Why do you need / don't need an Industry 4.0 consultant for plant(s) digitization ? Plant Digitization

Ankur Jain

May 12

2 min read

Updated: Oct 10

The question in the title is a long standing question across multiple industry verticals and horizontal functions - why do we need consultants?

Some time back I was working with team at Cognizant when they had undertaken a massive sized project having multiple plants across 25+ global locations. They were running multiple initiatives across both the shopfloor and the topfloor.

Why do you need / don't need an Industry 4.0 consultant for plant(s) digitization ? Plant Digitization - Analysis by House of Analyst Ankur

I had only question? What is that you do when Rockwell Systems will do the hands-on enablement plus go-live, why are you guys even being paid?

So the answer is not so straight-forward, but I will try to answer....[Plant Digitization].....

Broadly there are two aspects under consideration that these services firms do - first is customization work and second is handling the PMO operations. Sitting together with the Cognizant One Plant Team plus Rockwell FTPS, they together along with client stakeholders decide the roadmap for implementation. In most cases, ~50% customization is to be done where you need tech services support since standalone MES does not work or to say does not give any ROI in most cases

Once technical go-ahead has been received by Rockwell team, Cognizant team does the heavy lifting in terms of some line items as listed below: -

Setting up of the PMO office calendars, go-live timelines and resource allocations
Alignment of dates and timelines with existing ERP / product upgrades timelines
Negotiating on the service contracts
Best practice SOP developments and onboardings to avoid confusion as the implementation progresses
Another interesting aspect is the fact that as 25+ plant locations are involved, it is imperative to have back-n-forths, in such case, it is crucial for the PMO office to maintain pace and coordination. This in my point of view is most crucial work for Cognizant team
As the implementation progresses >50% levels, it is crucial to curate and provide structured trainings to respective teams on the software and associated OT solutions
Teams also have to conduct specific workshops at regular intervals along with training sessions to ensure better learning
Talking about an aspect that is generally avoided by many inhouse and consulting professionals - which is talking about retirement of obsolete and end-of-life systems

All-in-all, burden of change has to be minimized at all costs by the consulting teams so that proposed implementation happens. Generally any MES project takes around 6-9 months for go-live and ROI realization is beyond that time period anyways which consultants are not liable for in most cases though technology vendor has the relevant SLA's in place to count the benefits. If you think, the above 7-8 pointers can be handled in-house by your PMO teams and you have already zeroed down on the use cases and technology vendor(s), then feel free to skip consultants contract:)

Check my recent assessments by clicking on links below :-