Comments on: How to Improve Engineering Change Processes using Enterprise 2.0 Technologies?

By: olegshilovitsky

olegshilovitsky — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 20:53:05 +0000

François, thanks for pointing on history aspect of wiki. This type of collaboration can be real power if you build solution, for example, for CCB collaborative meetings. -Oleg/

By: François

François — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 20:46:50 +0000

Hello

The example of ECO is extreme, as, like you wrote, ECO has an important facet related to process. But I have seen a try to implement a wiki to simply document the products, like it could be done into a word or excel file, but with all advantages of a wiki (history capture). The point for me to see this kind of application really adopted by users, is more a social issue, which is to educate people on the principle and benefits of collaboration.

By: olegshilovitsky

olegshilovitsky — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 20:05:40 +0000

Daria, I’ve seen wiki solution in production, but never seen in such specific case as ECO.

By: Daria

Daria — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:20:42 +0000

Mark,
As far as I know, many experts call an application Enterprise 2.0, if it supports 2 core Enterprise 2.0 principles: collective intelligence and emergent structures. Both of these can indeed play a great role in improving any internal processes, including Engineering Change Processes. Yet, do you think that enterprise should use generic tools like wikis or blogs? Or search for more sophisticated solutions that support Enterprise 2.0 principles? Don’t you think that blogs, wikis tend to be Web 2.0 solutions (consumer technology) and for bringing real improvements to processes you need a tool that will have more management features?

By: olegshilovitsky

olegshilovitsky — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 17:52:41 +0000

Mark, I agree, multiple organization ECO span is important. Therefore going with web standards and REST architecture can simplify this solution. BPM /workflow only can have limits in this case. This is probably combination and balance we need to find. Wiki have good potential as platform for collaboration, but cannot be used as is today in my view. – Oleg

By: Mark Holman

Mark Holman — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 17:35:33 +0000

Oleg,
Something to consider in the future state of ECO implementation — I believe many (if not most) ECO’s will involve multiple organizations in the process before they are fully implemented. This would potentially include component suppliers, distributors, contract manufacturers, design houses, etc. Therefore a few things that would have to be considered are data federation (i.e. only sharing certain elements with certain parties) and ease of access across firewalls, geography, and organization boundaries. Few wiki based tools make this easy, which is why i think it needs to be either a web based PLM approach with well thought (but flexible) elements, or possibly some form of BPM tool. I don’t think existing wiki tools can cover the real world use cases. Perhaps for collaboration within an org — but I think this might miss one of the greater values of automating the ECO process.