Resetting the cost
base
·
Technology
is creating opportunities and threats for the supplies of traditional
industries from utilities to pulp and paper to construction.
Counting on a gradual pace of change, established industries have long been
cautious in adopting or responding to advancing technologies. That posture is
starting to shift in three industries, as this package will show. In the
electric-power industry, battery improvements are bringing down storage costs
faster than expected, allowing customers to “defect” from grids—with disruptive
consequences—but also offering utilities a chance to defer major investment in
new capacity. In pulp and paper, data analytics and artificial-intelligence
applications are opening surprising operational improvements across new and
existing plants—areas where veterans assumed gains were foreclosed. And in
engineering and construction, a new crop of start-ups deploying robust mobile
apps and GPS monitoring are improving managers’ efforts in the field and lowering
costs, pushing digital benefits far beyond the back office.
1. UTILITIES INDUSTRY
Will batteries disrupt the utilities industry?
A rapid decline in
storage prices encourages customers to produce a greater share of their own
power, partially “defecting” from the grid.
Cheap solar energy is already a challenge to utilities. But cheap storage will be even more disruptive,
raising the prospect that individual and business customers will bypass
traditional suppliers for greater parts of their consumption.
Storage prices are dropping much faster than anyone expected—battery costs in
2016 were one-quarter of what they were in 2010. In this new world of low-cost
storage, solar users can stay connected to the grid in order to have 24/7 access
but rarely have to use or pay for energy, instead using stored energy, which
helps dramatically reduce their utility bills. So-called partial grid defection
reduces demand for power provided by utilities (because consumers are making
their own energy) and likely increases rates for those who remain (because
there is less consumption to cover fixed grid costs). This is already happening
in places where electricity is expensive and solar is widely available, such as
Australia and Hawaii. On the horizon are other solar-friendly markets such as
Arizona, California, Nevada, and New York.
Storage, though, can
also benefit utilities in markets where loads are expected to be flat or
falling. In some US states, for example, utilities can earn returns by
providing contracts for distributed energy resources. This would, among other
things, allow them to defer expensive new investments.
The future of storage
is a matter of balance. The ideal would be a regulatory system that strives to
balance the desire for a healthy storage market and greater freedom for
customers to manage their own energy requirements against the need to ensure
the economic sustainability of the utilities and access to electricity
service for all customers. Getting
this right will be tricky, and no doubt there will be missteps along the way.
But there is also no doubt that storage’s time is coming.
2. PULP AND PAPER INDUSTRY
Pulp and paper: Where digital help far outweighs the hurt
While the industry’s
prospects vary by product and region, digital offers opportunities across the
board to improve costs—and capture new growth.
With the strong tide pulling readers away from
paper to digital modes of communication, it’s no surprise that paper demand has
suffered. But for the paper and forest-products industry overall, digital is giving as well as taking away. Most conspicuously,
ever-increasing online purchasing is generating new sales of fiber-based
transport packaging. Less visibly, digital technologies are driving
across-the-board opportunities to improve efficiency throughout the value
chain.
Paper and board
producers already collect a lot of data, and companies that are able to apply advanced
analytics and artificial intelligence to it can learn how to better run their plants.
Improvements include predictive maintenance, which helps keep machinery
running, as well as more stable production processes, which in turn lead to
lower consumption of energy and bleaching chemicals. Remote process controls
for mills and other uses of automation can also reduce costs.
Our
rough estimate of the new benefits accruing from adoption of existing
technologies at the plant level for pulp and paper manufacturing—based on what
is already starting to be achieved. It also offers a cautious interpretation of
potential gains, as digital technologies evolve and are applied to new areas in plant operations.
Meanwhile, digital has potential elsewhere in the industry. In forestry, drones
are already boosting the precision with which tree growth is monitored,
harvesting decisions are made, and logging crews are deployed. Downstream,
there are new product-development opportunities, for example, in packaging that
can be better traced or that incorporates new security features. Digital also
opens the potential for more efficient customer interactions and even direct
B2C relationships between paper-product makers and end consumers, for example,
in tissue products.
While opportunities
exist across the technology spectrum, perhaps unsurprisingly, data-intensive
applications involving artificial intelligence and advanced analytics offer the
biggest opportunities for gains.
3.ENGINEERING AND CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY
A digital upgrade for engineering and construction
Construction-technology
start-ups are helping the industry tackle long-standing productivity problems.
Engineering and
construction companies
have struggled with low productivity for decades. But digital solutions, many developed
by specialized technology start-ups, are helping the industry identify and
extract new sources of value.
To better understand
the evolving productivity landscape, we examined the products of more than
1,000 construction-software start-ups (representing $10 billion in investment
funding) between 2011 and 2017. Those start-ups have brought to market
thousands of innovative project tools, whose capabilities include everything from improved
quality control to predictive analytics. New ones are emerging all the time,
and the mix of capabilities on offer appears to be changing.
Overall, the
preponderance of tools created by these companies has been for the construction
phase, with far fewer aimed at design, preconstruction, operations, or
management. Many start-ups have focused on basic collaboration tools that
compile or share project information (such as document-management solutions) or
core back-office digitization (such as enterprise-resource-planning systems).
The priorities of newer
start-ups—those actually founded in the last five years—suggest digital
productivity opportunities are becoming richer. Almost 30 percent of those
companies offer on-site performance-management and field-productivity tools.
Quality-control tools, including GPS and images to monitor sites, also ranked
high: 27 percent of recent start-ups offer them. More advanced tools
are in demand, including predictive analytics to help manage projects, the use
of drones and the Internet of Things for monitoring, and wearable and
virtual-reality technologies to improve safety.
With productivity
within the construction sector about half that of the total economy, digital
solutions alone will not close the gap. But as the range of digital possibilities grows, the importance of engaging with
the start-ups offering them will, too.
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/digital-mckinsey/our-insights/resetting-the-cost-base?cid=other-eml-alt-mkq-mck-oth-1803&hlkid=a74b9ba7bc8e4975be5e6deefa4acc5e&hctky=1627601&hdpid=9b81e422-d38e-4e99-8250-26e9e1e90d01
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