Why Smart Orchestration Is Critical for Disruptive Industrial Digitalization
By Madhav Vemuri
Digital transformation has become the holy grail for industrial leaders, a chance to streamline operations, unlock new efficiencies, and stay competitive in an increasingly automated world. But the reality on the ground tells a different story. Across sectors, digital adoption remains painfully slow and fragmented, hindered by affordability challenges, adoption complexities, limited quantifiable benefits, and questions around sustainable impact.
When you look at end-user expectations around cost, time, ease of use, and tangible results, the disconnect is clear. Current digital adoption outcomes simply don’t measure up. The root of the problem lies with solution providers who have yet to crack the code on truly simplifying the digitalization journey for industrial players.
The Ground Realities of Industrial Digitalization
Digging deeper, we see some of the key factors holding back widespread digital adoption. Traditional industrial automation giants (like Siemens, ABB, and GE) and independent infrastructure providers (such as AWS and Azure) each bring their own strengths / functionalities to the table. However, none of these palyers alone can deliver the sustainable business results or optimal user experience that the industry demands. Most digital solutions struggle to fully address plant digitalization’s operational requirements, creating an unwieldy web of dependencies between infrastructure and solution partners.
Digital adoption is a team effort that hinges on lean, agile, and spirited collaboration among all stakeholders—SMEs, domain experts, technology leaders, infrastructure providers, industrial solutions developers, and end users. Yet, the reality today is that the burden of managing integration and value orchestration often falls disproportionately on end users and plant operators, leading to muted, disconnected adoption.
Clearly, a new approach is needed – one that can simplify the digitalization journey, bring together the right expertise and resources, and deliver real, sustainable transformation.
Transitioning to a Smart Orchestration Approach
It would be unrealistic to expect any single platform or infrastructure player to scale up as an end-to-end solution provider across multi-sector industrial use cases. While Smart Orchestration (SO)— a Digital System Integration approach—emerges as the most promising path forward, it’s an ambitious undertaking that requires unprecedented industry collaboration.
The SO methodology systematically aligns digital infrastructure, tools, and advanced techniques with domain-specific process knowledge and enterprise-wide business insights to enable seamless transformation. However, its efficacy depends on more than technological integration—it necessitates the establishment of a unified industry consortium where key stakeholders can architect standardized frameworks and implementation protocols. This collaborative platform must facilitate strategic dialogue and systematic problem-solving from operational plant environments to enterprise architecture, driving harmonized solutions that scale globally. Without such orchestrated cooperation through an empowered industrial Knowledge forum / Standardization body, even sophisticated digital implementations risk becoming siloed deployments rather than integral components of a transformed industrial ecosystem.
This systematic approach offers the most viable and sustainable pathway to balance enterprise needs, market pressures, adoption complexities, and solution maturity—yet its success hinges critically on fostering cohesive, industry-wide collaboration.
Understanding the ‘One at a Time’ Fallacy
Despite consensus on the three cornerstones of industrial digitalization, there is significant variation in digital maturity and data readiness across industries and regions. While commitment to transformation runs deep, the actual impact often falls short. A major cause of this is the fragmented and siloed approach to digitalization. Take the ‘One at a Time’ rollout approach, typically driven by misinterpreted Proof of Concept models, incremental mindset and / or ROI-focused funding. While well-intentioned, it consistently falls short of truly transformative results. Yes, financial prudence matters, but evaluating digital investments solely through an ROI lens misses the bigger picture. We need a balanced perspective that considers the Cost of Inaction (CoI) to truly understand the risks of delayed adoption.
There are two most talked about and widely persuaded approaches to the Industrial digitalization journey –
- A layered approach starting with digital infrastructure, then tools and techniques, and finally focusing on outcomes—risks compartmentalizing efforts and stalling momentum.
The common trend of bulk investments in digital initiatives like IoT sensors or IT/OT integration is a typical example of compartmentalized thinking, often leading to organizational fatigue and waning interest when the impact falls short. The unspoken contributor to this approach is often management’s understandable but counterproductive impatience with evaluating benefits and managing coordination hurdles when creating or enhancing IT and OT infrastructure.
- A comprehensive approach (with or without a Smart Orchestration) ensures point solutions are deployed in phases, fitting together seamlessly in an overall architecture rather than a patchwork of disconnected systems. This structured approach maintains compliance and integration while reducing risk.
The ‘Point Solutions’ Conundrum
Point solutions often look like the perfect quick fix for specific asset types or limited problems. These include digital solutions for process-critical assets like pumps, motors, compressors, and windmills. Undoubtedly, these solutions enhance maintenance through early fault detection and real-time alerts based on leading indicators. And when applied to large fleets, the impact multiplies, enabling fleet-wide analytics that provide valuable insights into operational metrics (e.g., availability, efficiency) and point to design improvements.
While equipment-centric / point solutions offer clear benefits, they must be evaluated in the context of broader operational needs and industry applications. Production plants are complex systems with interdependent electro-mechanical and process components. To maximize value, asset performance should be analyzed holistically, not in isolation. A Smartly Orchestrated approach amplifies benefits by providing comprehensive asset integrity insights —from residual life to OEE, TCO, and operational efficiency — going beyond condition monitoring.
Though point solutions offer quick implementation and strong OEM support, a holistic Digital Transformation Blueprint with a Smart Orchestration layer remains essential for meaningfully Integrated Operations view. Because point solutions have limited focus / capabilities, their full impact & real gains will continue to be a challenge, particularly in the absence of a well-designed, end-to-end / specific unit operational coverage. Therefore, investment decisions and adoption sequencing must strongly align and clearly derived out of the enterprise blueprints and plantwide digital architecture, even if it’s planned in waves, but not the other way around.
The Way Forward
Despite advances in digital infrastructure, tools, and awareness, adoption maturity hasn’t kept pace, primarily because the real, sustained impact is difficult to demonstrate. Recent technological progress—driven by service providers and technology leaders—has certainly improved data capture (e.g., soft sensors, IT/OT integration) quality, network connectivity (e.g., coverage, speed, bandwidth), and analytics capabilities (e.g., AI/ML), addressing fundamental challenges around data reliability, availability, volume, and quality. However, these advancements will only prove to be effective if we are able to identify and unleash new value propositions through an Opportunity Loss Management (OLM) approach. While domain expertise and digital tools form the foundation, successful transformation demands something more – a coordinated approach that drives genuine value through integration and discovery.
What our industry needs now is a concentrated effort to develop and expand access to Value Unlocking and Integration expertise, much like we’ve seen in the cultivation of Digital Entrepreneurship. Forward-thinking leaders with a Value Discovery mindset will be essential in pushing digital solutions beyond conventional boundaries. Moving forward, the key will be spirited collaboration and pragmatic partnerships across the entire value chain.
“Digital transformation thrives on collaboration, co-creation, and knowledge-sharing. By establishing an integrated Digital Blueprint, we can foster partnerships across the ecosystem to unlock untapped value and drive sustainable growth.”
(The author is Madhav Vemuri, Business Transformation Leader, and the views expressed in this article are his own)
