Best practice development within a manufacturing enterprise collaboration framework
Interesting paper. What kind of benchmarking approach have you used to determine the best practice? Is the proposed approach suitable only for external benchmarking?
This ICT system was developed by the firm using various solutions. The point to take away is as follow: the organization started by mapping all processes, mowing away from departmental functions to work flow processes, where each work process had an upstream “supplier” and a downstream “customer”. Each major process activity was laid out on a diagram with level of responsibility (vertical axis) and time (horizontal axis) using Visio tools. Each function on the chart was linked to a set of information such as a description (routine) of the activity; references to a deeper procedural manual referring to relevant pages, national and international standards, etc; and illustrations such as pictures, videos etc. This combination of process mapping, guiding and reference linkage may be a factor in reducing anxiety for learning from ICT for computer literate employees.
The organization developed its own best practice system. They apply international benchmarking only in the form of Key Performance Indicators. To bring these indicators down into the organization, they converted the KPIs’ to benchmarks for the operative processes for each business unit and local production unit. They started by mapping all processes, mowing away from departmental functions to work flow processes, where each work process had an upstream “supplier” and a downstream “customer”. Each major process activity was laid out on a diagram with level of responsibility (vertical axis) and time (horizontal axis) using Visio tools. Each function on the chart was linked to a set of information such as a description (routine) of the activity; references to a deeper procedural manual referring to relevant pages, national and international standards, etc; and illustrations such as pictures, videos etc. This combination of process mapping, guiding and reference linkage may be a factor in reducing anxiety for learning from ICT for computer literate employees.
Thank you for your reply. Your project seems very useful. My thanks to Yi also for passing our message to you. Best wishes. DTP.
Thank you for contributing this paper which looks most relevant to the Production Organisation and Management (POM) cluster of our I*PROMS Network of Excellence (url: www.iproms.org). You mentioned the role of ICT in facilitating best practice promulgation in an enterprise. Which ICT tools would have the most effect?