Collaboration Update: Engineers and Production
Collaboration reaps many benefits but there are still many frustrations with the process and with the technology. Manufacturing Business Technology magazine reports on a survey of just over 400 (about 1/2 design engineers and 1/2 production/project managers) about collaboration as it relates to design and manufacturing improvements.
Only 20% were “satisfied” with current collaboration efforts citing two key areas of frustration:
1. Slow responses from those to whom communications are sent.
2. Clarity of communication.
90% regularly collaborate with internal to company people with only 30% going outside to customers and suppliers on a regular basis. This surprised the reviewers but seems to make sense given intellectual property concerns. These types of realities also create caution when sending design files to production because of difficulties protecting files from changes and making sure the right version is out there.
In spite of the frustrations there is general agreement that collaboration is improving and that there are many benefits to doing it- key among them being:
1. Reduced design and manufacturing errors.
2. Increased product quality.
All of this seems to point more to the value of standardizing processes and the technology that enables them. In fact the article reveals that engineering and production/project management tend to use different systems and processes. This is an age old “siloing” issue borne out of the “need” to hoard information until it is useful to reveal it. In other words, it is NOT a technology problem, it is a people problem.
Once again, centralizing projects related to multiple departments under the guidance of a PMO-like organization could clearly benefit companies collaboration efforts. Leaving it to IT alone to sort out the mess is not a solution- a channel from projects to tactics to strategies that involves an executive level board fed by a supportive PMO can attack the two key issues of slow response and lack of clarity in communications.
How do you view collaboration? Is it more of a people problem or a technology problem? Have you solved the collaboration issue with an innovative business model? Share it!
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Tags: Bob-Turek, business-processes, collaboration, communication, enablement, engineering, Manufacturing-Business-Technology, production, projectmanagement411, projects, reponse, strategy, technologyRelated Stories
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