SUPPLY CHAIN IMPROVEMENT
Assessing Readiness for Change trough Collaboration Evaluation
Olivier Zephir
1
, Emilie Chapotot
1,2
, Stéphanie Minel
1,2
1
LIPSI/ ESTIA - Technopôle Izarbel - 64 210 Bidart
2
IMS, UMR 5218 CNRS, Univ-Bordeaux1 – 33 405 Talence
Benoît Roussel
ERPI-ENSGSI, 8 Rue Bastien Lepage – B.P 647 – 54010 Nancy
Keywords: Process design, collaboration, readiness for change, product design, organisational change.
Abstract: Our goal here is to propose a practical model enabling the assessment of the readiness of cooperating
organisational agents to face technological change. The focus is on the quality of cooperation and
collaboration which we presume determines the agents’ readiness for change. Providing such a model
facilitates decision making in process design such as organisation design or product/services design. The
transformation feasibility of existing cooperation is determined through a collective operational
effectiveness evaluation. Lillian T. Eby et al. (2000) outlined that little empirical research has focused on
this phenomenon. Amenakis et al. (1993) have proposed a theory-based model where readiness for change
is perceived as similar to Lewin’s (1951) concept of unfreezing. According to this theory beliefs and
attitudes are core factors acting on organisational actors’ perception of the readiness for change. Readiness
for change relates to the employees’ abilities and perceptions to face and support a pending organisational
change. We consider the change in routines and practices of collaborating actors in interaction with the
degree of activity change. In an organizational system based on cooperation, the various actors interact
under a team spirit for a general interest and share a collective output. A certain degree of confidence and
comprehension between actors is inferred. When change affects a company, technological or structural,
organisational actors face change in roles, rules, methods, tools and habits. These transformations have an
effect on the quality of cooperation and the related performance. We propose hereunder a methodology to
measure the impact of change on activities accomplished trough cooperation. Our empirical research takes
place in an organisation adopting a new technology in the maintenance sector.
1 INTRODUCTION
During the diagnosis phase of an organisational
change, operating structures are analysed to evaluate
the impact of change on staff and departments.
When the concerned services are spotted, the
changing processes and activities related to
organisational roles and functions are defined. Our
investigations begin at this level. We define with
methods such as the cooperation evaluation scale
and information transformation level, the needed
knowledge, skills and coactions to fulfil a
transformed activity. Our aim is to capture the extent
to which current work practices are evolving and to
define the prerequisite skills, knowledge, practices
and tools to ensure compliance with corporate
procedures and process. Readiness for change which
is the organisation maturity to integrate new
practices is evaluated through the potential change
maturity model. We access the organisational
capability to incorporate new business processes and
mastering there possible evolutions.
We will first introduce the goal of the European
integrated SMMART project and detail the
innovative system use to improve the maintenance
process in aeronautic and transport industry.
Secondly, we will underline the potential changes
due to this new embedded system and demonstrate
the potential impact and the necessity to asses the
readiness for change. In the third part of the article,
we propose a “potential change capacity maturity
609
Zephir O., Chapotot E., Minel S. and Roussel B. (2007).
SUPPLY CHAIN IMPROVEMENT - Assessing Readiness for Change trough Collaboration Evaluation.
In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems, pages 609-614
Copyright
c
SciTePress
Customer
Engine repair
Local repair centre
Logistic Traceabilit
y
Database
Satellite
Mobile
worke
r
Tags Reader
(Concentrator)
Doc.
CONFIG
Planning
A
A
n
n
a
a
l
l
y
y
s
s
i
i
s
s
Trouble
shooting
Collecting usage data
Industrial traceabilit
y
Provision of improved data
Components
repair
model” and explain for each levels of the model the
applied methodology.
2 SMMART EUROPEAN
PROJECT
This model is being developed within an integrated
European project entitled SMMART (System for
Mobile Maintenance Accessible in real Time)
regrouping industrial stakeholders form Aerospace,
road and maritime transport. This consortium
launched in November 2005 for a 3 year period is
constituted of 24 industrials and research centres
working on the development of RFID embedded
system. The project, submitted under the Framework
Programme 6 received contribution from the
European Community.
