In the last few years, manufacturers/miners have placed a renewed focus on digitisation and automation. Many believe that new technology will be the silver bullet to solve safety, productivity and profitability problems. And yet many initiatives deliver a limited return on investment, and more often than we would like to admit, the impact is negative.

At this Forum, Hendrik Lourens will identify why new technology does not always deliver the results we expect. We will use the implementation of ERP systems in the 1990s as a case study and use a powerful checklist to see what the new technology can deliver and what changes we have to make to our current operating rules and management style to reap the benefits. We will identify how managers can deal with the overload of information that follows many digitisation efforts. How do we prioritise this information and make sense of it?