MELT: An Approach to drive Manufacturing Enterprise Landscape Transformation

MELT: An Approach to drive Manufacturing Enterprise Landscape Transformation

The evangelists of BPM (Business Process Management) have long believed that strategies built around strongly inter-linked processes are more sustainable than those built around independent activities & interventions and that all process centric initiatives, to be sustainable in the long run, require integrated planning and management of change in:

o People
o Processes and
o Technology

The authors propose an integrated approach, which seeks to align optimized and harmonized business processes with the strategic initiatives of enterprises, has customer pull as the key driver, IT as the key information enabler, and is facilitated by a significant transformation effort.

This approach, captured as a framework titled MELT – Manufacturing Enterprise Landscape Transformation, delivers a customer centric organization built around industry best practices and standards. The approach ‘MELTS’ traditional organizational boundaries and leverages technology enabled digitized processes to deliver business results.

Executing this form of complex approach requires a multi echelon project management methodology, envisaged by the authors as an integrated but distributed (Web Enabled) environment, which drives collaborative behaviour amongst the stakeholders. The authors seek to provide an umbrella approach that brings together multiple organizational interventions as LEAN & Six Sigma, industry standard frameworks & process models and IT tools.

Charting and managing the road map for such a transformation is the single most important element of business process management & improvement, and change management holds the key to successful outcomes. An organizational internal ‘Competency Center’ approach is proposed to drive this transformation.

This paper was presented at the PMI Conference held in Hyderabad in Nov 2009, and it was also published in the Conference Handout.

Introductory Note

Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) or Consultants from any organization, working in the area of large Process Management interventions or large IT Programs, invariably end up grappling a common set of questions or situations

o Who owns the intervention or the program? The IT Head? The Process Lead?
o What are the roles played by different designations viz. Business Integrator, IT Analyst, Business Analyst, Process Champion?
o Where do the multiple tracks converge? At management level? At results level? Or do they remain independent?
o When do they build consensus? When do they align the goals of these interventions?
o Why is there so much resistance to change? How do we convince the business users that the intervention is for their benefit?
o How do we align this project with the many other projects already going on in the organization?
o How many such interventions have really yielded their desired results, year after year, both in the context of the organization and the industry in general?

Being consultants from the manufacturing industry, this set of issues was even harder to address, given the intensity of the ‘clicks vs. bricks’ debate of the near past, and the relatively deep set of boundaries that have typified this sector over the years. We therefore felt the necessity of driving a convergence of the numerous topics into one single framework, which we decided to call ‘MELT’ – Manufacturing Enterprise Landscape Transformation, signifying the enormous change efforts that go into transforming these organizations.

Go for conjoint twins!

Our hypothesis, validated through multiple customer experiences, drives us to accept the fact that we need to align them at birth, because every initiative of this nature will ultimately need to add business value. The alignment needs to happen at multiple levels –

o Objectives of the interventions i.e. business objectives
o Objectives of the stakeholders
o Objectives of the customers

The answer, as we believe lies in answering one common set of questions –

1. Who is benefited by this initiative? Customer, Stakeholder or Business?
2. Where does it fit into the organization goals / mission / values / policies?
3. How is it aligned with the customer objectives?
4. When & how does the alignment need to happen?
5. What are the conflicts and how can they be resolved?
6. Why is this the only way to meet these objectives? Are there alternatives?

In summary, as a LEAN purist recently put it; don’t undertake any of these initiatives if it does not add any value to the customer! Or if there is no underlying intent of adding value to the customer or differentiating your competitive position from the customer’s perspective.

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