Manuela Gatti interviewed Alberto Chin, Business Unit Manager of the Milan office in the February 2020 Special issue of Sistemi&Impresa about “Smart production systems. A new mindset in the age of data“: the adoption of enabling technologies within manufacturing companies allows to be more competitive on the current market. But there are often difficulties linked to training and also of a cultural nature that must be overcome.
Change management to embrace innovation
“Innovation cannot be separated from people. When an evolution process is initiated, a change management theme arises, and the greatest difficulties are often in this area rather than in the technological one”, Chin explains. However, the matter could also have a positive impact. “Sometimes the implementation of these technologies becomes an opportunity for companies to start an important moment of reflection at all levels, reviewing for example roles and responsibilities, but also models and production flows”, explains Atomos Hyla’s Business Unit Manager in Milan. From people’s point of view, the solution lies in the implementation of training or retraining plans. From a technological point of view, however, according to Chin the tools to make a factory ‘smart’ are there, the point is to integrate them correctly. “In the Smart Factory, all the components involved in the production processes must be connected together, so that they dialogue and provide information. We must not only think about the digitisation of factory data: the same precious information is also requested on the IT side”. All this, according to Chin, should take place with “a bottom-up approach, in which the interface with the machines becomes a fundamental element”.
