July 16, 2021 Publisher’s Letter

Volume 24 | Issue 1

We’ve had stories in Industry Today dating back to 2016 that are either about, or in some way refer to, the term “digital transformation.”

In this, our inaugural 2021 issue, we feature a number of articles that help define what exactly digital transformation means for manufacturers.

One example is three use cases of digital transformation solutions presented in “Workflow Apps Increase Safety for Frontline Workers.” Author David Brebner describes how touchless workflow applications greatly improve the efficiency and safety of frontline operations. Digital agents provide intuitive, hands-free visual information that, Brebner says, “accelerate the completion of a company’s digital transformation journey by tackling the last-mile problem of enabling frontline workers.”

The pandemic has been a significant driver of digital adoption, a wake up call to manufacturers of the need to move faster to achieve greater agility and higher efficiency. This can be achieved through a digital-first business model to keep up with demand and maximize profitability. For more details, see “Enhancing Factories Through Digital-First Manufacturing.”

Glenn Leask and Geoff Schreiner write about how digital strategies and platforms are essential to continuous improvement. They outline 10 key assessments to evaluate a company’s readiness to effectively adopt digitalbased production systems in “Continuous improvement: The Lever of Digital Operations.”

Last but not least, Seth Siegel explains how manufacturers can avoid three common mistakes that lead to derailing digital transformation initiatives. These are: 1) Treating business process automation as an IT project, 2) Failing to create automation centers of excellence and 3) Establishing metrics the c-suite doesn’t care about. The full story is in “Business Process Automation: Make It Mission Critical.”

What is mission critical for us here at Industry Today is to provide you with comprehensive coverage about digital transformation as well as other topics of interest to manufacturing and industry. The way we now do this is an example of our own digital transformation, replacing our print with this digital format. And, of course, our daily and weekly coverage at industrytoday.com.

We hope you find what you learn from the article in this issue transformative. 

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