Why are Plastics Manufacturers Embracing Digital Twins?
In the spirit of Digital Transformation (See our blog from last week – Why Are Plastic Manufacturers Embracing Digital Transformation?), Plastic Manufacturers continue to look for:
- Transformational changes to generate more revenue
- Initiatives to protect and grow their user base
- Ways to produce more with fewer resources
Here are some additional ways that Digital Transformation will drive revenue and reduce costs:
- Customer interaction and experience will continue to improve through different, more scalable and personalized interfaces. Simple examples are mobile apps and bots that will allow self-service at scales never seen with super quick responsiveness. While there will be a place for the Customer Service Representative, it will generally be to serve more complex issues.
- Intelligent interaction – as more information becomes available, companies will not only reference past events, but anticipate and proactively recommend products and resolution. Think of something simple like predictive keyboard technology that auto completes your typing based upon past inputs or possibly multiple sources of information. Whether your customer is using an FAQ, Chat Box, Mobile App, or interacting with a Bot, wouldn’t this be a helpful interaction if the digital information used for the predictive keyboard included all client purchases, service cases, etc.?
- Speaking of intelligence, why not embed it everywhere. Where numbers exist today, why not always allow graphical representation but with auto scaling and recommending the best visualization to represent the data? Or, why not introduce bot-like interfaces to drive any repetitive process that normally involves humans? For example, to grant employee access to a SharePoint Server?
- Digital Twin (or some other catchy metaphor) – This isn’t actually a way to drive revenue or cut costs but, sorry, “Digital Transformation” doesn’t really resonate. Creating Digital Twins at least begins to conjure up an image of taking a physical device and mimicking it with digital information to capture not just the physical attributes but also the operational attributes related to: system speed, pressure, temperature, availability, vibration, audio (volume and frequency), etc.
- Imagine taking your smartest developer, product manager, customer service representative, operator, quality supervisor, plant manager (okay, you get the idea) along with the most advanced analytical technologies (business intelligence, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning) to interpret Digital Twin data in real-time and in sub-second response. Then, layer onto other external digital information. Always available and, best yet, as your company grows, this resource scales and makes even better decisions. It’s like taking your very best people along with advanced analytics and replicating this subject matter expertise and digital interpretation across your enterprise to help you grow.
- Digital Transformation is about scaling, reuse, intelligence, customer service, operational excellence and driving costs down and revenue up.
So, you want to be a leader in your Plastic Manufacturing segment? Digital Transformation is a step in the right direction…