Business Process Digitalization as a Resolution Directions for Digital Operations Challenges in Industry 4.0 and Digital Supply Networks

Abstract

Supply chain maturity models urge increased collaboration among supply chain participants to achieve sustained competitive advantage through operational end-to-end visibility and transparency. Industry 4.0 solutions provide the tools and technologies to enable Digital Supply Networks through inter-connectivity among supply network partners. Business Processes Orchestration across functional silos and organizations, leveraged by data integration and IT systems connectivity, is referred to as “Digital Operations”. A major challenge in improving digitalized operations is the divergence between existing ‘official’ business processes maps and accountabilities, and the ‘de facto’ executed business processes. During business processes optimization and IT systems enhancements, this mismatch between documented vs. tribal business processes results often in inefficient, ineffective, and if not addressed early, infeasible digital solutions. In this paper, the authors outline the challenges and identify some of their root-causes by discussing possible resolution directions in the dimensions of organizational change management (involving the end-users), IT systems gaps (when implementing composable apps to bridge these), and the establishment of common datasets for digital operations and business process mining applications (like digital twins).