 From around the globe, it's theCUBE. Covering HPE Discover Virtual Experience, brought to you by HPE. Hello, and welcome to theCUBE's coverage of HPE Discover 2020, The Virtual Experience. I'm Lisa Martin, and I've got a couple of guests joining me, but Steven Lapper, the principal at Deloitte Consulting and Brenna Snyderman, Executive Director for the Center of Integrated Research at Deloitte Services. Steven and Brenna, nice to have you on the program today. Thank you. So we're gonna be talking about the smart factory. I'd love for you to start, Brenna, we'll start with you. Give our audience an overview of Deloitte's definition of the smart factory, and then we can dig into some of the very interesting research that Deloitte has been doing the last few years. Sure, absolutely. So the way we think about the smart factory is it is a system that's quite flexible, that uses data and information from throughout physical assets to optimize performance, to enable the facility to be more agile, to be proactive, to optimize its assets, and to react and change as quickly as possible to shifts going on. It overall enables organizations to just be more intelligent about the way they use their assets, to use data to make more informed decisions, and to drive a more optimized process. And Steven, for you, one of the things that I found interesting looking at some of Deloitte's research is that the last few years or so, there's been net zero growth in manufacturing labor productivity, this labor productivity being an indicator of economic impact. Why, in Deloitte's perspective, has that manufacturing labor productivity growth been flat? Yeah, it's a really interesting observation. And what we've seen is really decades and decades of management principles, companies using things like Lean, like Six Sigma, taking advantage of labor arbitrage in many cases. And the reality is that a lot of that low-hanging fruit is gone. Those projects have been executed well. And we're now seeing what we would consider to be diminishing returns as it relates to investments in those same types of tools. And that is really what's leading many organizations now towards things like the capabilities that you find in a smart factory, adding additional technologies to the capability set to really bring companies to that new productivity frontier. One of the things that I saw too is that smart factory adoption in one of your studies can result in a three-fold productivity increase. So talk to me about, in the last few years, some of the early adopters, right now we'll start with you, what are some of the trends that you've seen with those early adopters? Any industries in particular that are leading in that respect? Well, that's a good question. I think when we recently published a study on lessons from early adopters in the smart factory, and what we found was that a lot of the organizations that have adopted the smart factory have learned lessons that are not necessarily new, but some that are new as well. Really, I think the biggest challenge has been to figure out how to gather data from a lot of assets that maybe haven't had to produce data before to find out where all the information is from throughout the facility to bring together different groups and different cultures within the organization whether it's IT and OT and have them figure out how to share information and data and really just to figure out what to do with that information once we've gotten it. Some of the organizations that we spoke with for our research really ran the gamut from aerospace to automotive to consumer products to industrial manufacturing. It really has been an interesting spread that we've looked at. And Stephen, walk us through the last three years or so of research that Deloitte has been doing into the smart factory from the 2017 study to the 2019 study to the one that was just released. What's some of the progress that you've seen over the last three years? Is it what you anticipated it would be? Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, three years ago, I think a lot of people were talking about Industry 4.0, they were talking about the industrial Internet of Things, they were talking about the smart factory, but we saw relatively few very concentrated efforts to advance those. Now, as we fast forward three years, we're seeing that the specific capabilities that each one of those topic areas can enable for organizations has become much clearer. So correspondingly, companies have been planning for these types of investments and they're taking action on much of the capability build and quite frankly starting to see the value. One of the underlying kind of architectural elements that I think are critical as part of the modern smart factory is exactly what Brenna touched on and that was as it relates to the data. Many assets out there, even if they're several decades old, likely have a wealth of data associated with them. The challenge is that that data is either not readily accessible or it's not well understood. And much of the effort that organizations have now undertaken is not only how do they connect, extract and use that information many times on a real time or a near real time basis, but now also combining that information with other assets, other parts of the manufacturing facility or even their manufacturing network to generate that value. So Stephen, follow on question. How does an organization, a company start that process if as you said, there's myriad assets of varying age, some really advanced, some really old, as well as even from I guess a generational