Not betting on the digitalization process is to lose money and competitiveness.

About the author: Jordi Blanco

Jordi Blanco has been Product Manager at Tecnomatrix since 2014 and has been a key player in the digitalization process with Kapture.io. The present and the future is to have greater control of the data and he tells us how to exploit the full potential that we have within reach.

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/jes%C3%BAsmontoli%C3%BA/

What symptoms should you look for to detect that your company needs to bet on data digitization?

The first thing you should see is that you do not have the information when you want it in an agile and fast way, but you have to ask for it. Another symptom is that you receive the same information in different formats or that one contradicts the other. This means that your digitization and data extraction process is not standardized and there are many factors that can lead to errors and incorrect information. There is a very significant case: when you start digesting a lot of information with Excel sheets it means that the process can be digitized and made much faster and more effective.

What will you get if you bet on Kapture.io?

You will be able to exploit the full potential of your data. The entrepreneur has an intangible which is the quality data of their process and with this data there is very valuable information that they can make work for them: they can make forecasts, predictions and have a much clearer view of what is going on and take advantage of it.

“With Kapture.io in a very economical way we can start digitizing processes and have a quick return.”

The machine will always be faster than a person in data analysis.

If the machine has broken down it is clear to everyone that it is not working, but if it breaks down intermittently or does random things there may be a pattern that we can solve. This is a clear advantage of having the data digitized. In the face of very obvious problems a person will realize before an external system, it is obvious, but there are many error patterns that are hidden, that make us lose money and can be revealed by taking the data and applying some intelligence. Sometimes simple analytics can reveal this hidden data.

Can the human factor lead to hiding or camouflaging failures to avoid problems?

Yes. What we find most often are data controls that should be done and are not done. They are not recorded anywhere and it is very difficult to know what has not been done and why. We quickly detect the controls that have not been done on the parts and, as you said, we detect human error. If there is a product that has a trend and suddenly has values that are out of line, it is detected instantly. This is the advantage of having the data digitized, it is not a piece of paper waiting for someone to look at it, waiting for what we could call forensic analysis.

Have you calculated how much data is lost by not having everything digitized?

There is no exact calculation, but there are clients who are generating six million pieces of data every six months, which were previously unfeasible to have and analyze. They used to stay on sheets of paper and now, instead, they have them available. A million data per month that was lost!

Is it dangerous to delay the digitization process?

The risk is competitive. You have a lot of product data and digitization improves the process and the product. That is money. Not betting on the digitization process is losing money and competitiveness. In the long run your competitors will have much more process information than you.

“If they don’t jump on the digitalization bandwagon there will be a loss of competitiveness in the sector.”

But we are facing a major economic crisis and now everyone is thinking about saving or cutting costs!

Yes, and you don’t have to think of it as a big expense. Sometimes you can look for little things, little touches where I am losing more money. It is about applying the process as a journey in which little by little I can retouch the points that can generate a faster return on investment, without any big outlay. With Kapture.io in a very economical way we can begin to digitize the processes and have a quick return.

Could we say that money is not the key factor in the commitment to digitalization?

It is more a barrier of people and mentalities than an economic one. It’s a matter of changing the way we think.

The coronavirus has damaged the global economy and threats of factory closures due to cost-cutting are growing, so could we say that companies that have not bet on digitalization will have a harder time overcoming this crisis?

It’s very obvious. You have to get it right the first time, without rejection, and always know what you are doing wrong. Detecting the existence of rejection comes from data. It makes us more competitive. It’s not just receiving the data, but analyzing it and making the right decisions. If you don’t get on the bandwagon there will be a loss of competitiveness in the industry. Also, at Kapture.io we have information sharing between customer and supplier, which generates a lot of savings. The customer can see how the supplier’s manufacturing is doing and adjust to what they are seeing. There is a win-win in the sense that certain controls can be relaxed and there are features that can be made more sustainable thanks to information sharing.

“Information sharing between customer and supplier creates a lot of savings. The customer can see how the supplier’s manufacturing is doing and adjust to what they are seeing.”

The benefits of digitization are obvious. Is it widely deployed?

No, it is very poorly implemented. We were pioneers with Kapture.io 2015 and the adoption curve has been very slow. Maybe in this last half year with the coronavirus it has accelerated because everyone has realized that they should be able to continue working or analyzing the process from home. Or from the other side of the world. Having the process digitized gives you access to the data at all times so you can do the analysis quickly. We have cases of customers who have suffered an accident, for example a fire, and the next day, having everything digitized, they were able to continue with the process from the point where it was, only replacing the burned equipment. As he had no paper, but had everything in a cloud, he could connect to another device to continue working.

Without naming names, what cases have you come across that reflect the benefit of data digitization?

I was struck by one a few years ago. The case of a task that was not being done, which resulted in a major recall of vehicles from dealerships. In order not to make a small expense in data control, a company spent millions of euros withdrawing vehicles from dealerships. Another case would be controls that go wrong, are noted on paper and as nobody looks at them in the end cause a rejection, as happened to a Catalan company sending parts to the United States. It ended up costing them a lot of money because they had to make all the parts again. Sometimes the investment is very small and the benefit, very large, although it may be intangible because you do not see that you are saving because the process happens to go well at all.

We have talked about automotive, but can digitalization be applied to other sectors?

We also work with the pharmaceutical and construction sectors. Especially in the latter case, the data control process is very similar to that of automobiles and they benefit from having the process digitized. The data is immediately available and in real time they can see what they are doing in the factory, what losses there are and apply changes. Before this process could take days, even a week. They could find themselves in a situation in which they were correcting errors from five days ago, when new ones had already appeared that had nothing to do with it. With digitization this does not happen.

With Jordi Blanco it has become clear to us that the future does not depend on digitalization, but that the present will be very complicated if we have not taken the step. The competitiveness of the sector is at stake and on the Kapture.io website you will find all the information you need to avoid being left behind.