Digital transformation can mean many different things for many different types of organizations. In manufacturing it’s become a buzzword that’s impossible to avoid. Yet for all the attention it’s received, it’s alarmingly misunderstood. There’s many industrial leaders who believe they’ve completed their digital transformation simply by moving data from paper to digital spreadsheets in programs like Microsoft Excel.

While this is a step in the right direction, it’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how digital transformation can help you expose inefficiencies and realize the potential of a fully integrated digital system. In this article we’ll explore why manufacturers need to embrace a growth mindset to adopt a comprehensive digital strategy that will unlock true value.

Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable

Excel has established itself as a go-to tool for engineers, operators, and managers for good reason. It’s versatile, accessible, and available at all levels of your organization. That makes it an appealing and comfortable resource that allows users to quickly create workbooks, design macros, and generate charts to assess processes and monitor performance.

“Comfortable” feels good, but in digital transformation you should take comfort as a warning sign. If you’re too comfortable, you’re probably not doing enough to have a true impact. Transitioning from manual record-keeping to a digital environment where data can be stored, manipulated, and shared is a huge accomplishment. But it’s sort of like evolving from a paper map to printed off driving directions in 2025. It’s an improvement, but it’s still far short of leveraging available technology to truly transform your business.

Where Excel Doesn’t Excel

Let’s take a look at four shortcomings of Excel as the centerpiece of your digital transformation:

• Data Silos

  By nature, the data in any spreadsheet software is isolated. It exists for use in the workbook itself, but the data still requires manual analysis, and insights still require manual adaptation. Sharing the data between teams also requires manual intervention.

• Scalability

  Your industrial processes are ever-evolving and Excel has performance limitations with large volumes of data. As processes become more complex, your ability to handle the data they produce with spreadsheet software will degrade, manifesting itself in performance issues, file corruption, and version control problems.

• Handling Real-Time Data

  Real-time insights are the lifeblood of industrial transformation. Excel is a static solution by nature, and is unable to monitor live processes, identify immediate challenges, or deploy prescriptive solutions to unforeseen hurdles.

• Managing Changes and Accountability

  If you’ve ever tried to identify who made what changes in a shared document, you understand that it’s cumbersome and difficult to maintain an accurate audit trail in Excel. This leaves your organization vulnerable to operational inefficiencies and compliance risks.

The True Value of Digital Transformation

Digitizing existing processes is a start, but digital transformation is about so much more than that. It’s about enabling technology to help you reimagine how work gets done. Disparate data sources can create conflict and confusion. Bringing all of your systems into one unified digital platform eliminates these by creating a “single source of truth” upon which fully-informed decisions can be made. We call it unlocking the hidden factory, because it has the power to expose capacity you didn’t even realize was there within your existing operations.

There are several reasons this approach has such a transformative impact on organizations who embrace its principles:

• Unified Data Ecosystem

  Operating from one centralized platform eliminates competition and discussion about which silo’s data is the right data to pay attention to. A unified data ecosystem ensures all stakeholders are operating from the same reality with consistent and updated information. This shared understanding of truth fosters collaboration and eliminates many of the barriers to decision-making.

• Scalable Infrastructure

  What you do in Plant A might be vastly different from how you operate in Plant B. Similarly, the industrial footprint of your organization today will likely be quite different in ten, five, or even three years. The tools available today for industrial digital transformation are designed to handle massive data sets and evolve as your organization evolves, allowing you to scale while avoiding the most common bottlenecks.

• Real-Time Insights

  The companies setting the standards for production capabilities and performance today are the ones who are able to react to insights as they’re happening. Today’s advanced analytics tools can process live data and provide actionable insights to help you quickly optimize production, tackle downtime, and improve quality.

• Enhanced Visibility of Operations

  Automated tracking and reporting simplifies the process of knowing the who, what, when, and where of your production environment. This makes it easier to maintain a comprehensive audit trail and meet evolving regulatory requirements.

• Automation and Integration

  Say goodbye to disconnected standalone solutions. Today’s digital solutions seamlessly integrate with IIoT devices, ERP systems, and other industrial tools, to help manufacturers apply insights from one area of the business into actions in another. This helps to identify and automate routine tasks, freeing up limited human resources for higher-value activities.

Building a Digital Transformation Culture

Transitioning to a fully digital ecosystem requires a transformative mindset shift. It needs to be embraced by leaders and cascaded down into the layers of the organization to effectively take root and flourish. Tri Tech Automation can help guide you with a vendor-neutral approach to prioritize needs, make the right decisions first, and start taking action. It’s something we have helped countless organizations work through to realize the full benefits of digital transformation.

First, you need to conduct a thorough assessment of current processes. This will quickly illuminate inefficiencies and bottlenecks in existing workflows and expose some of the limitations of legacy systems, like Excel. Armed with that information, you’re prepared to define clear and shared objectives that spell out what you want to accomplish, what the impact will be, and how progress will be measured.

Your desired outcomes should guide the tools you invest in. Too often, we see companies who have been sold a one-size-fits all digital transformation solution only to be underwhelmed with how it performs in the real world. Tri Tech Automation works with customers to assess and choose a digital platform that best aligns with their objectives and integrates most seamlessly with existing infrastructure.

Digital transformation has low odds of succeeding if the entire team isn’t on board with it. For that reason, it’s very important to educate your team on the reasons for this work in the beginning, reinforce that message throughout the process, and empower them with training to work with the new technology being introduced.

At Tri Tech, we are known for saying that digital transformation is a journey. It’s not an activity with a completion date. Technology is evolving faster than ever and there’s no room for a fixed mindset in this space. With an appropriate foundation, you’ll be equipped to monitor the impact of your digital initiatives, refine your approach based on data, and take advantage of new capabilities in the future.

You’re Not Alone

To digitize or not is no longer a choice in the modern industrial world. By partnering with Tri Tech Automation, you can unlock new levels of efficiency, agility, and innovation, ensuring you remain competitive in an ever-evolving market.

Reach out to our team of digital transformation experts to begin the process of laying out your digital transformation roadmap with a Digital Maturity Assessment today.