perspective in the workforce, you've got multiple generations. For organizations that know, we've got data that's hidden. Where do they start? Yeah, absolutely. And I think a really important element of your question is kind of how do you determine where to start? And the reality is that not all of these solutions are created equal, not all of the assets have data that's interesting enough to be equal. And so really going through a very concerted effort to understand what are the capabilities we're trying to build and what value does it create for our organization? Aligning that to the objectives and the goals of the organization is critical right from the outset. And we see companies that are being most successful in their implementation of the smart factory following that value orientation. And that might not mean that that value comes tomorrow, it might not come next month, but there's a very clear guidance in terms of how the particular capabilities that are being built will lead to value. Organizations that are not doing that, we tend to see random acts of digital, we see a lot of different efforts underway with very little tied value. And correspondingly, many of those efforts don't continue because the executive team and the shareholders aren't going to continue those investments in that space without showing them. So, Bernat, walk us through along what Steven was just saying, I was reading in your 2020 study that positioning the smart factory initiatives for value starts with human centered design. And I thought this was really interesting that Deloitte research demonstrated, successful teams generally focus on the user first, not the technology. Well, yeah, and I think to follow on a little bit to what Steven said about understanding the value and the goal of what you're trying to do before thinking about the technology, you need to rush out and implement, goes along with this as well. You want to think about what the user is actually going to be using that data for. What is their job? What information are they going to need? And think about from their perspective, what is going to be most helpful and effective for them? And I think the value of this is twofold. One is if talent within your organization and folks on the shop floor see the value of this data and information, they're going to be more inclined to adopt it because it makes their job easier. But also, if you have a tremendous amount of data and information from all the different assets and parts of your facility, if an individual has to sift through all of that to find what's going to be valuable to them, it's not really going to make their job easier. So human-centered design is really thinking about what that individual needs to do their role. And in a lot of the work that we've done, we've almost thought about it as personas where this particular persona or job needs this information, needs to go through these steps. And here's the data information we need to show them to enable them to do that. It's just a way for people to leverage information to make smarter decisions more quickly. How does a manufacturing company do that, Brenda? Brenda, excuse me, without being siloed in business units, I'm thinking, getting cross-functional support all the way up to the top level. That's something that we saw quite a bit in our research that many of the groups or organizations that have successfully enacted a smart factory have done so because it's not just coming down from the top, it's also coming up from the bottom, although that might sound like a pejorative term, but coming from all angles of the organization. So we see from the strategic level, this is what we need to do to change the way our organization operates in a more effective way. But from the line of business individuals that are using this information and data every day, we need to think about sort of having a groundswell of support there as well, so that our team members are using this information. So I think it has to be something that comes from throughout the organization. You know, what we've also found to your point about silos is bringing in diverse teams and individuals from throughout the organization who have different types of expertise, different perspectives, different things that they're looking at and different ways they need to use this technology to do their job will enable us to make sure that what we're producing is something that's going to be of value to them. And along those lines, Steven question for you, this must need to be looked at not as what can we do today or the next six months, but over the long term so that ongoing enablement and education is going to be critical. Yeah, absolutely right. And you know, the reality is that some of these investments that organizations are making into smart factory do take quite a bit of thought, research and assessment. And those aren't investments that they're making for the short term. Many of them are long term. The important part about those investments that organizations are making is that they're creating platforms by which the teams can continue to evolve the persona based type solutions that Brenna referred to, so critical, right? And so the flexibility, the adaptability, the agility of those platforms and the investments that are being made really is one of their critical, critical factors. I did want to just revisit the user adoption of these types of solutions. And I'm an engineer by education and I could look back to early in my career and say, hey look, I built solutions, right? Using data from manufacturing shop floor equipment