Notes from the plant floor

Why digital transformation stalls in many plants, and a simpler way to start

By Dr.-Ing. Do Manh Cuong, Co-founder of HNE and Deputy Secretary General of the Vietnam Automation Association

Over the past few years I have talked with many plant directors about digital transformation. Most of them agree it matters. Far fewer can tell me where their plant stands today, what the first step should be, or what they expect to gain. And many, if they are honest, do not yet believe it will pay off.

The most common pattern I see is simple. The plant hands the whole thing to one person, one department or one contractor, and management stays outside. There are kick-off meetings and slogans. Money gets spent. But the project never really finishes, because the people who run the plant were never part of it.

Four steps that work better

The plants that make progress tend to follow the same path.

1. Start with the leaders. Before any technology, managers need to see a few real examples that worked, so they have both the belief and the will to push.
2. Build an internal team. Put a manager and the plant's most experienced engineers in the same team. Consultants support them. They do not replace them.
3. Let the team assess itself. Give the team a structured model, such as the Smart Industry Readiness Index (SIRI), train them to use it, and let them score their own plant. People trust results they produced themselves.
4. Fix the weakest points first. Build the roadmap from what the assessment shows is weakest, not from what a vendor wants to sell.

You may not need expensive technology to begin

One large manufacturer I advised followed exactly this path. Its own team wrote the strategy and did the assessment, then worked with outside experts step by step: reorganizing the workshop layout and production lines, the warehouse and its management, and digitizing records of its resources. At that early stage, with no expensive systems yet, they had already cut costs by more than 10%.

That is the kind of result that turns a sceptical director into a supporter. Once people see savings they can measure, the next step, whether it is monitoring, analytics or AI, is much easier to agree on.

What this means for AI

AI does not change this logic. It makes it more important. An AI tool that the maintenance team did not help design, and does not trust, will sit unused. One focused use case, built with the people who will use it and measured against a number agreed at the start, is worth more than a large program that never lands.

This is how we work at HNE: we start with a readiness assessment done together with your team, pick one pilot, and train your people to own the result.