Adapt, Innovate, Thrive: African Manufacturing's Resilience Journey with Autodesk's Digital Disruptors

DANEEL BALLARAM: Hi, everyone, and welcome to the session. My name is Daneel and today's title of the session is Adapt, Innovate, and Thrive: Africa's Manufacturing Resilience Journey with Autodesk Digital Disruptors. So I'm going to jump into the agenda very quickly.

Firstly, there's an introduction. We look at Africa as a continent. We look at manufacturing in Africa and some stats in here, just to give you a bit of context into the details that we're going to cover. And then it gets interesting because then we go into the customer case study, where we look at three main pillars the adapt, innovate, and thrive. We look at the results of this. We look at some lessons learnt, as well as some questions and close at the end.

So to jump into it, my name is Daneel Ballaram. I'm a distinguished speaker, renowned professional trainer, and a certified Autodesk professional. I have a career spanning over a decade in the Autodesk industry and my background is mechanical engineering. I also have technical qualifications from an Autodesk perspective on data management, manufacturing, and the AEC industry.

And today, I'm going to tell you and talk to you about-- firstly, Africa, as well as a case study that we've put together for you to show you the resilience and the adaptability of the client that had transformed their business over the years using Autodesk tools and has been recognized as one of the digital disruptors of the industry that they serve.

So let's look at Africa as a whole from a manufacturing perspective to give you some content. We will look at the areas of transformation in Africa.

So Africa known-- manufacturing is known for both challenges and opportunities. And I think if you look at a challenge and you convert that into an opportunity, it's always a positive-- so with infrastructure limitations, market volatility, as well as historical challenges which hindered growth. However, from a resilience perspective, manufacturers are adapting to resource constraints and fluctuating markets. Resilience is key for thriving in a global supply chain and the global structures that the market serves.

However, digital disruption is also a thing with advancements in technologies, like Autodesk tools, that are driving this transformation, optimizing processing-- processes, reducing waste, and, of course, accelerating product development. These digital tools foster sustainable growth and innovation within the continent.

So what does the opportunity look like today? Firstly, let's have a look and see how big the continent is on its own. From a vastness perspective, the image on the right details that African continent has a land mass of just over 30,000,000 square kilometers. Translated into imperial terms, 11.7 million square miles. That's enough to fit in the US, Canada, India, Japan, Mexico, and many other European nations combined.

We have 54 countries within the continent. And as of 2024, the population looked at just over 1.5 billion people. Of course, there's over 2,000 languages in the continent. I don't know all of them, but we have a vast amount of different dialects within the continent.

From a resources perspective, we find that 90% of the world's cobalt comes from Africa. 90% of the world's platinum supply is out of Africa. 75% of the world's coltan comes out of Africa. And interestingly enough, 50% of the world's gold supply comes out of Africa.

If we go into the precious stones environment, we find that 100% of the world's tanzanites come out of Africa, specifically in a country called Tanzania. 60% of the world's diamonds come out of Africa. And, of course, 50% of the world's rubies and 40% of the world's sapphires are out of Africa.

So how does this impact us and how does how does it change our landscape? Well, it's true that these aspects exist. Africa is definitely more than what meets the eye. The reality is that Africa's a dynamic, diverse, and rapidly evolving continent. It's a hub for innovation, culture, of course, opportunity. As we explore the manufacturing landscapes here, we'll shatter some perceived notions and reveal the vibrant, forward-thinking Africa that's embracing technology and transformation.

Africa as a continent. Let's dive into some stats. So in here it's quite fascinating dynamics that we can talk about as from a population perspective. So as of 2024, we found that the consistent, staggering growth of the population now sits at just over 1.5 billion people. To put this into perspective, back in the year 2000, Africa's population stood at approximately 819 million. Subsequent increase and a substantial increase over the past two decades-- but what makes this even more intriguing is that the future outlook. Forecast suggests that Africa's population will continue to surge in the coming years with the projection that could rival the Asian population by the year 2100. Yes, you heard right. Africa's demographic landscape is poised for a transformation and transformative growth.

