Leaders' Blog

“Embed your digital adoption and process adherence into your company’s performance production system”

— Andrew Faulkner, Tools, Process and Planning Manager - Alstom

For manufacturers, disruption is no longer an occasional challenge. From supply chain instability and changing demand to geopolitical events and logistics delays, organisations are increasingly having to maintain operational excellence in an environment of constant uncertainty.

Ahead of Manufacturing Leaders’ Summit in November, Andrew Faulkner of Alstom Group shared how manufacturers can build greater resilience and responsiveness by embedding continuous improvement into everyday operations.

His approach centres on five key priorities: strengthening execution discipline, increasing supply chain resilience, establishing digital continuity, building trust in data, and using technologies such as data mining and AI to support better decision-making.

A central theme is moving away from firefighting. Rather than focusing on activity, manufacturers should focus on exceptions – identifying where processes deviate from the expected standard and responding as early as possible. The objective is simple: detect issues sooner, act faster and minimise their impact.

Standardisation also has an important role to play. Establishing a core set of tools and ways of working across sites allows organisations to share learning, replicate best practice and respond more consistently to disruption.

Digital adoption can also be embedded directly into operational performance systems. At Alstom, data mining and AI are used to generate a digital adoption score as part of the company’s manufacturing performance framework, providing an objective measure of how effectively digital processes are being followed.

Planning is another area where greater resilience can be created. Moving away from periodic forecasting towards integrated, end-to-end planning enables manufacturers to incorporate real-world events into their scenarios. For example, logistics data can be integrated directly into core business systems, allowing shipping delays and changing lead times to feed into forecasts and production planning.

This creates greater visibility for both manufacturers and suppliers, supporting real-time demand and capacity planning while helping teams identify risks and constraints earlier.

Ultimately, operational excellence in a disrupted world requires organisations to become more proactive, connected and data-driven – turning disruption from a constant source of firefighting into an opportunity for faster, smarter decision-making.

Andrew Faulkner

Tools, Process and Planning Manager, Alstom