GlobalManufacturingSuite COE
This is one of most common topics, I have had touched in discussions with prospects and customers.
How big my organization should be?
Who should be part of it? Is this a full time job?
Having in mind what I wrote in previous posts, that Manufacturing Operations Management solution should evolve from day one and not stay “as implemented” forever… the answer is easy. You need at least one person who will be the owner of the solution. You can always hire, outsource or contract temporary specialists later on, as you need.
But there must be an owner from DAY ONE of your program. Person responsible and SPOC (Single Point Of Contact) for both:
- Your users
- External services teams
This is your minimum starting point. An OWNER. From there (as always), there are many options, and there is definitely not a “one fit all” solution. But, fortunately, there are some common patterns that pave the way.
When does your COE really start?
In reality (despite the common belief it happens later) your COE should start right at the moment you prepare yourself for SELECTION of solution. When you are internally gathering requirements for new solution, which you will buy. This will tremendously help expectations management and change management later, as well as improve solution adoption and internal users’ satisfaction. If you can assure continuity from requirements definition towards your selection process, through blueprinting and rollouts – you will have happy users and more benefits form the solution. Every discontinuity affects satisfaction (benefits expected vs delivered).
The latest stage to have a proper ownership is at the start of implementation, during blueprints when requirements get reprioritized (again) and CORE Model V1 is agreed.
Is single owner enough?
It is a necessary management function but the input will be coming from sites, these are your Business Owners that will start defining CORE Model. They will continue to provide you the enhancements requests. Some of them will use the solution on daily basis and therefore will become the source of backlog items that we mentioned before, right after first go live, and then… based on their daily process improvements.
Community of following people is core to success
- MOM Solution Owner (e.g. COE Manager),
- Business Process Owners (Global and Site)
- Key Users.
They must come from your organization. The technical and IT roles you can always introduce from outside, but the Business Roles must come from your own community.
At the beginning, this seems like an additional workload, but in reality, this is their regular work and input coming from process improvements they are focused on. This is “just” providing knowledge on how to fit the tool they will use on daily basis to do their job more efficiently. It will definitely take some time, but in overall the gain they will get from replacing the numerous excels (and creating them) or digging through multiple data sources will compensate for that in future with advance.
Regarding the IT roles
Theoretically you have way more freedom to choose. Are you running your internal IT organization? Are you using external outsourcing on daily basis? Are you doing mix? Do you just body-shop during projects? There are many options depending on your company culture and organizational expectations.
The thing to remember is: you cannot get the knowledge how YOU produce and how you WANT TO produce form the outside. Your process is your IP as much as your product and MOM solution has to embed that knowledge – hence you need your internal knowledgeable people as contributors.
Depending on how your CORE Model will grow over time – potentially covering new areas, this group will naturally expand. Up to the point, you will need some governance on top of that (both during the CORE Model deployment phases and in subsequent evolution). Those will be topics of next articles.
In the meantime, please comment how you run your COE? DO you outsource? If yes then what areas? Please share your lessons learned.