The aim of the project is to provide new technology
smart tags capable of operating and communicating
wirelessly in harsh environment of a vehicle’s
propulsion unit.
This system will enable the monitoring of usage and
maintenance data trough the life-cycle of critical
parts and provide secure end to end visibility of the
logistics supply chain (Figure 1). The project also
aims to establish normative referential in terms of
organisation, procedures and tools involving MRO
(Maintenance Repair & Overhaul) stakeholders from
manufacturers to operators, various regulation
bodies and insurance companies. This should
improve quality and traceability of maintenance
operations, and finally safety of vehicles operation.
The SMMART consortium incentives are meant to
enhance European leadership in the worldwide
MRO sector.
Investing in such research and development
activities compose a strategic stake for the transport
industry. According to MRO professionals the
worldwide commercial jet transport MRO market
for example is expected to grow at a pace
approaching 5 percent annually over the next five
years.
Figure 1: SMMART Concept Overview.
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The issue is to decrease maintenance time in order to
maximise time in the air. The adoption of new tools
will transform the maintenance activity and the
relationship among MRO stakeholders. Business
process changes are expected and the corresponding
support tool being prepared as through the
developed potential change maturity model to ensure
the operational capability of the SMMART
technology.
2.1 SMMART Impacts on Product Life
Cycle
In the previous paragraph the goal of the European
SMMART project was described. The mixing of
technologies allows improving the management of
maintenance activities. Although the SMMART
project is dedicated to maintenance process, the
figure 2 shows the multiple impacts on the product
life cycle. The SMMART Project integrates a global
life cycle approach. As we can notice, there are
indirect impacts due to the new embedded
technology integration. We underline here the need
to evaluate the capacity to change for an
organisation. Our aim is to illustrate the potential
changes in design process and identify the impacts
on organisational actor’s capabilities.
For instance, we can identify two major changes
in the design process. The first one deals with the
transformations accompanying the technology
integration. The second one with changes introduced
by new information availability. We will develop
hereunder the potential changes involve by
SMMART project.
2.1.1 Potential Technical Changes
The gas engine is typically a mechanical product.
The implementation of RFID tags, wireless sensors,
and DCU (Data Control Unit) implies considering
the new engine as a mechatronic product. Catherin
(2006) defines the mechatronic as the simultaneous
usage of mechanical techniques, electronical,
automation, micro-computing and system analysis in
terms of products design and optimization of devices
and procedures. This mix of disciplines implies to
rethink the product conception and another design
logic adoption to design the new product. The
mechatronic product should be rethought not only on
> 30 YEARS
Design/Prototype
Production & industrial
Out of
Service
Varied Operational Cycles
including scheduled and
unscheduled maintenance
Production and
industrial repair, planning
Ò Resource
optimisation
Ò Spares availability
Ò Anticipated demand
Ô Stock levels of
spares
Indirect
Indirect
Maintenance portion
Direc
Increase ratio available time/down time
Ô Cost per hour / km
Ô Required logistics resources
Ô Risk of human error
Ò Maintenance/repair efficiency (+30%)
Ò Reactivity in emergency situations
Ò Pre-normative MRO solutions
Ò Configuration control
Ò Ease of access to historical data
Ò Efficiency / user friendliness of IT tools
Ò Data collection safety
ÒQualification of technicians
ÒCorrect disposal of retired components
IMPACT OF
SMMART
PROJECT
Ò Life-cycle of
sub-assemblies/parts
Ò Availability
Ô Cost of ownership
due to an optimised
and
synthesised “return of
experience”
Design
Figure 2: SMMART a global life cycle approach.
SUPPLY CHAIN IMPROVEMENT - Assessing Readiness for Change trough Collaboration Evaluation
611
the technical aspect but also in the functioning life
cycle processes. Indeed, the mechatronic design
follows a concurrent engineering approach (Kusiak,
1991). These technical changes will generate a need
of tight collaboration between design actors.