This dynamic and this demographic shift carries profound implications in our discussion on the manufacturing within the African continent. So where do we start looking at it? From a youth perspective, we'll delve into the topic that's not only fascinating but also keeps me feeling young at heart. So that's Africa's youth demographics.

First off, did you notice that Africa boasts the world's youngest population. This-- it's like we found the fountain of youth somewhere around the Sahara Desert. Approximately 70% of sub-Saharan African population is under 30 years old. It's a lot of energy, a lot of enthusiasm, of course, a lot of Instagram stories.

Now, why is this important? Well, it's not just about having a lot of young folk running around, although it's never a bad thing. This youthful demographic presents a golden opportunity for Africa's growth, realizing the potential that requires empowerment and inclusion. It's not enough to have a youthful population, we need to give them the tools and opportunities to thrive.

You know what they say, with great youthfulness comes great responsibility. Young people have the potential to initiate positive change and we seeing it firsthand. We're seeing the engagement in conflict resolution, driving development, and the force-- driving force behind the change in Africa. So as we talk about manufacturing in Africa, remember that it's not just about the machines and the factories, it's also about harnessing the energy and ideas of the young population.

To give you some stats and some insights, some of the major brands that you would find on the left hand side, like BMW and Mercedes, is produced out here in South Africa. We find that the BMW 3 Series and the Mercedes C-Class is produced in the South African factories and shipped for global consumption.

Lower down, you would find the logo of the company called Sasol, which is an oil and gas company and founded here in South Africa in an area called Sasolburg, now is a global enterprise that supplies petroleum as well as the diesel energy solutions for global consumption.

Now, what does that mean? How does it impact and how does it affect us from a global perspective? It affects our manufacturing in the country. So we've got the stats on the right hand side that show that the manufacturing projection is up on a trajectory and moving upward. Yes, we did have some stumbling blocks like the recent pandemic, COVID-19, which caused a bit of a dip in the numbers. However, we're finding that there is significant growth in the manufacturing sector within the continent.

Some trends. So let's talk about what's keeping CEOs of industrial companies up at night. Digital transformation is one of it. It's a buzzword of the decade. It's been around for a long time. And guess what, it's now on top of the minds of the top CEO list.

So where do we stand today? Well, as of now, around 20%-- 27% of the surveyed companies rate that their digitization level is quite high. That's a good start because it's just scratching the surface of digital transformation.

Now, here's where it gets really exciting. Looking ahead, within the next five years, we expecting digitization to level to soar to a whopping 64%. That's a digital revolution in the making.

But what's the strategic focus here? CEOs and industrial leaders are not just digitizing for the fun of it. They're focusing on essential functions within internal, vertical, and process operations within the organizations. Now it's all about driving revenue growth, operational effectiveness, strategic effectiveness, and harnessing the power of industry 4.0.

So as we delve into the digital transformation journey, keep in mind that it's not just about adopting the latest tech and trends. It's also about reshaping industries and securing a competitive edge over modern competitors.

So let's look at South Africa as an example. On the left hand side, you would see a very famous person, Nelson Mandela, known for his change that he brought about in the country when he became president. On the right hand side, that's our latest World Cup winning team that won the 2023 Rugby World Cup. And it wasn't their first World Cup, it's probably the third now that they've won. They've also rated as the number one rugby team in the world. So as you can see that-- the country has a diverse population but also diverse skill sets and strengths.

And if we look further, we've-- now that we've explored the digital transformation landscape, let's pivot to something equally exciting and inspiring. It's a remarkable buildings and infrastructure in Africa. Africa is often underestimated and its full potential overshadowed. But here's the thing, Africa's infrastructure isn't just limited to rural landscapes, as we've seen earlier. Yes, we have our challenges, but we also have world class cities that rival some of the best in the world.

So how do we get there? How do we get to having this amazing infrastructure? Well, at Baker Baynes we have a motto that we believe "we solve our customers' problems through digital transformation, helping them to design and make a better world," all by using the digital technology available from Autodesk. So that brings me to my next point, where we talk about the customer success story of today. And this comes with a great inspiration and I'm hoping it inspires you as well to understand and see how by using the right tools and the right technology, you can transform your business into a thriving-- in thriving industries of tomorrow.

