ICT and International Manufacturing Strategy

Abstract

Nowadays several manufacturing principles are applied to Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and the ones who went lean (or agile if you will) are improving their capability to deliver and execute. Still, is doing things right enough today? The real challenge is actually being able to do the right things. In a time of great challenges the capability to provide an ICT strategy model, totally aligned with International Manufacturing Strategy it is going to be a key success factor to bridge business value requirements and ICT world in order to deliver higher performances focusing on right priorities. The International factor brings into the picture a higher level of complexity in order to overcome global technical hurdles as well as cultural barriers. Managing complexity can be facilitated if the ICT systems are implementing balanced, centralized or decentralized, solutions. The ICT road map should be able to answers several needs at different levels of the organisation: from operational tasks, to management control up to strategic planning and, at the same time, support the decision making process where information characteristics requirements differs (in terms of time horizon, level of details, data source, degree of certainty and frequency). Manufacturing and ICT need to face the challenge together and find the right balance on several factors, where the threshold of automation is definitely a key one; together with the hard balance between the opportunity to leverage best-practices or protect own-practices that are considered competitive advantages. As a result robust processes will be embedded in (rightly) automated work-flow procedures which will be available across the company. Although often neglected, people management and people development is recognised as a foundation of a Manufacturing System, even to this extend ICT has the power to contribute and become a strong enabler. Knowledge Management Systems are not supposed to replace coaching and mentoring, but they will help, more and more, in creating a knowledge repository and facilitating communication and interactions.