In my first of two articles on SKF I outlined how this global ball bearing giant has made three model facilities that embrace digital transformations, and the benefits this has created. But SKF is about so many more than just three factories. In fact, the company has over 100 facilities worldwide. The question now is how to get the concepts from these three "model factories" to spread throughout the organization? How will they meet the challenges, and what’s in the future for SKF?
Besides the importance of inspiring and organizing the employees according to cohesive digital end-to-end solutions, SKF’s COO Kent Viitanen pointed to the roles of digital twins.
“The future is about how we deal with this,” he says.
The basis of this includes three points, says Viitanen:
- Digital twins of the product. Here SKF works with PTC's solutions Creo (CAD) and Windchill PDM/PLM.
- Digital twins of the production facilities. SKF works with its own so-called World Class Manufacturing program, based on Siemens Closed-Loop Manufacturing concept and Siemens Xcelerator software, mainly Teamcenter.
- Digital twin applications related to the product in the hands of customers, where SKF's service centers ("Rotation Services") are responsible for monitoring, support, maintenance and optimization.
“Above all, it is the third point in which our product creates value in the hands of the customer. The key value, as I see it, doesn't show up until this point: how well the product performs in the customer's application. This is what we have to get the entire organization within SKF to embrace,” asserts Viitanen. “As it stands now, we are heading towards this as well. We differentiate ourselves against competition in this arrangement, and the better we succeed in getting the entire organization on this journey, the stronger we stand. A key point is that this model should not just sit in one of SKF's portals—we have many—but the employees must understand that, ‘what I do has an impact in other parts of SKF's organization.’"
Industrial IoT and closed-loop digital twins plays important roles in SKF’s product realization setup. The effectiveness of the digital twin’s performance is dependent upon live data, which requires a digital strategy and an IoT-based approach. For instance, with industrial IoT as a service, you may connect your physical machinery and infrastructure to the digital world via digital thread—a framework that enables closed-loop digital twins and real-time data flow with the digital twin components.
"We Must Have Traceability Right Through"
In this, end-to-end connections are keys to success, notes Viitanen. "We all know that this is about huge amounts of data. Sharing this data horizontally requires getting a grip on this data from the details of the entire product development process. Hence, we must have traceability right through the entire process. One must be able to obtain data that shows why a solution from us, for example, only lasts for three years in an application even though you would like it to last for six years.”
“Of course, we have lots of simulation models here that can help us. We have done tons of testing work that has been fed into our simulation models. Now we need to keep track of these and have them ready for sharing. One point is that the production processes are far from only about the manufacturing parts, and therefore data from all parts must become available to a number of different people in the total life cycle around the ball bearings—even things that are not just limited to manufacturing. We have to get the data out to application engineers, buyers, and even our customers have to be able to access the data.”
Transparency Crucial
We're not quite there yet, says Viitanen, but in the future that is where SKF needs to go.
“Customers will increasingly want to interact with us. What we have to do is define where the boundary line goes. Why? Take your contacts with the bank as an example. Everyone is a customer of a bank, but if my bank did not allow me to interact directly with them about things related to my account, cards or other similar things, I would change banks immediately. Transparency in this is therefore crucial for customer relations and the development points to this communication becoming even more important in the future. Ball bearings are no exception.”
SKF’s journey into a highly digitized future is that of a dedicated digital Future Factory organization, focusing on things such as IT and OT (Operational Technology), procedural streamlining and the launch of state-of-the-art technologies. This is to give the facilities in SKF's various regions their own mandate to implement changes based on the pattern factories' strategies.
What can make this possible for a giant organization like SKF?
Of course, you must have state-of-the-art PLM solutions, which are also seamlessly connected to mainly AI-driven automation solutions. But not only that. SKF is increasingly moving towards "Product-as-a-Service" solutions, which means that the customers must also be included and connected in this chain. To reach this goal, SKF needs to have the horizontal integration and the vertical integration, Viitanen sums up.
“When today we draw up the target for where we will be tomorrow; when the next generation of product solutions, distribution and business models are to be implemented, the above-related pieces are of the greatest importance,” he says. "Centrally located experts must cooperate with locally located ones, those who literally sit in the middle of the business and do the work and know how it is done on a daily basis; all complemented with partner expertise.”
“For our part, we now first and foremost have the World Class Manufacturing concept. But of course, we also have a number of ongoing deals and business relationships. Here we need to ensure that we can provide data structures that provide our customers with decision support. Behind this, there must be transparency and simplicity in the solutions that allow people to make the right decisions. Just ten years ago, this was impossible to achieve without spending huge amounts of time and resources getting solutions in place. But today, when you visit our factories, it becomes clear that in most places we are driving the operations towards this target image. We have computers and dashboards in place with all important information, we have processes with direct customer feedback in place, etc.”
Successful Digital Transformation Requires Balance
Balance is the foundation, says Kent Viitanen. But to also achieve this quickly, the connections to the people in SKF’s organization are key.
“How can we ensure that the people who work on the shop floor, those who have the knowledge of how things are managed every day, what their needs are and what the problems are, can be connected with those who have the skills to really be able to solve them? When I jumped back into SKF's factory operations about five years ago, we had a very centralized approach to this. In many cases we even solved problems that people didn't have. I mean, the fact that a factory had a specific problem does not mean that all factories have it. Of course, the central experts have an important role in being the bearer of standards and development direction, but I asked them not to create solutions that slow down: ‘...but if you have solutions that can increase the speed, go ahead.’"
But smart solutions are what allow you to maintain and preferably increase the momentum you have in the local business. Why is this so important?
"If you want an effective digitization transformation, a balance is required with the legacy environment, the technology and the people we have on board. If you make the central technology too strong, I think it gives a tough disadvantage when the local employees feel that they have no control or even the possibility of influence. Then there is the risk that they will simply switch off,” says Viitanen.
With such staffing locally, you will not get the momentum throughout the organization that is needed to successfully carry the digital transformation through.
But if training and hands-on work still fails despite this?
“It is also part of the learning process. If you have a climate where it is allowed to fail, people will dare and without the will to dare to step out into the unknown, development risks stalling,” says Viitanen.
With 34 years in the SKF environment, Kent Viitanen knows what he's talking about. As he moves on to a new job as CEO of the industrial company Emballator in January 2023, his legacy to SKF is that a successful digital transformation will require the people's willingness to keep up, to receive both theoretical and practical training with an eye on new technologies.
It is not difficult to understand that motivated people can move mountains. If they also have the right digital tools, it can go faster than you can imagine.