Following a concurrent engineering approach
various professional corps participate to a common
objective in collaboration with life cycle actors in
the design activity.
Theses collaborations bring a need of
information flow identification. Thus, to map the
impacts on each organisational actors activity. We
describe in the next paragraph, other changes due to
the implementation of embedded technology
SMMART.
2.1.2 Potential Changes: Maintenance Usage
Data in Design Process
Considering the normal product lifecycle industrial
loop, we focus our study on the potential added-
value of the feedback from maintenance process to
design process.
The SMMART embedded technology enables to
have information about the functioning cycle of
engines in real time. This real time system will
provide more precise previsions enabling better
reactivity to anticipate and face the various failures.
Thus improving customer satisfaction linked to
reparation effectiveness. In the scope of developing
predictive maintenance the product failures data are
merged and redesigned possibilities are considered
to improve product reliability. This operation
demands a tight collaboration between the
maintenance stakeholders and design actors to
identify the causes of events and evaluate the
threshold to launch redesign campaign. The
SMMART system brings new information in the
current process and implies new activities, new
collaboration and cooperation. To reach the
integration of this innovative system, we need to
map the impacts on each process and identify the
concerned organisational stakeholders. This
investigation will enable defining the need resources
and support for the changed activities to stabilize.
In the two previous paragraphs, we have
highlighted the needs and the potential impact
related to the SMMART technology
implementation. In the following part, we explain
the proposed model for readiness to change
assessment.
3 POTENTIAL CHANGE
MATURITY MODEL
The model organised in 3 levels is designed to
access the potential change and the organisational
readiness to theses change. It is a practical tool to
determine the prerequisites for processing from
current state to an improve level of organisational
state. Through each level a specific component of
change is tackled by a set of assessments. Level 1 is
the initial stage where the focus is the Change
Impact Mapping on system level and on team and
individual level. At this stage the As-Is
organisational state is captured through interviews
and the impacts of programmed change on processes
and organisational structure is determined. Level 2
integrates 3 models evaluating the transformation of,
information, collaboration and coordination between
the As-Is state and the To-Be state. At this stage a
consolidated picture of the programmed change
impacts (TO-Be state) on the As-Is activity structure
can be defined. The level 3 consist in measuring the
necessary technical and human resources to
transform an As-Is operating scheme. By the means
of simulations and incremental adjustments the
necessary efforts to improve the ongoing activity can
be set. Theses 3 steps allow to diagnose the
organisational variables that will evolve, the extent
to which they will change and the organisational
capacity to successfully introduce those
transformations. The figure 1 describes our
methodology to systematise potential change
identification and change capability evaluation.
3.1 Impact Mapping
It is the first step where the impacts of the
programmed change is characterised on the
organisational activity. Through interviews the
impacted processes and core competencies are
determined. Core competencies as defined by
(Hammel et al., 1990) are those capabilities that are
critical to a business, it embodies an organisation’s
collective learning, the know how of coordinating
diverse production skills and integrating multiple
technologies.
When the impacted core competencies are
revealed, the link can be made to identify the teams
and the individual competencies impacted. This step
is crucial to fix the As Is state, it fixes the body of
organisational knowledge and competencies that is
concern by the change.
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The impacted process analysis reveals the related
capability that is supported by the knowledge, skills
and abilities employed by organisational actors to
achieve the process goals and objectives. This level
allows identifying “who” the organisational roles
and functions and “what” competencies or tools,
impacted.
3.2 As-Is V/S to BE
When the As-Is situation is set the To-Be one is
designed considering all the impacted stakeholders
in the various concerned processes. The Minel’s
(2003) Cooperative Evaluation Scale (CES) is
applied to characterise the level of collaboration
between 2 professions involved in a same activity.
Useldinger’s (2002) model defining as a six point
Likert scale different levels of information is
readapted to express the level of information change
in an activity. Our investigation consists in the
mapping of collaborating professions in the spotted
impacted activities. We first carry an “As-Is”
collaboration situation, to evaluate the level of
cooperation before the change. Characterising the
degree of cooperation allows defining targets related
to change implementation. That is, when considering
2 professional corps collaborating, to determine if
the same cooperative level is to be kept after change
implementation or if it needs to be optimised. The
Minel’s (2003) CES considers 6 levels of
collaboration, described by the level of knowledge
shared by two interacting actors. The levels are as
follows: 0 stands for no knowledge shared, 1 for
common vocabulary, 2. Knowledge of concepts, 3.
