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Insight Article
Work Process Interoperability
By Joe Morray
The NIST Study released a few years ago documented the cost associated with a lack of interoperability in the engineering-construction industries at more than $15B annually. The follow-on studies by FIATECH brought a broad understanding of the technical dimensions of interoperability and the potential costs and benefits of various solution strategies.
There is yet another issue which we need to consider in this area, that being the ability to define workflows (the way work gets done) to make use of the cross-functional information flows. Our experience has shown that unless the business processes drive an individual to access and deliver information across functions, that the value of technical interoperability will be significantly reduced. I have come to think of workflows as the “playbook” in a sports analogy. If they are not defined, all of the talent that has been assembled will not work together. Essentially, the processes need to be documented to define that information needs for delivery, and receipt, to each department, business area, or even company. Some examples where cross business flows are important include
- Exchanges of information between disciplines that are using specialized modeling or computational applications. This also applies to workflows which require upstream information, or the delivery of information to downstream activities.
- Work processes that use the same information but for different business applications, such as the sharing of information between finance, procurement, engineering, project management, etc.
- Collaboration between home office and plants, where the information being created is of value, but possibly in a different form. Consider if every business process had a defined set of steps to deliver the information to set of targeted systems in a plant (maintenance, control systems, warehousing, etc.). Generally the workflows today stop at the door to the home office.
- Vendor/subcontractor information delivery processes, which are focused on delivery to a client/prime. How often do we create “turn-over” packages by “dumbing down” the information? I suggest that this frequently happens because we do not have the insight, or perceived value, of a linked cross-company information delivery.
This brings up the interesting question of which work processes should a company initially focus on to achieve the benefits of interoperability. Beyond the obvious, a number of factors can be used for establishing targets for interoperability workflows
- Processes that are invoked often. Clearly the value is directly related to the number of times it is used.
- Business processes that are responsible for distributing, or receiving, information that may change often. The ability to codify the delivery of “fresh” information is a key aspect to many processes and their value.
- Identify those business areas that normally don’t work together on a day-to-day basis, but require each others information. In these situations, we may not intuitively understand the value that can be delivered, or received, from another group/company.
- The simpler the process, the better. Find those workflows that create interoperability value on a repeatable basis, without requiring a complex set of steps to achieve it. As one of my old professors used to say, if you can’t make it simple, you probably don’t understand it well enough!
Interoperability requires technology, business processes, and people (the Trinity for Innovation) to succeed. Let’s make sure we keep our eyes on the last two as we move forward with an ever expanding technology palette.
Joe Morray is president of Trinity Technologies Corp., a process and power industries consulting firm that helps owner/operators and EPC firms succeed in the use of information systems. The company specializes in driving companies to align work processes, technology, and organizational change requirements for the plant environment.
EMC/Documentum
