POWER March 2020 - 6

SPEAKING OF POWER
Digital Transformation:
Lessons from a Leader
Aaron Larson
s your company's information technology
(IT) department your friend or
your enemy? Does it work with you
to identify, evaluate, and select the best
new digital technology to make your job
easier and your plant more efficient, or
does it dictate what new solutions will
be implemented with minimal input from
people in the field? Does it help you find
the resources needed to implement
state-of-the-art processes or is it a black
hole where hardware and software requests
go to die?
If you're not getting the service you
I
desire from your IT department, perhaps
your company could learn something
from Dow. Yes, I know it's a
chemical company-or as it now calls
itself, a material science company-but
some of the lessons it has learned since
2016 while integrating digital technology
into its operations could apply to power
companies too.
Bringing IT and OT Together
Melanie Kalmar, corporate vice president,
Chief Information Officer, and
Chief Digital Officer with Dow, and Peter
Holicki, Dow's senior vice president of
Manufacturing and Engineering and Environment,
Health & Safety Operations,
took the stage together at the ARC Industry
Forum in Orlando, Florida, on Feb.
4 to explain how they have built a winning
digital team. The two leaders said Dow
has gone through a real transformation.
They claim the company has brought IT
and OT (operational technology) together
to collaborate on digital solutions, and it
sounds like a successful pairing.
" Clearly, it didn't make any sense for
us to work separately, " Kalmar said. " The
manufacturing
organization has deep
knowledge and expertise. The IT organization
has deep knowledge and expertise.
We really needed to break down the
silos between the two organizations to
bring the deep knowledge and expertise
together. We have so much to learn and
leverage that it made a lot of sense to
bring the two organizations together to
work together. "
6
Kalmar acknowledged that there are
fundamental differences between IT
and OT. Personnel in the IT department
can typically take an enterprise-wide approach
and develop capabilities that fit a
majority of the business-side functions-
what she called " one-size-fits-most " solutions.
On the other hand, operations
personnel must often take a more customized
approach, looking for solutions
that fit site-specific needs.
Holicki noted that the two groups
often speak different languages. " We
speak a manufacturing lingo, operations
lingo. [The IT group] speaks binary
code-very hard sometimes for us to digest, "
he said.
But the two groups also have common
ground. At Dow, Kalmar said, both
organizations were focused on delivering
safety, reliability, and a better customer
and employee experience through digital
technology. Both of their teams also had
a passion for creating something new
and they were very eager to be pioneers.
The leaders knew they needed to develop
a culture that would help make the
partnership successful. They understood
trust would be a key component. The collaboration
was unlikely to be successful
if the combined group wasn't willing to
try new things together, and even make
mistakes
together,
without worrying
about finger-pointing.
" We made it very clear that working
together was the new paradigm and that
working in silos would no longer be accepted, "
said Holicki.
A Platform for Innovation
To spur innovation, Dow invested heavily
in a new Digital Operations Center
(DOC), which is located in Houston,
Texas. Kalmar said the DOC is really the
company's " think tank " for the development
and piloting of digital solutions
for work within Dow's manufacturing
fence line. She said the initiative was a
" first-of-its-kind partnership " between
operations and IT. But the company
didn't stop there; it also brought in supply
chain logistics and process R&D
(research and development) groups to
www.powermag.com
enhance the collaboration.
" We thought, if we need to deliver
capabilities that connect across our
sites, why not bring together the expertise
across all of those functions, so we
could look end-to-end, " Kalmar said. " I
think the mindset we had was: Let's put
the facility in place and provide the room
that we can bring all the right people
with all the right skills together. "
Billy Bardin, Dow's director of Global
Operations Technology, who was a panelist
in another session at the ARC event,
agreed that collaboration among departments
is important. " You have to have
both your IT organization backing you
with the infrastructure and the knowledge
of how to deploy that accurately,
and you have to have the operations and
production organization being, first, willing
to accept that technology, but also
understand how it changes the work
process. And so, both of those elements
are required, " he said.
Adding Value
But Holicki was quick to point out that
not everything that can be done, should
be done. " One thing that's very important
is to have a value case, " he said. " If
it doesn't create value for your company,
why would you pursue it? "
And when it comes to cost, Holicki
said there is no limit to what could be
spent in the digital space. " Literally,
there is no limit, " he said to emphasize
the point. " So, you need to have a strategy,
and you have to have an underlying
value proposition that really harnesses
your willingness and the willingness of
your people to spend money. "
Kalmar would do some things differently,
if she had it to do over again. " I
would have sent my teams out into operations
a lot sooner, " she said. " Clearly,
there's nothing like seeing what's going
on with your own eyes to really help you
better understand and internalize the differences
and challenges-and the opportunities-that
are out there to work
together on. " ■
-Aaron Larson is POWER's
executive editor.
POWER | March 2020
http://www.powermag.com
POWER March 2020

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