So a quick introduction into them. So as we shift our focus here to the remarkable journey of our dear customer, let me set the scene for you. The company story spans over 31 years of the metallurgical processing industry that has left an incredible mark in South African manufacturing.

Founded in 1993, located in Johannesburg, South Africa, with the managing director as being one of the best metallurgical processing engineers in the world, the company has led South Africa and the industry that it serves with various industry best practices and leading technologies that's been developed in-house-- successful projects in remote areas, developing countries across Africa. So you can imagine the backdrop of the type of work that they're busy with.

The team consists of 16 engineers, 20 drawing office staff, 400 site and construction staff, three satellite offices, one head office out in Johannesburg, two warehouses, to store stock and materials that needs to be shipped to site, and, of course, one satellite workshop for specific projects that need to be attended to on emergency basis.

From a project's perspective, they provide full turnkey mineral processing and commodity solutions for customers that specialize in the gold, silver, platinum, and iron ore industries, specializing in both greenfield and brownfield projects. The services range from feasibility studies, plant upgrades, expansions, and operations and maintenance into existing plants-- of course, with over 50 successful plants constructed since 2005 across Africa, and not only in the borders of Africa, but also in Australia, Asia, and some in South America.

So let's look at how are they leading innovation. So from a project and services perspective, they offer full turnkey solutions, looking into engineering and design, procurement and construction, commissioning, and operations. They also offer a study service which conducts feasibility studies, early stage project feasibility analysis, scoping studies, also detailed feasibility analysis. And from a services specialized services, they offer modular and mobile plants. And these are ideal for remote locations or short-term projects.

From a footprint perspective, they have a global footprint in key markets. And something to be cognizant here is that this wasn't the case initially. And I will take you through the journey of how they got to that. And some of the key stakeholders are some of the global blue chip companies that you see on screen. From a technology perspective, focusing on heavy minerals separation, and advance design and fabrication techniques allow them to be innovative in the way they operate the engineering departments.

Sustainability and impact. Sustainability is always a big factor on CEOs and companies of today. Promoting innovation, reducing waste, and optimizing production is one of the key mottos.

For the discussion today, I'm going to introduce you to the strategy that they've adopted. And before we even get there, let's look at the main areas of focus.

Our main focus when dealing with the customer was looking at the engineering and design department. So to give you some context on what it looked like, firstly, it was a mechanical and piping engineering that made up part of the design team. They've also had Electrical and Instrumentation, also known as E&I. Next, we had the civil and structural engineering teams and, of course, the plant layout design teams.

Now, we do know that sometimes having multidisciplinary design teams and engineers working on similar projects or same projects is always going to be a design challenge. And this is where the areas that we focus on come into play.

So from a design challenge perspective, firstly, working on inefficient modeling tools. The second challenge is-- that was noted was no data management and document data control. And, of course, with data management, the next thing comes the Bill Of Material management. So how was the BOMs managed? And that was also a challenge for them.

And with BOMs, we know that issuing material and managing the cost of them plays a significant factor. And this was particularly the next issue.

Following the bill of material challenges, rework and inefficient processes followed. And this was a significant challenge for the client. File sharing and collaboration had no control. Again, looking at these challenges, we realize that there's been some serious issues within the design teams in the organization. Further to that, at the time, the company had extended teams, which was outsourced and that looked like the construction teams that provided the construction and detailing services for them. And following on from construction teams, they also had an analytical engineering department which done all-- and conducted all of the analytical work of the structures that's been created and manufactured.

So what did it look like? And what was the challenge in here? Firstly, we find that data traveled from the internal team via 2D drawings as well as PDFs across to various departments. And this was done via email collaboration. So you can imagine that files being transferred to different departments would have very static workflows that did not allow for collaboration at the time. Any changes or reviews that needed to be made were marked up and emailed back. And we all know that sometimes we may miss emails or there might be a challenge with sending an email across.

What happened was often the manufacturing teams did not get the updated versions of the files. And this was one of the big challenges-- that construction projects would start, manufacturing would start, and sometimes working on the wrong versions or incompatible-- incorrect versions of the files.

