Asia Pacific manufacturing companies are championing the digitization and end-to-end integration of their operations, introducing digital products and services and connecting new technologies across their organizations at a much faster rate than their peers in the Americas and EMEA. This gap will continue to widen, as 32% of Asian companies plan to have established mature digital ecosystems in the next five years, compared to 24% in the Americas and 15% in EMEA.

For its report, Digital Champions: How industry leaders build integrated operations ecosystems to deliver end-to-end customer solutions, PwC’s Strategy& surveyed 1,155 executives at global manufacturing companies in 26 countries and asked them about their views on Industry 4.0. and digital operations. Based on the outcomes, PwC developed a digital maturity index to explore the role of frontrunners – the so-called ‘Digital Champions’ – and what distinguishes them to outpace their competitors.

Key Findings

• 10% of global manufacturing companies are Digital Champions, while almost two-thirds have barely or not yet begun on the digital journey
• Asia Pacific is leading the way to digitization, where 19% of manufacturers have achieved Digital Champion status, compared to 11% in the Americas and 5% of companies in EMEA
• Automotive (20%) and Electronics (14%) have the largest share of Digital Champions. Consumer goods (6%), Industrial manufacturing (6%) and Process industries (6%) are lagging significantly behind
• Global manufacturing companies are applying new technologies to their operations at a large scale, but artificial intelligence is just kicking off
• Two-thirds of all companies don’t have a clear digital vision and strategy to support digital transformation and culture

While Industry 4.0 is transforming manufacturing rapidly, only a small group of companies are in a position to gain real competitive advantages from this operations revolution. In PwC’s Strategy& Global Digital Operations Study 2018 only 10% of global manufacturing companies are dubbed as Digital Champions. These companies view digitization in ways that are far-reaching and aggressively innovative, well beyond mere automation and networking.

In the report, 19% of the manufacturers from Asia have achieved the Digital Champion status, compared to 11% in the Americas and 5% of companies in EMEA. It seems like the region’s young and tech-savvy corporate managers who are embracing digital technologies, as well as soaring compensation and production costs, have pushed manufacturing companies in Asia Pacific to digitize their key operations processes at a much faster rate than elsewhere in the world.