How can management and process methodologies help to define a roadmap for digitization? A proposal based on a practical case

Abstract

Companies have been forced to adapt quickly to the Industry 4.0 paradigm in order to obtain, or at least maintain, their competitiveness. Digital Transformation has been one of the ways that companies have found to adapt their processes, to make them as effective and efficient as possible. For this, there is an emerging need for methodologies that guide this digitalisation processes in companies that already operate with traditional management methodologies, capitalising on the effort that companies have already put into philosophies such as Lean Manufacturing. This article aims to propose a roadmap to monitor the digitalisation of processes based on traditional management methodologies (PDCA, SDCA and Lean) and processes (BPM and BPMN), also presenting a tool that supports one of the steps of this methodology. Aligned with this methodology and in this investigation context, a tool was also developed using Microsoft Excel, entitled DiYD (Do it Yourself Digitalization) which aims to help the digital transformation. This tool, based on a process-oriented language, was used to map the company's processes, facilitating the identification of their flaws and achieving opportunities for improvement. The construction of this roadmap (for the process of dematerialisation and digitalisation of processes) was based on a practical experience in the industrial context with the objective of contributing to the achievement of World Class Manufacturing status and operational excellence. In this way it is possible to fill the gap in the strategies for the development of digital transformation, integrating lean tools in its base.