and I created those solutions for others. But the reality was that I created it in a way that an engineer would consume that data. And the reality is the persona based approach really lets us focus on how is a particular individual in their job going to consume that data in a way that enables them to make the best next decision which ultimately has a positive outcome for the company. And in some cases that might mean not exposing them to all the complexities that happen underneath the surface. The modern smartphone, for example, enormously complex device, yet intuitive to use, easy to pick up, easy to interact with. The modern smart factory is also very similar in that way. Along those lines of agility, but also designing for with certain mindsets, culturally, IT and OT are different. One of the things that I found interesting in the research was the marriage of IT and OT. How do you advise, or let's go to the clients that were part of that 2020 study, what lessons can the next wave of adopters learn where it comes to bridging those two IT, OT, mentalities and different cultures? Yeah, that's a good question. And I think the different cultures is sort of a key insight that is helpful. With respect to IT, they work on different time frames. They think about investments in a different way. They think about technology in a different way than individuals who are in OT, who are on the shop floor, who are using these tools every day. And what we found was that bridging that divide and bringing them together is a challenge that many overlook and something that really, the importance of it can't be overstated. I think to get back to Stephen's point about adoption, if those within the OT space have an understanding of what IT is doing and why, they're just likelier to adopt and to use. And conversely, if those in IT have a deeper understanding of what those in OT are doing and what types of tools they need, they're likelier to come up with solutions that are going to be effective. I think the cultural divide is something that's critically important to understand, to address, and not to overlook because I think the last thing that anyone implementing any sort of smart factory solution wants is to roll out a solution that was sort of baked in one area but not taking into account the other as well. Great point. Stephen, I want to go back to you for a second. Just understanding along the lines of the cultural differences and the design principles that need to be factored in. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March of 2020, for clients that you were talking to that were in whatever stage process of rolling out smart factory initiatives, where are they now? And what are some of the advantages that you see that organizations that aren't yet adopting smart factory initiatives should be doing to prepare to thrive in this new normal? Yeah, absolutely. Let me start with some of those advantages right at the outset. So many organizations now have been looking at advanced solutions, perhaps to enforce social distancing within the manufacturing environment or perhaps contact tracing within the manufacturing environment. And the advantages organizations are seeing that are already on that smart factory journey is they're finding they have largely a lot of the infrastructure required to be able to do that already in place. So that has been an enormous accelerant for companies that are already on the journey. The reality is that many organizations are unable to have their experts, their engineers, their vendors. Many of the people that are supporting the equipment and the people in their manufacturing plants around the world, they're not able to get them there. And companies that have been on the smart factory journey specifically as it relates to creating what we would call the digital twin of many of their assets where they can now see not only visual representations of those assets, but can also see that the data flowing off those assets and in the most advanced solutions being able to see those together. They're able to unlock remote support in a way that organizations that have not been on this journey simply can't. And we're starting to see some very distinct kind of results as it relates to those who are able to continue running at scale and those who are struggling in the COVID environment. And Steve, the last question for you. I know you've got a session or a demo on smart factory and AI that you're doing at Discover 2020. Tell us a little bit about that and what the participants can anticipate. Yeah, so we're really excited to be able to bring factory AI as we call it in a live virtualized session. That session is going to cover what we have built around a, we'll call it a mini manufacturing line. And usually we'd have that with you at the conference or we take that around the country to many of our manufacturing clients to really show them the power of adopting many of these different types of capabilities in the manufacturing environment. So what we're going to be showing and what viewers can expect to see is a demonstration of edge capabilities of computer vision, of advanced internet of things all wrapped into several high impact use cases. So we're looking forward to doing that. Excellent. Well, Steven, Brenna, thank you so much for your time discussing the smart factory. This is such an interesting provocative topic. I wish we had more time, but appreciate you speaking with me today. Thanks for having us. Thank you. You're watching theCUBE, Lisa Martin for HPE Discover 2020, the virtual experience. Thanks for watching.