This, firstly, was not only just a cost factor, but also a time issue. So time's being wasted on having this data collaboration between the teams as one of it. And apart from that, we all know that CAD checking, CAD reviewing, as well as CAD repairing of CAD files and validation is not a value add. It adds bottlenecks to the organization as well as to the processes that the organization uses.

Now, how did we overcome it? How did we work through it. How do we get better at it? And this was the question that was, of course, on the CEO's mind as well as the design team and the engineering managers mind. How do we get better and how do we achieve success in it?

One of the things that we've come up with the client by using the technology that Autodesk provides is looking at an acronym for AIT-- Adapt, Innovate, and Thrive.

Adapt. Adapting to changes, altering strategies, accelerating growth. And that's what the A stood for.

The I for innovate-- implementing new ideas, integrating technology, and, of course, in aspiring creativity within the teams. And the thrive side of it was looking at transforming the challenges into opportunities, targeting success, and taking those opportunities to thrive moving forward. This adapt, innovate, and thrive symbolizes a strategic approach to overcome challenges and achieve success within the organization, all coupled with the innovation strategies by the engineering team and the technology that Autodesk provides to support it.

Now, just to add a bit of humor to this, I'd like to show this picture because often we find that an expectation and an outcome is always two different things. And if it's-- if a project is not completed correctly, or in time, or in budget, sometimes it's considered as unsuccessful. But there's also a key area, which is adoption.

And the project can be completed on time, completed on budget, but fails with adoption. Technically, that project does not fail because there's no adoption to the key strategies and way forward. So let's dive into it. And let's understand, firstly, the challenges and how the customers overcome these challenges with the technology provided.

So, first, let's look at adapt. And from the customer's early challenges, we find that, using the three keys of improvement framework, productivity was the first on the list, which relied heavily on manual workflows, causing tasks and duplications of-- and rework of processes that could have been avoided.

Insufficient team collaboration. As you've seen, collaboration methods was not really great. They had issues. Sometimes the messages may have been missed, or not taken in, or not-- those changes were not brought in, which caused challenges downstream.

Frequent project rework. And rework is such a thing that-- it's not a value add to any organization. Duplication of work does not add any value to the company or any company for that matter.

The second key that we looked at was cost. So how does cost affect this. So within the organization, the high cost from rework, data errors, or poor data management was quite challenging. The company also suffered from penalties. So you can imagine some of the penalties look like late delivery of projects or not meeting milestones. And these would be billed at a percentage of what the mine would output today. So you can imagine that was quite a large amount-- a significant amount in penalties that they were exposed-- that they exposed himself to.

Waste in material and time due to inefficiencies was also a challenge. So, remember, whenever you've got to rework something or remanufacture something, there's not only the time as a cost but the material also that that's involved in that.

And from a time perspective, longer timelines from slow manual processes. That was a challenge. Design revisions took weeks and-- due to poor version control. Project handovers, and documentation, and automation of certain information also was a time factor that was considered.

So adapting to early change, looking at the struggles and limitations. Initially, non-Autodesk applications were used from a 3D perspective, which had its limitations, which did not give them the flexibility to design and model the way that they should to be efficient.

Early reliance on outsourced design and fabrication was another challenge. No efficient collaborations to external stakeholders, design changes took longer to complete, struggles with duplicate work, and, of course, rework was a very time-consuming.

The other area which exposed the weakness in the existing system was the growing size of the plants. So the plants that they worked on initially was average, smaller. But as time grew, the plant size grew with more work coming in, which caused challenges in their workflow. Again-- reliance, again, on manual processes for project coordination and, of course, rework and the lack of integration between teams was also a challenge.

Adapting to this early challenge, again, inadequate tools, non-Autodesk for over nine years for from the period of '96 to 2005, couldn't handle large scale projects or complex design, and there was a decision that was made to move to more capable software to handle the growth that was expected.

Again, from a data management perspective, there was no common data environment. Everything was saved on a local server, which, again, as we know, engineers and engineering data is not meant to be managed on any local applications or local servers that are not designed for engineering data. Frequent rework, again, to-- due to unstructured data storage. Sometimes data would be overwritten. Struggles with maintaining integrity across all projects, so data standards would not be in there, and the design integrity was questionable at the time.

