2026-06-03 · Dashboards / Data & Control

It starts harmlessly. A dashboard, because the data is not yet trusted. A special report, because Finance sees different numbers. An Excel list, because the new system does not yet reflect real operations. An escalation meeting, because decision rights are described, but not lived.

All of this is understandable. In a running plant, nobody builds on a clean sheet. You change things while the machine is running, with delivery dates, shift logic, old habits, and people on the shop floor who have no desire to become the test setup for someone else’s target picture.

The problem is not that such support structures emerge. The problem is that they stay.

A transition becomes an operating model. A workaround becomes standard. Transparency becomes ritual. And at some point, an organisation employs people, meetings and reports to stabilise a system every day so that it looks as if it worked by itself.

Then we call it governance. Sometimes it is only nursing care for a system that cannot yet run.

Digital maturity is therefore not shown by how much additional visibility is created. It is shown by what can quietly disappear again. When planning, quality, maintenance and Finance understand the same operational reality, less translation is needed. When decisions are made where deviations occur, less escalation is needed. When people trust the system, they stop keeping shadow books.

Some things we build today should later be switched off quietly. Not because they were wrong. But because they have served their purpose.

The most uncomfortable governance question is therefore this: what are we currently funding as control, although it has long become a symptom?

Or even simpler: what are we building today that a successor will quietly sunset tomorrow?

Originally published as a LinkedIn note. Edited for Industrial Notes.