Coats

Matthew Stockwin

AGA was a large gas company based in Stockholm that was purchased by Linde in the late 1990’s. In the early 1990s, they built the world’s first ever fully automated cylinder filling plant. At today’s prices, this would have cost over 42M EUR. Yet these guys had vision. They knew the process inside and out; and before transforming their cylinder filling they realised they need to standardize the cylinder valve. The valve is the essential component for getting gas into, and out of the cylinder. They started working on the valves some years before. It was all part of their vision. They also realised that employing skilled people in the production plant – those who could maintain and improve the computer system – was the way forward; these people will occupy the “critical roles” for the future.

Linde Group began their race to automation in cylinder filling in 2012; and succeeded in building two different (but in some way aligned) plants in Germany and Australia. Various parts of these designs have been copied and deployed in the Nordics and in France. The interesting thing is—standardisation of the automation was not possible because there was no such vision like there was in AGA to start the journey some years prior and to realize that the key to the project was the valve. Yet what was also key—was the vision of the CEO, at the time Wolfgang Reitzle. He was absolutely determined that Linde should find a way to do it; and they did. The company responded positively, meeting the will expressed by the CEO. The challenge he gave the company required it to ask fundamental questions of its process, such as – where is the complexity, what makes business sense to automate and what does not.

"We need a vision for the company when taking bold steps to transform our operations. We need a keen eye on financial reality as well, but without vision we will not ask of ourselves the right questions."

In other industries – for example Textiles – the “moonshot” project would be to find a machine that winds thread onto a cone, and subsequently packing it into a box without requiring human effort. This is the equivalent of putting a person on the moon. Yet that part is extremely complex and is likely to be very expensive. Hence more likely is a plethora of projects that strive towards it but do not quite reach it.

I am a keen reader of HBR and this is the start of an article that I really like, taken from page 2 of “AI, Analytics and New Machine Age” and it reads: “in a study of 152 moonshot projects in almost as many companies reveals that highly ambitious moon shots are less likely to be successful than “low hanging fruit” projects that enhance business processes.”

Of that I have no doubt. However, that is financial success. Ask yourself—are we likely to achieve more success when we challenge the fundamentals of what we do, then work out what parts of it are possible and which are not, than remaining without the big vision and making steadfast but incremental improvements.