Accelerate Innovation with Digitisation

Digitisation sits at the heart of the modern product life cycle. They evolve business models, unlock new sources of revenue, and deliver astronomical value.

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Digitisation sits at the heart of the modern product life cycle. Standards for the performance, time-to-market, and sustainability of new products continue to soar. Any company wishing to compete in this environment must adopt digital technologies rapidly. What began as a trend has now become a fact of modern product development; in 2022, 75% of product development executives said that further digitisation would be a key priority going forward.

Our mission is to provide exceptional sensing and insights – and we’re already empowering innovators around the world to take advantage of digitisation and create more efficient, effective, and sustainable products.

We’re not just a component provider. We’re here to help you make the most of digitisation at every stage of the product life cycle – optimising product development, driving sustainability, and solving all of your testing and measurement challenges.

We bring decades of experience in testing and measurement to the table – and we’re constantly expanding our people’s expertise and the power of our products.

Male software developer at work in the office

Speed, sustainability, and innovation: the future is digital

Crucially, digitisation does not just mean using digital technologies. To achieve true digitisation, companies must create real change. These technologies are capable of great things: they can evolve business models, unlock new sources of revenue, and deliver astronomical value.

The opportunities are significant – for any company dedicated enough to embrace true digitisation.

Digitisation trends: key sectors

Historically, industrial and manufacturing companies have trailed slightly behind sectors like electronics and retail when it comes to digitisation.

But recent years have seen a boom in the adoption of digital technology across a wider range of sectors – with two key players leading the way.

Industry 4.0 Modern Factory Office Meeting Room: Handsome Male Engineer Wearing Hardhat, Uses Pen on Touchscreen Digital Table to Correct, Draw Machinery Blueprints. High-Tech Electronics Facility

Smart sensors - An engineer uses a tablet computer for machine maintenance, automation tools. Sensors communicate their status.

Digitisation in industrial settings

Industrial companies are in the middle of a challenging period – costs are rising, the skilled labour shortage continues, and geopolitical tensions leave supply chains more vulnerable to disruption.

For many companies, digitisation has been crucial for weathering this storm and emerging stronger.

Digital technologies have allowed companies to:

Optimise the performance of equipment and processes with Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) devices;
Develop predictive maintenance schedules that reduce spending on replacement parts or machines and use maintenance staff’s time more effectively;
Create systems that automate product quality assurance, catching errors or design flaws earlier in the production process.

Digitisation in the automotive sector

As customers demand more advanced vehicles and the industry shifts towards battery power, digitisation is a crucial competitive advantage for automotive companies.

Digitisation allows automotive companies to:

Improve the durability of electric engines by simulating the impact of vibration or structural weaknesses on battery packs and vehicle structures;
Conduct real-world assessments of electric vehicle performance, understanding how vehicles are used and their robustness outside of the lab;
Model the impact of external conditions like usage, temperature, and charging methods on electric vehicle batteries.

Green Energy Car Design: Automotive Engineer Using Augmented Reality Hologram to Construct 3D Model of High-Tech Electric Vehicle Optimizing Battery Efficiency. Automated Robot Arm Manufacturing

“[Digitisation] is the use of digital technologies to change a business model and provide new revenue- and value-producing opportunities; it is the process of moving to a digital business.

Gartner

Transforming the product life cycle: Five core benefits of digitisation

Studies show that digital leaders see 1.8 times higher earning growth than so-called “digital laggards” – and more than double the growth in total enterprise value.

R&D teams can get new products to market faster by using simulations and computer-aided engineering (CAE) to rapidly test and retest the impact of tweaks to product design – without wasting materials rebuilding the physical product.

Digitisation can bring the physical and digital worlds together, allowing product teams to run simulations and test physical parameters simultaneously. As a result, R&D teams can reduce bottlenecks and get new products to market faster.

Embedding sensors into assets allows companies to closely monitor the environmental impact of their machinery. Companies can closely monitor emissions, operating efficiency, and the regularity with which components need to be replaced – finding opportunities to improve and reduce their carbon footprint.

Running simulated tests instead of building and rebuilding physical prototypes helps R&D teams cut down on the cost of materials, and ensures that physical tests are as efficient as possible. Live monitoring of assets enables predictive maintenance schedules and helps ensure that key machinery runs better for longer, reducing the need to replace components or entire machines.

Engineers inspecting the robotic part of the machinery at a research workshop factory for testing the function using a digital tablet.

Why is digitisation so important?

Today, creating a successful product means delivering outstanding performance and integrating the latest technologies. But companies are also under increasing pressure to deliver new products faster so that they can keep up with the pace of innovation and maintain their competitive edge.

Not to mention that spiralling R&D costs and tighter budgets mean product development teams are under pressure to reduce spending.

This tension between performance, speed, and budget has made digitisation a non-negotiable requirement in almost every product-driven industry.

Take advantage of digitisation – without drowning in data

Digitisation is an extraordinary opportunity, but it also brings new challenges.

The accelerated pace of development – combined with increasing asset intelligence – has transformed the data available to R&D and product teams.

How to solve the data challenge? Connect and collaborate.

HBK will make sure you reap the benefits of digitisation, without getting trapped in a tangled web of data.

We empower innovators, giving them actionable data insights from their simulation, virtual and physical tests.

A hallway of servers for big data in test and measurement and with IoT (Internet of Things) technology

Digitisation gives you access to data from a vast range of new sources. Without proper management, it’s easy to let this data go to waste without extracting insights from it.

Continuous data streaming and real-time monitoring mean data arrives on your desk faster than ever. Which means you need ways to extract insights from it and act on it rapidly.

Drawing data from more sources means more types and formats of data entering your system. You need a way to organise and analyse all of it, merging it into one clear picture.

We want to deliver customer needs

We want to build on our proud heritage and position HBK to deliver customer needs. We have grown our portfolio to provide simulators, simulation, and physical testing with real-time analytics and software platforms, plus test solutions for bespoke projects. With this capability and deep domain knowledge, we aim to serve our customers, enabling them to innovate for a more sustainable and digitally enabled world.

portrait rounded image of Ben Bryson, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of HBK

Ben Bryson | President, HBK

Deliver better products faster with digitisation

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