ARC’s Asia Forum explored accelerating Digital Transformation and Sustainability
The online annual ARC Industry Forum Asia titled Accelerating Industrial Digital Transformation and Sustainability on July 12-14, 2022, saw registrations of 1,600+ delegates for the two language tracks – Japanese and English.
Coordination between ARC’s India, Japan, China and SEA teams ensured the success of the online Asia Forum that featured 70+ executive speakers from several industries to share their experiences in digital transformation, future automation architectures, sustainability initiatives, industrial cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and asset performance management.
This three-day virtual forum provided end users, solution providers, and decision makers an opportunity to learn from each other and get an overall view of the fluctuating and unpredictable market requirements. In recent years, the theme across all ARC global forums has been digital transformation and sustainability.
The pandemic has given birth to new ways of thinking, communicating, and collaborating globally. While technology has opened new doors of opportunity, it is clear that organizations that do not adapt with agility to the accelerating pace of change will become extinct.
The welcome address by G. Ganapathiraman, Vice President and General Manager, ARC Advisory Group, India set the tenor for each day’s presentations in the English track. Parallelly, Chiaki Itoh, Senior Director, ARC Advisory Group, Japan made the welcome address in the Japanese track. After each presentation there were brief Q&A sessions.
The Presentations
Digital transformation can provide the pathway to success for industrial and infrastructure organizations. Failure to transform is likely to undermine the future viability of the organization. Digital transformation is a whole new way of doing business, supporting customers, leveraging the available services, and adapting to a changed business environment. Customer relationships have become more dynamic.
The growing demand for sustainable products and services coupled with regulatory mandates have made sustainability a vital component of organizational strategy. Technology must be in tune with environmental, economic, and social concerns.
What is needed is a clear direction to proceed forward. It is important to understand that there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach. The speakers advocated a step-by-step approach:
- Assess the organization’s appetite and ability to support digital transformation.
- Strategy should be linked to ground reality.
- Account for the human element in digital transformation.
The turbulence of the past two years has altered market demand more abruptly than any single event that we have ever witnessed, impacting all stakeholders in the value chain. Manufacturers have been forced to deal with this new reality, running their operations and control systems remotely. New work models have emerged: work from home and hybrid.
Topics such as open platforms and interoperability, the importance of global standards, legacy system migration, industrial cybersecurity, and sustainability initiatives were highlighted. The attendees garnered information and best practices from the early adopters and understood the pain points along the way.
The interactive Q&A sessions cleared doubts about how new technologies can be deployed in a responsible and sustainable manner.
Forum Sponsors
The success of the online Forum was largely due to the support of industry sponsors, and they in turn were happy to virtually meet and interact with a global audience:
- Sponsors: Platinum Sponsors: ABB, Chiyoda Corporation, Emerson, Hexagon
- Global Sponsor: Siemens
- Gold Sponsors: TXOne Networks, Yokogawa
- Silver Sponsors: Andritz, AVEVA, Claroty, Fortinet, Seeq, Supcon, UniversalAutomation.org
Media Sponsors
Automation-news.jp, Chemical Engineering World, Chemical Industry Digest, Chemical Today, electronicspecifier.com, ENN-net Engineering Network, Highways.Today, IED Communications, Industrial Automation, Industrial Automation Asia, ice-keiso.co.jp, PharmaBio World, World of Chemicals
The session videos will be available till August 13th for you to watch at your convenience. We encourage you and your colleagues to login or register and watch the recordings on the vfairs platform: ARC Asia Forum 2022. The documents and video links are also available at the sponsor booths.
