Getting Your Management Involved with I-DEAS
A guest speech presented by Wayne McClelland at the ICCON User Conference, Dallas, 27-April-1998

I was honored and pleased to present "Getting your management involved with I-DEAS" at the recent ICCON user conference. You can read a narrative of the presentation below or, as many attendees requested, download the zipped PowerPoint presentation (1.1MB). If you don't have PowerPoint97 you can view and print this presentation by first downloading the free PowerPoint Viewer.

Strategic versus Tactical Implementations

As a backdrop, we first discussed a frustration I have that the vast majority of I-DEAS sites can point to only modest gains of say 10-15% improvement in product quality and time-to-market. Yet other sites in similar industries and with similar talent have achieved documented benefits upwards of 50% improvement (a factor of 2x!) in product quality and time-to-market (see Assuring Success for specific examples). What's the difference? -- Driving the implementation with and towards strategic objectives, with the entire top-to-bottom team motivated and measured by the accomplishment of these objectives.

But why do we want management involved?

Engineering as a Strategic Weapon

Process Changes

A common theme that underpins these documented success stories is a "continuous process improvement" with specific and tenacious focus on:

1. getting traditional 2D drawings off the critical path of product development, and in several cases eliminating drawings altogether
2. putting 3D solid models on the critical path as the unambiguous description of design, engineering, and manufacturing intent
3. deploying simulation-driven design where product concepts evolve to production designs in the spirit of "getting it right the first time"
4. concurrent team engineering where the entire design/engineering/manufacturing/management team works on the same configuration-controlled data across time and space

So we're talking here about continuous process improvement, but I must say that from my travels I all too often see "process procrastination". A strong rootedness in "the way we've always done it" and even a questioning about "if" we need to (get this!!) move from 2D to 3D design. This inertia is particularly strong in Germany and Japan. Make no mistake about it... process optimization has as its prerequisite the successful implementation of solids-based, simulation-driven, team engineering.

To continue the evangelism, I'd also like to emphasize that "effectiveness" (making the right engineering decisions) is much more important than "productivity" (doing things faster). In fact, strategic implementations will choose to spend longer on some tasks in order to derive process benefits downstream. We also will be shifting from a situation where day-to-day decisions are primarily driven by he or she that puts lines on the board (paper or electronic) to a "to be" situation where decisions are reflected upon by a much broader engineering team.

Let's take an example, perhaps exaggerated for effect. My project leader walks in this morning and tasks me with designing an L-bracket for mounting a motor subassembly. In the traditional approach, I'd say "fine, I'll have the drawings finished in a few hours so we can release to manufacturing". In the new process, instead of finishing in a few hours we might actually want to spend several days "getting it right the first time". But you know the story... once we get it right we avoid lots of problems and wasted time downstream... because we have addressed a broad set of engineering/manufacturing issues (the questions listed above, and more) upfront. So in fact, in designing the L-bracket we actually have a negative impact on task productivity... but a positive (and far more important) effectiveness impact on the entire process.

So here's one point where management needs to step in. If our metrics remained unaltered, our poor L-bracket designer (me) will get slammed come evaluation time because I'm taking days to accomplish a task that used to take hours. Management needs to change project milestones... slip early milestones to get the product right, and pull forward the downstream milestones. And management needs to come up with new, creative ways to measure and evaluate the performance of team members based not on task accomplishments but rather on process benefits. This isn't easy, but it is most definitely necessary.

Enabling Technologies for Supplier/OEM Integration

Getting Management Really Involved

OK, so now we see the value in getting management involved in driving for strategic implementation. But how do we get this to happen? Well, as Jerry Maquire was taught... "show them the money"... or in our vernacular "show them the opportunity". For ease of browsing, I include below a few paragraphs from our Assuring Success article (it really is a good article that you should also read).

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Let's work through an example. We'll start by assuming that Company XYZ runs its business with six productlines (say hairdryers, shavers, whatever), each productline competing in roughly the same size market (say $500M each) with similar market share and profitability. Next let's assume conservatively that, as witnessed by the Success Tour case histories, a successful CAD/CAM/CAE implementation can impact each productline business roughly as follows:

(Now, in fact, more than one of the success story companies said that it wouldn't even exist today were it not for the effective implementation of its new strategic CAD/CAM/CAE weapon! -- but that's a little hard to reflect quantitatively on a spreadsheet!)

So, such a modest impact on market share and profitability (2% each) can deliver $3.4M per year to the bottom line of each productline business. Now comes the punchline... but we forego these profits (opportunity costs) every time a new product development project begins with the old tools and process, rather than the new tools/process that can deliver these profits.

When you selected (or will select) your new generation CAD/CAM/CAE system you prepared an implementation plan documenting how soon the tools would be installed, the staff trained, and the new tools unleashed on new product development projects. For our hypothetical (but realistic) Company XYZ we'll assume a given implementation rate in terms of when new projects can begin with the new tools and therefore when, say for a 12-18 month product lead time, the benefits (opportunity $$$) accrue to the company. From our simple spreadsheet we plot (below) the planned implementation as well as a worst case plan (just a couple quarters of "slip") and best case plan. The reasons for delay are many and varied... and seemingly unavoidable. But wait, it's our destiny we're plotting here! For Company XYZ the opportunity risk is the swing between the delta +$8M best case and the -$11M worst case, or $19M... five to ten times more than the technology investments that Company XYZ is making to install a couple hundred CAD/CAM/CAE seats!! That's why we must manage the "opportunity" much more than simply managing the "cost".

So the natural tendency (ugh?!) is to experience a delay in our implementation profile. But what happens if our competition beats us in this implementation race, by even a quarter or two... OK, we don't want to think about that! ... but we certainly should marshal our resources and perhaps buoy our investment to make darn sure that we meet or better our planned implementation.

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So what specific steps can you take to get your management involved? Certainly you should preach at every opportunity and on every street corner the messages presented above, "show them the opportunity", and be prepared to stick your neck out (along with your management) to make it happen. Additionally, we've seen that it can be super effective to actually give your managers (all the way to the top) a quick, hands-on taste for the technology and tools. You might start with a simple demonstration that clearly depicts the value of integration, such as the I-DEAS Integrated Demonstration. And then walk them through one or two well-scripted simple design tasks. A well chaperoned 3-4 hour hands-on session does wonders for opening their eyes to the possibilities and at the same time removing some of the mystique.

As a final and slightly commercial note, WAMware has had the pleasure to participate recently as catalyst in several process optimization activities. We have found that rather than initiating an extensive, thorough "As-is/To-be" process planning activity, it is often more logical to take a quick look at the existing process and identify clear opportunities for short- and mid-term process improvement. This "Process Opportunity Analysis" has been successful in giving a "running start" to new I-DEAS installations as well as a "mid-life kicker" to existing sites with even many years of reasonable success with I-DEAS.

Summary