On the frontlines of digital transformation

An inside look at how the right technology partnerships can fundamentally alter a company’s outlook.

By WP BrandStudio

A hundred and thirty three years—that’s how long Virginia-based Newport News Shipbuilding has been in the business of manufacturing ships. As the sole developer of U.S. Navy aircraft carriers, the company has constructed more than 30 warships, including the world’s first and largest nuclear-powered carrier, which weighs 100,000 tons and comprises 300 million parts. Traditionally, building a ship like this might require 30 million to 40 million man-hours. But that’s changing.

Digital transformation has upended the ship building business, said Bharat Amin, VP and chief information officer at Newport News Shipbuilding, on stage at Siemens’ Spotlight on Innovation, an annual technology conference held recently in Orlando.

“You hear about smart cities, we want to be a smart shipyard,” Amin told the audience. “Our goal is to leverage digitalization to push the knowledge to our entire value chain and supply chain.”

Organizations like Newport News Shipbuilding recognize that leveraging new and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, big data and the Internet of Things (IoT) is imperative to staying competitive. According to Gartner, more than 80% of all senior executives have a digital initiative underway, with spending on digital transformation technologies topping $1.2 trillion. Spotlight on Innovation illuminated the ways Siemens is on the vanguard of this movement. As a top ten global software provider, Siemens is supporting companies and organizations across different sectors by supplying them with revolutionary solutions to help steer their digital journeys.

“Siemens now is at a moment where we’re exploring a new frontier as we bring together the physical world and the digital,” Siemens USA CEO Barbara Humpton said in her keynote address. “The capabilities we bring to the table are actually helping [our partners] make real their vision for the future.”

The promise and peril of digital transformation

One of those partners is the city playing host to the conference. Under Mayor Buddy Dyer’s leadership, Orlando has made the ambitious pledge to transition to 100 percent renewable energy by 2050. When asked during the conference about his motivations, Dyer cited moral obligations to the environment as one factor, but also acknowledged an economic development strategy.

“Cities now compete for talent,” he said. “The young, talented youths want to live in a city that is environmentally sensitive, that provides them different opportunities and mobility.… So, we’ve set a lot of goals and we want to be measured.”

To help implement its bold green agenda, Orlando partnered with Siemens to leverage the City Performance Tool (CyPT). The software analyzes hundreds of data inputs across various sectors—such as building energy use and travel patterns—to determine which infrastructure technologies need to be prioritized to meet the city’s goals. The analyses will serve as a resource for the city to help shape its sustainability approach.

Of course, the opportunities of digital transformation come with challenges. Organizations are having to contend with the growing threat of hacking, particularly on IoT devices. In fact, cyberattacks targeting these devices were up 600 percent in 2017, according to Symantec.

Company managers often don’t understand the danger posed to businesses by these “faceless” IoT devices, explained Mike Wiacek, cofounder and chief security officer at cybersecurity firm Chronicle, whose parent company, Alphabet, also includes Google.

“IoT devices have IP addresses, have logins, and are often connected to other critical systems, as well as IT networks. However, few organizations have the visibility necessary to detect threats within their IoT networks,” Wiacek said.

The threat is particularly acute in industrial settings, where IT systems become increasingly interconnected to the operational technologies (OT), hardware and software that control physical devices. “The reality is that industrial assets were never designed with security in mind. Digital was simply bolted on top,” says Leo Simonovich, VP of global industrial cyber and digital security for Siemens USA.

To solve for this, Chronicle and Siemens teamed up to launch a new cybersecurity product for the industrial space that creates a bridge between IT and OT. Powered by Chronicle’s Backstory platform and leveraging Siemens’s strength in industrial cyber security, the groundbreaking offering gives customers the ability to identify potential cyber threats through the application of AI, machine learning and data analytics tools.

At its core, Backstory works by allowing customers to upload huge volumes of network security data to be stored and indexed in the cloud. That information then gets instantly analyzed to detect any malicious network activity.

Simonovich believes the partnership will provide customers with “unparalleled visibility” across IT and OT. “The combination of Chronicle technology and Siemens’s know-how and service footprint means that we will not only be able to detect anomalies, but also provide customers with context and give them the confidence to take action,” he said.

“Business-to-society” is more than a buzzword

Newport News Shipbuilding also had its customers in mind when, in 2017, the company launched its integrated smart shipyard environment.

“The ability to deliver our products to Navy at a higher quality, lower cost, and quicker pace was one big driving factor [for digital transformation],” said Amin.

The foundation of the digital shipyard is Siemens’s Teamcenter software, a project management system that connects Newport News’ sprawling organization, centralizing everything from maintenance logs to design blueprints. The company is also using Siemens’s NX design software. The program creates a “digital twin” or virtual version of each ship, which enables company operators to run advanced simulations that can help optimize designs. Once the ships are at sea, their digital twins can also assist sailors in addressing serious malfunctions.

For Siemens, these types of collaborations speak to the organization’s larger outlook of being what Humpton calls a “business-to-society” company. “The real power of the technology we’re working with today is not about the technical gee-whiz gagdets. It’s about how accessible it is and how it levels the playing field,” she said. “Technology helps us to create space where human ideas can take flight. It helps empower us to bring about positive change in the world.”

That mission has spurred the company to pledge billions of dollars in grants to train a new class of workers for next-gen manufacturing positions and invest $1.4 billion annually in research and development. The ripple effects of these commitments have led to $5.5 billion in exports across the country, further driving job creation and economic growth. Siemens itself employs 50,000 people in the U.S. alone.

But while innovation can add countless value to the way we conduct business, there are still those who fear that too much automation will make the need for human workers obsolete. That’s far from the truth, Humpton reassured attendees at Spotlight on Innovation.

Take Newport News Shipbuilding, for example. Even as the shipyard undergoes a complete digital transformation, the industry still needs people to manufacture the ships. Technology is just a tool that helps shipbuilders deliver their products faster.

“From the time a human first picked up a rock and used it as a tool, tools have expanded what’s humanly possible,” said Humpton. “The rock didn’t take over the job from the human, it just made things faster, or better. What we’re capable of doing with augmented intelligence and robotics is like a new tool that is elevating the role of the human.”

View videos from Spotlight on Innovation to learn more.

This content is paid for by an advertiser and published by WP BrandStudio. The Washington Post newsroom was not involved in the creation of this content. Learn more about WP BrandStudio.