Knowledge of methods, 4. Master of domain, and 5
for expert of domain. Empirical studies show that in
order to attain collaboration between two different
professions, the level 3 of the CES is required to
share a common vision of how to integrate the
constrains of the other in ones own goals. Above this
level, actors’ specialised skills affect the
cooperation. Under this level, cooperation is not
efficient and can be improved. When the result of
the “As Is” cooperation state is figured out, it has to
be linked to the evaluation of the information
changing state. This is carried out by using
Useldinger’s (2002) model where six level of
information are defined as follows: Signal, data,
information, knowledge, Skills and know-how. The
model is similar to a 6 point Likert scale
characterising (under a hierarchy) the different
levels of information throughout different
formalized schemes. The collaborating actors have
to define in common the level of information
Level 3
Effort for change
evaluation
Simulation of new
structured
coordinated
activity system
Performance
evaluation and
adjustments
Level 2
(As-Is v/s To Be)
Collaboration
transformation
evaluation model
S.Minel
Information
transformation
evaluation scale of
Useldinger
Graphic review of
transformed
coordination
Level 1
Impacts mapping
on processes
Identification
of impacted core
competencies
Identification of
impacted team
and individual
competencies
Figure 2: Potential change capability maturity model (O.Zephir 2006).
SUPPLY CHAIN IMPROVEMENT - Assessing Readiness for Change trough Collaboration Evaluation
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changing in their activities. Defining that, allows
evaluating to what extent the activity is changing,
from the form of data or structure to competencies
and know-how. Having those information
collaborating actors are able to redefine their
common activities, and also to state the needed
resources, effort and support they need to
collaborate under a new operating scheme. A similar
evaluation is applied to evaluate coordination
evolution from the As-Is to the To-Be situation there
is no particular method applied here, but and
indication on each described collaboration activity.
3.3 Effort for Change Evaluation
This last step is design to indicate for each
transformed activity spotted in the level two, the
necessary human and technical resources to deliver a
constant process. Once the extent to which activity is
being transformed is fixed, as referred in CMM
models, simulations are programmed to evaluate the
needed documentation, management and control to
reach continuous process improvement through
readjustments. The prerequisite skills, knowledge,
practices and tools to ensure compliance with the
corporate procedures and process are fixed at this
level. We estimate that readiness for change is
reached when technical and human capability is
estimated in relation to a define service level with
improvement possibilities. Readiness means here the
organisational capacity to incorporate new business
processes and mastering there possible evolution.
Referring to ADESI Specific Action (2004) we
consider that the ability to answer to actual industrial
stakes such as constant change, an integration of
methods considering both human and technological
dimensions is crucial.
4 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE
WORKS
We have resumed in this article the potential change
that the SMMART project can generate in the
maintenance activity. The main issue for MRO
organisations is to decrease maintenance time so as
to maximize operation time. The SMMART concept
is a technological enabler that has to be integrated in
existing organisations to improve proactive
maintenance capabilities. The organisational impacts
are plural regrouping maintenance logistics and
design process. We proposed a potential change
capability maturity model which provides a practical
framework to estimate the change project
progression. Our next issue is to elaborate a strong
simulation method so as provide reliable human
capability evaluation. We still have to set the
adequate method base on empirical researches
analysis and strong theory evaluation. Our main
focus trough this article was to present a practical
model enabling the evaluation of technological
change impacts on human and technical structure for
new technology introduction. Our investigations aim
at conciliating human and technical factors for
optimal process design.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We thank Lionel Lautier from Turbomeca and Juan
Izeta Yurrita from MIK MCC for their contributions.
This Work has been carried out within the
SMMART (System for Mobile Maintenance
Accessible in Real Time) project that received
funding from the European Community FP6.
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