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Organizations that have made the change to a global product development process know that proper technology selection plays a key role. But these enterprises also know that technology alone doesn't determine success. Motivating Change Moving from different regional processes to one global process can demand a seismic, cultural shift within an organization -- a completely new "groupthink" mentality. Of course, as a first step, corporate-level buy-in is critical. But individual member buy -- in is what actually drives the success of Global Harmonization. Because of this, an understanding of what motivates participants in different global regions to change is key. In general, IntegWare has found three motivations that drive participants to accept change:
How Participant -- Level Buy -- In Works When one of IntegWare's clients, a global, Fortune 500 manufacturing company, wanted to shift to a buy anywhere, design anywhere, manufacture anywhere mode of operation, the financial benefits were obvious: the change would save them millions of dollars per year, reduce purchasing costs by four percent, bring design rework to a minimum, and reduce the need for regional warehousing. To achieve these goals, participants needed to change the way they did business in two critical areas: 1) Purchasing needed to quadruple in quantity the number of bids per part. In the past, the organization's purchasing departments processed one to two bids per part. Under this process, for each bid, specifications and related documents were located and printed. The company was now asking that number of bids be quadrupled and also processed from a global list of suppliers. The key motivator for the team was the new, automated process that allowed personnel to do their job quicker and easier, enabling them to easily reach their new goal of six to eight bids per part. In addition, the purchasing departments developed better working relationships with their suppliers through better information sharing and less rework on the part of the vendor. 2) Regional designers needed to change fundamental principles in their thought processes. Some regions of this organization followed a Form, Fit and Function rule in the process of making design revisions to parts. For example, in a certain product, when a design change was made to fix a quality problem, that revised part would replace the previous version across all products where that part was used. Some other regions followed a Where Used rule, and would revision a part specifically in the context of the product with the quality issue. In this process, the engineer would then check all other designs where that part was used and determine which designs would be revisioned to use the new version of that part. Having one system would allow for fewer part numbers and a simplified hand-off to manufacturing. Also, designs could be leveraged globally to any manufacturing site without confusion over revision numbers and inaccurate BOMs. The move to a single global process -- the Form, Fit and Function rule -- was met with reluctance from the organization's designers, until they were shown that they, too, would benefit. A designer's work could now be leveraged on a global scale -- no longer bound by regional manufacturing restrictions and requiring less rework on the part of the engineer having to support the design anywhere, manufacture anywhere methods. Bottom Line Grass-roots acceptance of a new global process can be an enormous challenge. If handled correctly, participants will welcome the change to Global harmonization. If acceptance is not encouraged and developed, switching to a new global process will be costly and slow. IntegWare brings a unique methodology and over a decade of experience in helping clients motivate and embrace these changes at all levels -- from the boardroom to the drafting board. If your organization is facing the challenges of moving to a single world-wide design and manufacturing process, call us and learn more about IntegWare's Global Harmonization process. |
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