Topics In Demand
Notification
New

No notification found.

Blog
Creating a Strategic IT-OT Investment Plan

May 4, 2018

441

0

Creating a Strategic IT-OT (Informational Technology – Operational Technology) investment plan is essential for all manufacturing organizations.  With all the opportunities to fund projects, which ones are the most important can only be understood, if considered as part of an overall corporate investment strategy.  Too often, IT and OT investments are considered separately.  While IT investments may have higher visibility across the enterprise, OT investments can also have a significant impact on the business. 

IT-OT investment plan challenges

As Mike Williams, ARC Associate indicated in his opening remarks for a session on this topic at the recent ARC Industry Forum in Orlando, owner-operators often find themselves in the challenging position relative to IT and OT created by mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures.  These business events create several technical and organizational challenges around IT and OT assets.   Mike asked the audience if any of the following issues sound familiar:

  • Incompatible IT infrastructures
  • Custom applications or configurations not well integrated
  • End-of-life issues stress an already challenging budget
  • Dwindling skill resources to support and sustain the installed base

Of course, many in the audience could relate to one or more of those issues within their own organizations.  So, what to do about it?  Mr. Williams’ experience through his prior career with Dow Chemical and assisting many other enterprises show that a strategic, imperative-driven IT-OT investment plan generally is structured for a three to five year period.  Formalizing a strategic plan ensures that executive leadership is fully aligned with the investment needed.  The strength of the strategic plan is through agreements between the business leadership and the IT-OT organizations.

Through dozens of successful plan and execution, Mike found that “gap analysis” is a key component of the plan, since that will reveal the current state versus the future IT-OT vision.  Once the gap analysis reveals the funding requirements and the financial incentives, the plan typically includes:

  • What IT/OT functional capabilities will be delivered against which business objectives.
  • Identifies the timing of delivery and any dependencies
  • Clearly articulates the value proposition of each deliverable
  • Defines any organizational change required

HowHow to Start a Strategic IT-OT Investment Plan

 

Corporate IT executives need to understand OT issues too!

Strategic IT-OT investment plans have the best chance of success, if corporate executives are involved in the early stages of the plan development.  IT executives need to know what is happening at the OT level, and OT management need to understand how the business IT structure works and interacts with the OT.  Often a simple step of having IT management visit an operating plant to see how OT impacts the ability to keep the plant operating and producing product can have a significant impact on the resulting strategic plan.

Where operating assets are the result of mergers and acquisitions, it is important to make sure you understand how the acquired facility works before implementing change.  As part of the analysis, understanding the timing of change, as well as the change itself is important to ensure that the it doesn’t disrupt the plant operation.

ARC consultants can help to facilitate the creation of a Strategic IT-OT Investment Plan.  The assistance you need may be as simple as helping you organize your first strategic meetings, or as seemingly complex as assessing your production assets to determine the opportunity value that could be created with the correct changes – both in terms of the “what” to change as well as “when” to change.

“Reprinted with permission, original blog was posted here”. You may also visit here for more such insights on the digital transformation of industry.

 About ARC Advisory Group (www.arcweb.com): Founded in 1986, ARC Advisory Group is a Boston based leading technology research and advisory firm for industry and infrastructure.

For further information or to provide feedback on this article, please contact lkanickaraj@arcweb.com

 About the Author:

 Dick Hill

VP and GM Manufacturing Advisory Services

Dick’s focus areas include Manufacturing Industries Strategies and Best Practices; Supplier Selection Process, Supplier Performance Management, and Operational Excellence Solutions, Oil & Gas, Refining, Chemicals, and other Process Industries; Advanced Software and Systems Technologies such as APC, Optimization, PIMs, and DCS.  Dick is responsible for covering advanced software business on a worldwide basis. In addition, he provides leadership for support of ARC’s Manufacturing Advisory Service team and clients.

 


That the contents of third-party articles/blogs published here on the website, and the interpretation of all information in the article/blogs such as data, maps, numbers, opinions etc. displayed in the article/blogs and views or the opinions expressed within the content are solely of the author's; and do not reflect the opinions and beliefs of NASSCOM or its affiliates in any manner. NASSCOM does not take any liability w.r.t. content in any manner and will not be liable in any manner whatsoever for any kind of liability arising out of any act, error or omission. The contents of third-party article/blogs published, are provided solely as convenience; and the presence of these articles/blogs should not, under any circumstances, be considered as an endorsement of the contents by NASSCOM in any manner; and if you chose to access these articles/blogs , you do so at your own risk.


© Copyright nasscom. All Rights Reserved.