Looking at geographic and resource constraints, again, the construction took place out in Africa-- in remote areas, remote sites where collaboration was a challenge-- the design and engineering teams set out in Johannesburg and in Cape Town. However, collaborating those design or design changes was a different challenge because everything was fabricated, and manufactured, and shipped across to site. And when it got to the point of going to site, sometimes if there was a change or an error on that. Having new materials shipped across was a different challenge.

Bill of material challenges. The accuracy of that was also quite a challenge because you had cross-border logistics that needed to be considered, delays at the border posts, as well as delays getting equipment to site. If there was any changes, again-- that was, again, going to be project delays. And as we understood from the earlier points about penalties that they faced-- so if they were not on time within the project on a specific milestone, it affected the overall project budget.

So manual workflows also played a challenge in the process-- heavy reliance on manual workflows for project management, insufficient or inefficiencies in project coordination and communication within the teams, and, of course, the limited use of digital tools for collaboration. And when we put all of this together, there's four key problems we assess under the adapt side of it.

Firstly, inefficiencies in workflows. 50% of that contributed to the inefficiencies they experienced.

Data management. When we quantified it, we realized that it was about 20% that contributed to that area.

Project complexities contributed to 15%. And, of course, project delays was a further 15%.

Understanding the problems was the first challenge, but knowing where they fitted into the organization was the next. So how did it work?

Data would move across via email to analytical team. Data would move across to the construction teams, and this would also be via email. Finding out that sometimes the data translation or revisions were not translated across posed another challenge. And we find in that efficient-- inefficient workflow, 50% of the problems resonated in that area. 20% was linked to data management, 15% in project complexity, and, of course, 15% in project delays.

And a very nice thing by Albert Einstein is "The measure of intelligence is the ability to change." So how do we adapt to change?

And-- but naturally, by being human, I guess, change is not something that we see very likely or we're not very open to doing. And for us to thrive, and innovate, and move forward, and become industry instructors in our industry, we've got to adopt change. So adapting for change, how does that work and what has happened?

In the case of the customer. We realize that, firstly, digital transformation strategy was the first step. The organization shifted towards adopting digital tools. They had a commitment to investing in technology to support their growth. They were prepared to-- they were prepared to prepare the teams to adapt in working in digital tools and digital transformation strategies to move them forward.

So the first area of change came in 2005 with the adoption of Inventor Professional. And this brought about many different opportunities for them to be better. And how-- the first was looking at automating repetitive tasks within Inventor using intelligent parametric design to tackle complex projects, using intelligent [INAUDIBLE] for more drag and drop approach to get assemblies out faster, a lot quicker. As you can see, a slide snapshot of the automation that was within Inventor to get them to push out these general arrangements, and drawings, and models a lot quicker.

Then later on followed the adoption of Vault Basic and this was around 2010, where the need for a common data environment came about, where they had to have better control, better improvement on project tracking, better version management, better reuse of data in-- and while Basic at the time gave them that solution. And this allowed for better internal team collaboration.

So what it looked like? Data was now saved in the Vault on the server, which was secure. Team members could collaborate with each other, access data. You could see who's working on what. Data was being managed, backed up, and controlled in a lot better and much more secure manner.

But from a collaboration perspective, sharing data across still not the most effective, but it was more controlled. Better version control was adopted and only the latest versions were sent out to the outsourced parties, with the construction team and the analytical team doing the necessary changes. Should they need that revision, updates were sent across and managed accordingly.

If we look at the adapt section and the overall improvements in this, from a productivity perspective, we understand that the integration with Inventor involved introduced digital workflows, reducing rework. And some of the significance here is that up to 60% of reduction in time was spent-- was realized by the rework. Improved team collaboration by using centralized digital tools resulted in overall productivity. And the overall productivity boost was up to 60%, which is amazing.

The cost was the next side of it. Standardizing design workflows reduced wastage and improved utilization of resources, about 50% of the cost saving due to fewer errors and reworks as well as material wastage. So as we can see that by just the first segment of adapting to technology and adapting to growth, there were some great improvements seen.

