Audience Opinion Piece

Can you introduce yourself by telling us abit about yourself, your role and experience?

Sure, Brian Perlstein, Digital Manufacturing Innovation Leader with Owens Corning. I have been with the company for six years and I would describe my role as that of a pragmatic disruptor, aiding Owens Corning in identifying the right digital capabilities to address scalable business opportunities.

Leveraging my nearly 30 years of experience in both information technology and business operations, I help my business partners to think differently about how they go about solving business challenges, and then look to identify if they can be solved with existing in-house capabilities or if we should explore new technologies. Ultimately, my goal is to help the organization deliver operational excellence by helping to foster a culture of innovation and collaboration across our teams and help eliminate the knowledge silos that exist in our operations.

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Where would you say Owens Corning is at within its digital transformation journey and which technologies have been key to advancing the business?

I would say Owens Corning is well on its way through the journey. This journey is about transforming not what we make, but how we make it. It’s about adding value to what our people do, creating capacity to make sure that they can do the work that adds value, and eliminating the upset conditions that put our employees at risk. I know you are asking about technologies but let’s start with the outcomes that are driving our success. Let me give you some examples:

·       Ensuring operational transparency, which allows us to see problems that we couldn’t see before by making data available to explore in new ways and leveraging the right tools to solve problems.

·       Rethinking how we onboard, train, and qualify our operations teams by bringing training into the flow of work. This is done through various initiatives such as rethinking how we interact with our employees from day 0 and throughout their career with OC. From a solution standpoint, it means improving knowledge capture and consumption capabilities and ensuring that they have access to this when they need it, where they need it, and in a way that they can easily consume it.

These examples are critical to helping accelerate our employees' decision-making processes and enhance the overall efficiency of our operations. Within the manufacturing industry, digital transformation is fundamentally about operational transformation, and our emphasis is on improving the efficiency, quality, and sustainability of our processes and products.

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How have you managed to take people along with you on the digital transformation journey and lead change?

Embarking on a digital transformation journey necessitates a blend of empathy, comprehensive change management, and unwavering leadership engagement to foster the trust essential to delivering successful outcomes. Beginning with empathy, as a leader, you must acknowledge that digital transformation can be intimidating, scary, and carry a significant emotional weight for people. Employees may harbor fears about job security or losing their opportunity to be seen as the expert. As leaders, it is imperative to exhibit empathy by recognizing this and maintaining open lines of communication, attentively listening to concerns, and demonstrating that we are genuinely responsive.

Change management is pivotal in achieving and sustaining alignment throughout the initiative. It starts with articulating the vision, goals, and objectives, and the anticipated value of the transformation, especially in the flow of work. Next is making sure there is continuous communication, involving employees in the transformation journey, providing necessary training, and nurturing a culture receptive to change.

Lastly, leadership engagement. As leaders, we need to show alignment and be champions, not just on day one, but throughout the whole journey.

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What have been the biggest challenges you've faced when leading tech-led innovation?

That question right there alludes to the problem itself. You cannot lead with technology. It always starts with people, the process, then applying the right technology. If you lead with technology, you are bound to fail.

Simon Sinek had a great example from Apple in his “Start With Why” book.

“With everything we do, we aim to challenge the status quo. We aim to think differently. Our products are user-friendly, beautifully designed, and easy to use. We just happen to make great computers. Want to buy one?"

They did not start with technology, they started with wanting to change how people get things done. Then they talk about making sure that what they come up with is user-friendly, looks good, and is easy to use. Lastly, they end with the tech, “We just happen to make great computers.”

If you start with tech, you will be bound to start looking for reasons to use it which is akin to trying to put a square peg in a round hole, and it will more than likely lead to pilot purgatory and failure.

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Which technologies do you think manufacturers need to pay attention to and explore over the next few years?

The area that I think people need to pay attention to and explore is AI and how if used properly it can be a true accelerator for transforming industrial companies. This is not just LLMs like ChatGPT or MS Copilot, you have to think further out and prevent your organization from just checking the box. This is about thinking more broadly about improving interactions across systems, and shaping the outcomes using reasoning engines and agency, concepts spoken about by thought leaders such as Mike Carroll and Ron Norris from Georgia Pacific, that will transform business processes and how companies operate.

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What initially drew you to participate in the MX.0 Midwest event and why are you looking forward to attending?

There are a few things that interested me while engaging in the MX.0 Midwest conference. First is the list of industry experts speaking at the event. Second, is the opportunity to network with industry leaders, in particular ones from this region, and lastly tying it all together is learning, and hearing how others are making their way through the journey.

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