(upbeat rock music)
Narrator: Digitizing operations is more
than a nice-to-have for manufacturing companies:
it's an imperative, and they know it.
More than 80% of them are actively investing
in digital operations, according to a recent BCG survey.
Digitization, when done right and at scale,
yields impressive upsides,
including a 10% to 20% reduction
in production and supply chain costs.
As our casework and research has made clear,
a wide variety of success factors
separate the leaders from the laggards.
Ford stands out among the leaders.
To find out what companies in all manufacturing sectors
can learn from Ford's success,
we've come to its advanced manufacturing center
here in Redford, Michigan.
Ford has invested in the center
to accelerate the deployment of digital operations use cases
across its manufacturing network.
(rock music continues)
-: Hi Mike, when you think about Ford's ambition
for digital operations,
first, how would you describe that?
And then, second,
what do you see as the major challenges
that you faced along the way?
-: Our vision is to really leverage access
to not just digitization of our manufacturing process,
but also the product realization,
product development process,
how our products are performing in the field,
what our customers are interested in,
and incorporating that
into a really intelligent manufacturing process,
one that really delivers the greatest value
to our customers.
-: This center, and your team specifically,
what is your role
in trying to overcome some of those challenges
and speed up for it along this journey?
-: Yeah, while we have really a few principle priorities
around data analytics and digital factory,
digital engineering methods, process innovation,
and certainly additive manufacturing,
so we have people
that are leading each of those five pillars.
Where we're really getting the benefit is the fact
that we're working across many of those priorities,
and the fact that we're colocated in a place
where we can really innovate across
and incorporate the technologies
at the right level and the right places
to create really innovative practical solutions.
I think that's the real advantage
of the advanced manufacturing center
and the people that are here.
Narrator: Structure and facilitation are essential.
Many companies mistakenly conduct a broad survey
to solicit ideas from operations employees
or follow an ad hoc first-come, first-served process.
The problem is, without proper guidance about the context,
employees often identify projects
that are too narrow in scope or not scalable.
-: How do you get your ideas?
Right, and there's tons of needs and pain points
and noise really from the organization,
but how do you prioritize the places where you focus?
-: They really come from three places.
One is whatever the product demands are,
so if you have areas in your current production processes
where you're not meeting the customer requirements,
those are obvious areas of focus.
Sometimes in our product development plans,
the product requirements for a new model
may require us to innovate a process
to meet some of the requirements.
From a manufacturing pain points that, you know,
when we look across our operations,
Ford has a very mature process
for measuring performance across many indices,
and so it's pretty easy for us
to stratify our current process performance,
recognize plants that are struggling
and that might need help with a solution
to close the gap to "Best in."
-: Yup.
-: And then the third source is,
we do a lot of technology scouting
and looking for technology
that maybe hadn't been previously considered
as automotive application, and evaluating where it may fit.
Narrator: The center provides
a unique physical space for testing,
as well as access to specific technical skill sets
that can be best utilized centrally.
-: But how have you thought about
like building your team and structuring your team,
you know, to really help Ford along this journey?
-: So we made sure that the organization
was small enough to be nimble,
but large enough to be,
to have significant impact.
Our plan going forward,
my plan going forward, is to do some level of turnover,
where I, as the technology continues to move,
and we deliver solutions into the operations
or into product programs,
I wanna move some of the people from this organization
into those product programs and into those facilities.
And then I wanna extract, either people from the operations
or recruit from industry or from academia,
the next generation of forward thinkers.
Narrator: Ford Center features several cells
in which agile teams use proof-of-concept projects
to test technologies, including additive manufacturing,
collaborative robots, machine vision,
and automated guided vehicles.
-: Obviously you're experimenting
with a lot of different things,
but are there particular technologies
that you're doubling down on, so to speak,
in this organization?
-: We have a significant footprint
of additive manufacturing at Ford Motor Company.
It's somewhat distributed,
or it's historically been somewhat distributed.
-: Sure, in the plants?
-: In the plants, and in product development,
and in some of our relationships with, again, academia.
So the commitment to consolidate,
and bring the people and the equipment here,
and really focus some of the development work
around the next generation of materials;
accelerating some of the openness of the software
and the material sources,
really developing automotive-grade solutions.
With the computing power that is emerging,
it's now providing an opportunity
to introduce artificial intelligence
in places that we hadn't historically had the opportunity,
so it's been really exciting to see
in much more simple processes
where you can introduce artificial intelligence
and really accelerate process performance.
-: Yeah, reflecting on your journey
over the past couple of years,
like what advice do you have
for someone in your shoes in a different company?
-: I mean, it's really important to not be afraid to fail.
And that's really important,
and it's easy to say, hard to do.
And in order to innovate,
sometimes you have to not follow processes.
So I think that's one of the first pieces of advice
I would give you, you can't be afraid.
There will be failures.
You need to have the humility to learn from those things.
That would be one of the biggest pieces of advice.
One of the things I've really been impressed by
with the team that I have here
is it seems like the more fun we have
the more, the higher the quality of the output
and the higher the volume of output.
You gotta have fun,
and I think you can have fun in your work.
Narrator: Ford has made great progress
in transitioning to digital operations,
but most companies have seen mixed results.
Simply put, it's hard to digitize operations.
A company needs to invest massively in change management,
new technical skill sets, cross functional collaboration,
strategic investments, and access to pricey talent.
It must also evaluate a daunting array
of new technologies and vendors-
and these are just the prerequisites.
(upbeat rock music)