The next was time. And, of course, by having automation within Inventor, by accelerating design iterations-- and revision times was cut down by 80%. And when we put them all together from a gains perspective, we found that 60% gain in efficient workflows just by having the correct design tool, [? invent ?] [? professional, ?] as well as having a common data environment-- at the time [INAUDIBLE] basic.

Data management gains was up to 30%. Project complexity reduced by 5%, which gave them a gain. And project delays was reduced by a further 5%, allowing them to be more efficient on their design and project delivery.

The next step we look at is the innovate [INAUDIBLE]. Now, innovation is actually a very, very interesting part and you'll see how it has-- how the customer has embraced innovation within their workflows to become better. And there must be a need for change, there must be a need for innovations.

At the time, the initial project values was between 20% to 100% of maximum overall of the budget. So that meaning that they would either get 20% of the work of the overall project or they would have had the whole project.

But by the early 2000s, that project size grew, meaning that the projects that they were currently doing were no longer the smaller projects. It was now the bigger projects. And it grew to an approximate 240% of the initial project value. So you can imagine, there's a lot more work going on, a lot more demand, and a lot more pressure from a project delivery perspective, which then further grew in the late 2021, where it grew by another 100% from the initial stages of it. So, overall, we're looking at about a 340% growth today-- year to date.

Now, with the increased project size comes complexities, which require better tools and better processes to ensure that you complete these projects on time and within budget. So if we go back to our adapting phase, we found that, yes, they have adapted data management system, common data environment was in place, they had better design tools. But when you got projects that's growing and expanding, you need to have better and more efficient workflows. And you've got to adapt to innovation and you've got to innovate what you currently have.

And to get the customer to that, we looked at three areas again. So the three keys of improvement looked at, firstly, from the productivity side of it. It was difficult managing growing project complexities using current tools and not integrating departments. Fragmented collaboration between design, engineering, and fabrication teams were still causing a bit of a challenge. The lack of automation, although they had quite a bit of automation within Inventor-- they were still a bit of lacking that and innovation that needed to happen in that space.

From a cost perspective, cost from frequent design changes was also quite high. When we looked at the numbers, again, inefficiencies in resource utilization was the other challenge. And, of course, penalties for missed milestones were still there. That did not go away. They got better at it, but it was still a risk to the company.

From a time perspective, manual approval cycles cause delays. That was one of the things that we picked up-- slow coordination between departments and caused delays for execution. And, of course, manual processes to extend the teams caused delays in the project timelines.

When we assess them in the four key problem areas under innovate, we found that team collaboration was still 25% of their major challenges. Design approvals contributed a further 25% of the challenges. Incomplete automation-- having interdisciplinary or interdepartmental collaboration was the other challenge. And, of course, the systems needed to-- was getting more complicated because the design outputs were complicated. The size of the plants were getting bigger, with more complicated additions added to it.

Looking at it from a more graphical representation, we find that team collaboration, 25%. Incomplete automation contributed 25%. And, of course, complicated systems and processes additional 25%.

But before we jump deep into innovation, I'd like to ask the question, what is innovation? And that's a question that we've asked the customer as well. How do you see innovation and what does innovation mean to you? And I think a very great definition put together by Dr. Jeff Chen says that innovation is a "process to create value for the targeted stakeholder for a particular circumstance."

Often we find that when we think about innovation, we think about disruptive innovation, we think about breakthroughs that come to it. And sometimes it doesn't need to be that. Sometimes it needs to be small, new improvements that you make that make the difference in the way you do your daily tasks or your processes. And this is what resonated quite well with the customer.

However, sometimes we find that there's also a big difference between innovation and a cognitive bias. So from an innovation and cognitive bias, they are really closely related because cognitive biases can significantly impact the way we approach and execute innovation [INAUDIBLE] thinking. Some key areas on the relationship is [INAUDIBLE] fixedness that limits our ability to see or concept beyond the traditional use and hinders our creative problem-solving ability.

The next would be anchoring. The anchoring bias allows us to rely too heavy on the first piece of information we encounter. And, of course, the status quo bias makes us prefer things to stay the way we currently work and not adopt any change. And we find it-- we hear quite often with clients. Some of the things that they would tell you is that we've been doing things the same for the past 10, 20 years. Why should we change? And this is the bias and this is the cognitive changes that need to happen for innovation to take place.

