By Saumya Sanyal, Global Director Technology Lead for Engineering & Operation Systems, Ford
The manufacturing sector is facing simultaneous pressures from AI adoption, supply chain volatility, and workforce transformation. Which of these do you believe will have the most lasting impact over the next five years, and why?
The long-term impacts of AI adoption will outlast by far the impacts of supply chain volatility or workforce transformation. Modern plants, both new build and legacy, are transforming using an AI first and AI everywhere approach. The application of AI at every stage of the product development and manufacturing processes is accelerating the pace of transformation. The ability to transform at rate is key to meeting currently known, and yet to be understood, industrial challenges.
You’ve worked extensively at the intersection of engineering, enterprise systems, and transformation. What is one lesson about digital transformation that leaders consistently underestimate?
Leaders guiding their organizations through digital or any other transformation consistently underestimate their own impact. Of the many transformations I have has the privilege to contribute to the most successful and durable results came when the leader recognized their obligation to the team. They established up front with their stakeholders the time attention they must devote to the transformation team and efforts. The level of engagement from the principal sponsor is the singular indicator of transformation success. It is stated clearly stated in all the literature, at the same time full leadership engagement is still very rare.
We’re hearing more about digital threads, digital twins, and model-based engineering. Where do you see the greatest opportunities for these technologies to create competitive advantage?
The competitive advantage derived from each of these are very different. Of these three the digital twin along with the Software Defined “X” has the greatest opportunity. Companies embedding digital twins in their products will get the greatest advantage across design, production, and post production service.
As AI becomes embedded in engineering and manufacturing workflows, what new skills should today’s leaders prioritize developing within their teams?
Our teams are already learning the power of LLM driven capabilities embedded with in the current workflows. AI prompting and incorporation of LLM modelling technology has become a fundamental. Going forward data management principals, problem definition and solution structuring skill must be prioritized. Knowing where and when to engage AI tech will be competitive edge.
Organizations often focus heavily on technology selection. In your experience, how important are culture, governance, and change management compared with the technology itself?
Both the technology itself and the transformation enablers are equally important.
No amount of change management can make up for technology selections made used incomplete criteria or scoping.
At the same time the culture, governance, and change management of both the core organization as well as the transformation initiative coupled with leadership participation must be there to deploy and operate the technology.
If you must choose you have already lost.
Manufacturers are generating unprecedented amounts of data. What are the biggest barriers preventing companies from converting that data into actionable business intelligence?
The biggest barrier preventing the promise of Big Data is accessing the domain knowledge OWNED by the experienced community of application developers. Data Architects, Data Scientist often spend extraordinary amount of time making sense of the data and not working collaboratively with the application owners.
Looking ahead to 2030, what emerging technology or industry trend do you think is currently receiving too little attention from executives?
The underlying trend towards a more networked value chain is observable but not very prevalent in the literature. We can see how the service economy is impacting everything around us and very few executives are building platforms to transform their corporations.
Throughout your career, you’ve led complex enterprise initiatives involving multiple stakeholders. What leadership principle has consistently helped you drive alignment and execution across large organizations?
Alignment is only achieved through constructive conflict. Only when the initiative foundation is established by exposing addressing the unspoken conflicts can initiative succeed. Skip this step and loose the whole investment, and possible your firm.
If you could give one piece of advice to the next generation of technology and manufacturing leaders entering the industry today, what would it be?
Leaders entering industry today already have the advantage of “born digital” my advice to them is don’t miss the opportunity learn from your peers and predecessors. Technology is not invested or interested in you like your peers and mentors are.
