PLAYBOOK
PUBLISHED JANUARY 2024
Enabling
Business Model
Innovation in Manufacturing
In collaboration with the World Economic Forum and Accenture
Executive Summary
The Goal
This playbook aims to equip manufacturing executives and their teams with the tools and philosophies to build robust, repeatable innovation programs, to achieve business model innovation. The playbook explores a wide variety of topics relevant to manufacturing leaders.
This playbook was built inside out.
The manufacturing industry has been evolving at an unprecedented speed in recent years. To craft this playbook, the US Center, partners, and community delved inside the minds of industry thought leaders who are navigating the multifaceted challenges that define the current manufacturing terrain. Developed against the backdrop of evolving industry dynamics, this playbook is a strategic compass to guide discussions about transformative technologies and innovative talent strategies that are imperative for shaping the future of manufacturing.
Over a span of twelve months, the US Center for Advanced Manufacturing, in collaboration with the World Economic Forum, Purdue University, and Accenture, engaged more than 30 manufacturing leaders to build this playbook. Ranging from plant managers to CEOs, and encompassing a wide array of industry perspectives, the playbook’s methodology involved conducting individual interviews and industry round-table discussions.
These discussions explored a wide range of topics, including; the catalysts driving the need for business model transformation, priority technologies to enable business model change, opportunities, challenges, and barriers that keep innovation just out of reach.
In addition to input from industry leaders, this playbook leverages findings from a number of detailed studies, including Industrial Speedsters Study, and Rethink, Reinvent, Realize: How to successfully scale digital innovation to drive growth, as well as an examination of over fifty manufacturing technology trends. The goal is to pinpoint technologies that empower the manufacturing industry to elevate its competitive edge and enable business model innovation. Starting with the successes and lessons hard-won by industry innovators, we’ve reverse-engineered their approaches to achieve the same.
Insights from leaders for leaders
Cynthia Hutchinson
CEO, US Center
for Advanced Manufacturing
This playbook includes the following key findings:
• Organizations who innovate, and use new technologies well can expect real benefits, where organizations who don’t, risk falling behind competitors. Innovation must be a priority now, due to rapidly evolving technology, and industry headwinds.
• Manufacturers face a number of industry-wide challenges, including; decarbonizing manufacturing operations, enhancing supply chain transparency and resiliency, speeding up scale up of new technologies, securing the future of the manufacturing workforce, and linking business value with social and environmental responsibility.
• New and evolving technologies are positioned to address these challenges, including; digital twins, connected worked platforms, intelligent asset management solutions, blockchain and supply chain collaboration tools, plant control towers, robotics and autonomous guided vehicles.
• Within organizations, leaders face barriers to pilot and scale innovation, including; resistance to change, outdated infrastructure, difficulty proving value to scale, limited partnerships, talent shortages and inadequate workforce upskilling, limited cross functional collaboration, siloed data systems, and lack of strategic planning.
• When considering innovation, be deliberate to honestly assess the organizations starting point and digital readiness, to uncover capability gaps, predict challenges, and identify organizational strengths.
• Ensure the right capabilities for innovation are present, through hiring, talent development, and external partnerships. Partnerships with universities help organizations establish an on-campus presence, connect with students, and can be used to shape curriculums to provide the next generation of talent with in-demand skills.
• Run innovation through a structured process from idea to scale, with focus on rapid experimentation to test hypotheses, governance structures with defined funding stage gates, quantitative value tracking, and processes to scale successful pilots across the organization.
• Create a culture of innovation within your organization and continuously work towards amplifying enablers of innovation in order to succeed in the above.
Access Our Innovation in Manufacturing Playbook
Tailored for decision-makers in the manufacturing industry, this playbook offers a strategic roadmap to build and maintain dynamic innovation programs. It combines practical tools with forward-thinking philosophies to help leaders navigate and master the nuances of business model innovation, addressing a wide range of pertinent topics for manufacturing executives.
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