A very interesting story about the image on screen. You'll notice that it's got all these little red dots on it. So during World War II, aeroplanes returning from battle would have numerous bullet holes on them, i.e. The red dots on screen. And this would then be reinforced.

However, one Army engineer, Abraham Wald, analyzed the damage on returning aircraft to determine where to reinforce them. Initially, it seemed logical to reinforce areas with the most bullet holes. However, Wald realized that these planes that had survived despite the damage. The critical insight here was to reinforce areas with no bullet holes-- so the highlighted areas-- because these are the planes that did not return.

Now, can you imagine challenging the beliefs of higher ranking officers within an army? That's not a good thing to do, sometimes considered insubordination. However, by challenging the way we currently think-- the status quo and the status quo bias-- that helps us understand how we can do better and how we can change. I think the story here highlights the bias that when we focusing only on surviving examples that can lead to incorrect conclusions. In innovation, it teaches us to consider overlooked areas and areas-- not only failures, but also looking at areas of success to make more informed and effective decisions.

So how did this innovation change and how did how did the customer adapt to it? So, as we know, there were different departments. By connecting different departments in was the first step. And looking at the workflow in here, not much of-- outside of mechanical department was collaborating with the common data environment. So that needed to change, firstly.

So to be innovative, first step was to adopt Vault Professional. So fully adoption of Vault Professional took place in 2017. This gave them a more managed, centralized data management for their design and project files, improved version control, data integrity, lifecycles was introduced as well as the engineering change or the workflow, which then improved collaboration with external stakeholders. Now, by having a powerful tool like Vault Professional, this allowed them to do a lot more and go beyond the boundaries that they previously had with the Basic.

The next step of the innovation was integrating Revit for the advanced civil and structural design. So, previously, these civil and structural design was conducted in a 2D environment. By embracing Revit for that, it allowed them to move into a 3D space, having more insight into the design, introduction to Revit for complex civil and structural projects, collaboration between design and structural engineering teams, as well as Revit to streamline the structural workflow.

Again, after integrating Revit for the 3D modeling, the next step came in with integrating Navisworks, so coordination was big for them. So with Autodesk Navisworks, we understood it was key in the coordination of multiple disciplines within the project. And this helped resolve conflicts before fabrication, which improved the overall efficiency of the team. And having the integration of Revit from different departments into one single model-- being a federated model allowed them to understand where challenges could arise before construction or fabrication.

So what did it look like? It looked like the teams adopting Inventor with Vault. And then we had teams adopting the AEC Collection with Vault-- in conjunction with Vault and allowing them to have a single source of truth for all of their data, allowing them to be more innovative internally and work with different departments more freely and more easily.

And, of course, from a collaboration and communication perspective, the shift from paper-based model drawings to two IFC models, which allowed for better integration and, of course, better clarity between the manufacturing and design teams. This significantly reduced the revision challenges that they faced and allowed for faster updates.

So traditionally we know, we understand that it looked something like this, where 2D files were shared out either via DWG format or a PDF. But by adopting this workflow, it allowed us-- the customer to use the IFC workflow, which then models would be sent out to analytical engineering for analysis. Any changes that were presented from there would go back to the design team, those changes would be updated, and, of course, the final model would be sent out to manufacturer.

Important thing to note here is that they did away with having general arrangement drawings, so the drawings done away. They used direct IFC or DWG at some times to fabrication that would be brought in into Inventor on that side or Advance Steel or even Revit at the time, brought in-- the detail would have been done and fabrication would have taken place.

Similarly for the manufacturing departments, they would have done all of the CAM work from the design side, ensure that it was correct, and send that out for CNC operations later on.

So from the innovation side of it, reducing rework by 85%. Cutting down on redundant work was key. And by adopting this workflow, we found that it reduced the rework by 85% and enhanced better version control and automation within the organization.

The next bit was introduction of automated checking and control. So fewer design areas that came about, we had automation from a Vault perspective where models were revised drawings was revised within the system, red line checked, marked up, and managed all in one go. And this allowed for the ability to publish drawings as shared views or publish models as shared views and review and markups would have been done by the external parties and brought back into the system for more streamlined collaboration.

