Disruptive Technologies In Manufacturing Part 1

Chuck: I think we’ve seen the evolution of CIO’s moving from back office management to back office plus potentially feeding software or providing software that fuels products and services that their companies offer. They’re shifting from “you’re just back office, please go make us efficient” to “now you’re more strategic in the work that you’re doing”. And I think in between there’s the justification, the return that has to be proven before technology can be moved. I think that’s shifting a little bit.

Chuck: There are cases now where a CIO can get away with, “okay, the ROI isn’t maybe great, but we need to keep up otherwise we’re going to fall behind” and next thing you know we’re going to be non-competitive right in our marketplace because technology has moved from a “nice to have” to a must have to a potentially strategic advantage.

Chuck: I mean look at Tesla. Tesla is a good example. Are they a car company? Are they a software company?

Chuck: I mean they, they build very, very sophisticated software for their cars and so.

Alan: They supposedly call themselves a “transportation solutions company”.

Chuck: Yes, exactly! But they got there through technology becoming embedded in their business to where.

Jean-Yves: In their case, you’re right, in their case they took it to a totally next level. I don’t think they did bother to look at their processes or to look at anything that is more traditional. I think they pretty much start with a cleaner, clean table with no paradigm because oftentimes it relates to all kinds of paradigm that the auto industry had over, you know, over many decades. They have always been doing making the car a certain way. So now we have a player that’s pretty much start with a blank page, say, no, we’re going to do it differently. And they became a software company, like you said, it’s a technology company and it’s interesting to see they took it to the next level.

Chuck: Yeah.

Chuck: And if you throw on top of that now security because they have shifted from how do we do this? How do we make process more efficient? And we know the data is local and we know we’re pretty secure to now cloud and data in many different locations. And we might be using the Internet to move things around or to access data. And the topic of security has come up as well. Traditional CIO, who’s now CIO strategic in providing some sort of solution for the company. And now on top of that, you have security, which is a big, big deal today. So we’re seeing more chief security officers popping up in organizations or chief digital officers, which are different than the CIO because of the advances in technology and businesses.

Chuck: Right?

Jean-Yves: Absolutely.

Chuck: Yeah.

Jean-Yves: No, that’s very interesting what they are doing. And I think that’s applicable to other industries as well. I think what they did, it’s probably doable in many other industries if we think about Uber. Well, Uber, they blew up the taxi industry with a great app and some creativity, so they broke the model. And other people can break the model in other industries as well. And this is, again, not only, but in large part because of how they use technology. I mean, what they put in place wouldn’t have been doable without the technology behind it.

Chuck: And John Eve, it feels like the example you gave about the furniture company to me, that’s disruptive to their industry for sure. And what comes to mind for me then is Amazon. Right. You know, I can go to the, I can not only go to the hardware store and buy something, but I could also order from that hardware store online. But Amazon’s like, you know, how many times have you gone in there? It’s like, okay, I just ordered it and I’m getting it tomorrow. And, you know, even the company that sells the product can’t do that. So that’s totally disrupting. Right.

Chuck: The environment. So it feels like, it feels like the example you gave is there’s a lot of disruption happening through the use of technology.

Jean-Yves: Yeah. This is where I think when you look at digital transformation, this is, if you take it to the extreme level, that’s what it means at the end of the day.