecurity have been the backbone of enabling secure and successful Remote Operations. Adapting to Cloud technologies was considered risky and low potential in pre-Covid era. Now, adaptation to cloud and remote technologies have increased multifold.
One of the major adaptations has been in the areas of Remote Operations and Remote Engineering.
In the Indian context, despite government initiatives, the digital divide persists which risks leaving large segments of the population outside. How can these issues be addressed?
In the Indian context, Mobility and Digital Payment Gateways are key drivers of overall Digital Transformation. I can still say that India is making very good progress on digital technologies mainly because of good adaptation of smart phones and government-driven digitalisation in many of the sectors like smart cities, Aadhar-connected major initiatives like CoWIN. There is no direct answer to avoid the digital divide, but it is an opportunity for us rather than a threat. We need to keep on pushing more and more digital initiatives, which will help us in the long run.
Amol Gandhi is a result oriented, Technology and Innovation leader with 20+ years of experience in New Product Development, Requirements Engineering, Systems Engineering, Solution Architecture, Quality Engineering, Project Engineering/Commissioning of Industrial Automation Solutions (DCS/PLC/SCADA/RTU/Wireless/ Terminal Automation/Field Instrumentation) and Life safety solutions (Fire Systems/Plant & Personal Safety/Real Time Location Systems).He has done his masters in Embedded & Control System Design from MAHE. Started his career as Automation Projects and Commissioning Engineer at Tata Honeywell, Pune and moved later into the global Technology team at Honeywell Process Solutions, Bangalore.
Amol is a Lean-Agile leader with Excellent Experience in Agile and Waterfall methodology. He has full life-cycle Technical Leadership experience leading large scale complex programs that span across Hardware/Software, UX, Marketing, and Third-Party partners delivering high-quality software products/solutions in Industrial Automation & Control Domain. He has multiple innovations to his credit with 10+ granted Patents in the area of IIoT and Industrial Domain space.