Looking at overall improvements, again, from the key-- three key approach-- we find that from a productivity perspective, up to 50% reduction in design time with automation. And the automation workflow was very simple. It looked at automation from Inventor to Revit to Vault to Navisworks to robot structure to Inventor again. And it gave us a nice workflow that was more automated, more streamlined, and suited the customer's needs.

Interdisciplinary model enhanced the team by using Navisworks for collaboration, having a federated model where they could, firstly, do coordination as well as clash detection and checks before any fabrication was done. Vault Pro ensured up-to-date versions, minimizing errors and minimizing time to find the right data. And this, of course, ensured that there was a productivity boost of up to 80%.

From a cost perspective, having Vault Professional reduced the cost of design revisions. So previously they would look for the right version. They would try to find what is the latest version that we're working with. How do we improve on this? And by just simply having Vault Professional, it allowed them to have better version control, better revision management, and, of course, making-- searching and looking for files a lot easier. It eliminated a few redundant tasks by eliminating errors and, of course, the risk of penalties from a project perspective was significantly reduced.

Overall, savings across the project life cycle contributed to 50% to 60%. And you've got to agree, that's quite a large saving on time and cost.

From a time perspective, automated workflows sped up the approval of fabrication processes, as you've seen. The correct data was going across to fabrication from the time to share datas between different departments was a lot quicker using efficient shared view methods. So from a time efficiency perspective, we've seen one of the greater numbers on here from between 80% and 90% of improvement due to fewer revisions and faster completion of the projects.

If you look at the four keys, again, from the four key problems areas that we assessed early on, we find that team collaboration improved by 35% Now, overall, from our assess phase, we-- the improvement was 50%. Adding the 35% to it gave us a total of 85% of improvement, which in any way you look at it is a significant improvement.

The improved design approval process saw a gain of 35%. From an automation perspective, adding to the existing automation, an extra 15% was realized by the team. And, of course, we understand that the systems were complicated-- it became complex-- projects became complex. There was a 15% efficiency realized by having a better system in place, which had reduced previous complexities that was experienced.

And, finally, the T in our strategy was thrive. And I think to start off thrive, we understand that companies that change might survive, but companies that transform would thrive. And from an overall thrive perspective, we understand that productivity using the digital twin perspective and approach with reality capture into ReCap-- reduce, rework, and improve accuracy.

One of the things that the customer had adopted from a reality capture perspective was being better. How do we do better? How do we maybe more efficient on-site when we're not on-site? And one of the things that they've adopted was having drone scans on a weekly basis. So drone would fly across, capture the current site, that data would be integrated back into the engineering team, and they could assess, firstly, from a project milestone perspective, but also if there were any changes that took place.

If there was anything that came or they saw as an issue, they would raise it immediately and ensure that the project followed the proposed initial layout that was set out for it. So this was also quite an innovative thing that they've done to thrive in that organ-- that industry that they were in.

Navisworks, again, enabled cross-discipline coordination between the teams and also collaboration. And, of course, from a productivity side of it, when we look at how they're thriving in that, it was between a 90% to 100% boost in project handling complexities within the team. And this has been significant because adapting, and changing, and innovating their processes helped them realize this change.

From a cost perspective, digital workflow reduced material wastage as well as time wastage of the team members. The risks of penalties was significantly reduced because they were meeting projects-- project deadlines, projects were on time and didn't suffer many challenges from that perspective.

From a cost perspective, including the project penalties, between the 60% and 70% reduction in rework and delays was realized. And, of course, from a time perspective, the time efficiency-- the greatest-- I think this was one of the, also, very, very high stat between 90% and 100% improvement, dramatically shorten the timelines within the organization.

Now, that 100% is in comparison to how it was done previously. So you could see that by just adapting to new technology, innovating the way they did work contributed to quite a bit of significant changes and improvements to the team.

Multidisciplinary integration was the next thing. So integrating civil, structural, and mechanical designs-- that reduced coordination time between different departments and, of course, Navisworks played quite a strong part in this. Real time design reviews and clash detections made it possible for design changes to happen before construction or fabrication started.