How Northrop Grumman Gets the Right People Involved with Digital Transformation
Key Highlights
- Managing people during a digital transformation is more challenging that managing the technology.
- Eagerness to learn is just as important as existing skills for transformation team members.
- Don't stay so focused on the goal that you aren't listening to feedback.
- Make your cybersecurity team part of the process, not just gatekeepers.
- Where AR and VR shine in manufacturing.
Ignoring the actual technical challenges and complexity behind them, every major digital transformation project has two massive challenges – winning funding from your organization and getting people to enthusiastically use the new systems.
Oscar Castillo, digital transformation expert and a 21-year technology veteran with aerospace and defense giant Northrop Grumman, says keeping both of those constituencies in mind during the planning and execution of big projects is the key to successful implementation.
Technology can improve OEE and quality among other KPIs but becomes irrelevant if you can’t successfully manage the people involved.
“Along the way you’ll hit a roadblock and reach out to the expert in the field. … But for most of our work, it wasn’t like that. It was good people skills, dedication to growing and learning and then really leveraging our partners, whether it be the cybersecurity team, the IT team, vendors…the change management is 100% the hardest part,” Castillo says.
The Right Team for the Right Project
In 2019, Castillo began a digital signage project to cover Northrop Grumman’s entire Redondo Beach, California, facility, including all the manufacturing labs, to provide single-source-of-truth data reporting.
“We wanted to bring data-driven dashboards that really provided the production floor with insight and actionable information,” Castillo says. “We wanted to do away with slinging PowerPoint slides, using a thumb drive, all over the factory.”
He kept his team small, preferably never more than 10 people, in part because of leadership and funding change. Castillo doesn’t risk his projects looking like dead weight. The smaller the footprint, the better.
While interest in data visualization and databases obviously mattered, Castillo also looked for creatives.
“That's very important when we came to building these dashboards that not only communicated information, but did it in a beautiful way, made it attractive and easy for people to get to the information they needed,” Castillo says.
He also didn’t focus on making sure his team already had the requisite knowledge. Ability and desire to learn were more important.
“I’m going to say this in a loving way. They were naively ambitious. They didn’t think there was a limitation on what they could learn. So they went online, they talked to vendors, they read articles, watched videos, and they got smart. Honestly, I think that’s the right attitude, because a lot of what we were doing here we haven’t done before,” Castillo says.
Cybersecurity Experts Are Your Friends
It’s easy to write the cybersecurity department off as “the group that says no,” says Castillo, but he feels you need to approach cybersecurity with humility and not assume you understand their constraints.
“I don’t think we always appreciate that their responsibility is huge. When I read the news and I hear about companies essentially being held hostage, like their whole plant being shut down for a month…that’s terrifying,” Castillo says.
Instead of letting the cybersecurity team an adversary, Castillo approaches them with an open mind, asking questions and earning trust as he learns about their constraints and what they’re protecting against. He also preaches resilience when dealing with cybersecurity experts.
“In the beginning, everybody says no. The easy answer is no. You can politely accept it or ask why? What are the elements here that make this a no? Address each one of those elements, come back with your mitigation strategy, your [options] that address that problem. Get them in the mode of solutioning, rather than just the gatekeeper,” Castillo says.
Now, when Castillo joins a call with a vendor, he knows the cybersecurity questions to ask before bringing the cybersecurity team into the process.
“So now [the cybersecurity team] knows I’m not trying to sneak anything by. Instead, I’m asking all the questions they’re going to ask and that reduces the amount of non-starters that they have to deal with,” Castillo says.
Excuse Me, Could You Give Me Your Data?
Demonstrating value at the beginning of the project was “scrappy.” His team didn’t have boards. They had computer monitors. They didn’t have small form factor computers. They had old desktop computers with hulking towers. And they didn’t have captured data to display.
The best Castillo could do at the very beginning was load screens onto the monitors to demonstrate how the dashboards might look and what sort of information they might convey.
The signage project came soon after Northrop Grumman had finished plant upgrades at a facility meant to be a high point of the entire campus, “a place for generals to tour.” Castillo wanted sleek monitors and mini-computers to showcase the signage project. Instead, he had to hide bulky PC towers behind desk plants.
“We didn’t have the funding to get this off the ground. I still wanted to demonstrate value as we went. We didn’t have a server up and running. We had a hidden computer and it would be our own little mini network…anything to get the vision across. Our leaders knew this wasn’t real. I would be upfront and say this isn’t connected yet, but it could be.”
Castillo took advantage of every opportunity to team up with others working on data-driven projects, such as capturing data from older machines not built for connectivity. Managers wanted something better than word of mouth to inform them of machine status, precisely the sort of information the digital signage project was designed to share.
When he heard about an initiative to install environmental sensors across the production floor, Castillo added capturing and sharing this information as part of the scope of his project. He likewise attached his project to an asset management initiative.
Where AR and VR Shine
Castillo also helped stand up a VR lab where people could experiment with the technology.
“This one was near and dear to my heart. Even before 2019, I’ve been exploring this, doing my own trainings, boot camps…in my eyes there’s a huge potential to really revolutionize how we put things together,” Castillo says. For instance, using VR to explore design for manufacturing and ergonomic principles.
He also led the AR project for the Redondo Beach campus.
“The AR is different. It’s in the production phase. In that case we’re using AR as a tool to bring the CAD model to life, projecting elements of the CAD model right on the work product to provide insight,” Castillo says.
“What I really love about it, though, is that we have a vehicle to deliver some of the tribal knowledge that doesn’t get captured in a drawing. We have a multimedia deliver vehicle to get all of that into the technician’s mind. It could be a photo from past builds. It could be a quick video tutorial. … [Junior technicians] become much more proficient, close to an expert level, not completely, but they approach that much more quickly.”
Remember That You Have Two Customers
Castillo always reminds himself that he has two constituents, those who fund the project and those who use the project. Dealing with the first group is more challenging because it’s not always easy at the very beginning to concretely cite costs and potential ROI.
“The easy answer is always going to be no, especially in the beginning. … [when] it’s an uphill battle all the way. Identifying a leader who trusts that you can get [a project] across the finish line…even thought they couldn’t prove it in numbers, they see the advantage,” Castillo says.
“And not all technology is the same. Some tech you can easily show ROI but other technology, like the digital signage system…very difficult to measure the impact much, let alone the return on investment. Very much a challenge.”
Dealing with the people that use a project is much easier as long as you remain agile.
“I bring that up because part of that agile mindset is to not only be value focused…but also to bring results early, not wait until the very end to show the results of your work and be well surprised when people aren’t happy with what you delivered. But continually share with them your progress, to get feedback,” Castillo says.
Castillo recommends that anyone working on digital transformation initiatives should not blindly march toward an end goal but continually get feedback to make sure they solve the right problem.
“When we were off track, we would hear about it right in our sprint demos…we would take those demos to the floor, get feedback, and the next time they see the demo [operators] see their comments incorporated and their eyes light up like ‘You did that. You were listening.’”
About the Author
Dennis Scimeca
Dennis Scimeca is a veteran technology journalist with particular experience in vision system technology, machine learning/artificial intelligence, and augmented/mixed/virtual reality (XR), with bylines in consumer, developer, and B2B outlets.
At IndustryWeek, he covers the competitive advantages gained by manufacturers that deploy proven technologies. If you would like to share your story with IndustryWeek, please contact Dennis at [email protected].