04 May 2020

Resilient Decision Making will be Key to Ensure the Future of Operations in the COVID Era

SINGAPORE, May 5, 2020 – Increasing demand for more custom products and experiences is requiring operational leaders to build operational capabilities that can consistently respond rapidly to market and demand signals. Operational leaders are under pressure to pivot their organizations, promoting and ensuring market driven responsiveness with the continued focus on throughput and efficiency. IDC predicts that by 2022, 80% of all industrial companies will have merged operational data streams with enterprise data streams to support broader and more rapid operational innovation. As IT and Operations Technology (OT) converge, companies will focus on using digital capabilities to build a resilient organization through instrumentation, infrastructure, integration, and insight. IDC has published a new Future of Operations (FoO) framework for IT and OT organizations to come together and support them in their path to become resilient decision makers.

The Future of Operations is marked by resilient decision making – having the ability to use all available data, turning it into information and then into action, facilitating rapid and effective decision making, connecting operations and aligning it with customer requirements. Critical in doing that is enabling, managing and gaining insights from the operational data stream, and combining that with enterprise data. Digital engineering is the piece that companies have been missing that brings together OT subject matter expertise with digital capabilities to manage and gain insights from the operational data stream and associated model. It is through enabling this data that organizations will be able to be more resilient and to tightly align operations with their customers' needs. The convergence of IT and OT is the driving force behind digital engineering and the resiliency at its core.

"The requirement for enterprises to respond to the COVID-19 health crisis has highlighted how critical resiliency within operational strategies. Companies who have made investments in key elements of instrumentation, infrastructure, integration, and insight and can use those to pivot on insights on a consistent basis across their operations will be in the best position to respond," says Emilie Ditton, Associate Vice President at IDC Energy Insights and Manufacturing Insights.

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To succeed in the Future of Operations and adopt the market-driven mindset, IDC is guiding organizations to stay true to these five key tenants:

1. Evolve beyond continuous improvement, lean, and six sigma to resiliency and market focus

2. Embrace complexity in products, services, and markets while minimizing complications

3. Resilience in adapting to changing markets and demands without losing the core operational purpose

4. Use digital capabilities to build a resilient organization and operation

5. Develop a converged IT and Operations Technology (OT) function in Digital Engineering

The IDC report, Digital Engineering and the Future of Operations (IDC #US46217020), reviews in detail the role of resilient decision-making in the Future of Operations, introduces the IDC concept of Digital Engineering, and outlines steps to reaching Digital Engineering maturity. Organizations ready to move forward in building their digital engineering house can look to the IDC report, Future of Operations: Building the House of Resiliency (IDC #US46188320).