Global Engineering – “Develop anywhere and Manufacture anywhere”
“Another aerospace company has set up a virtual engineering center at Infosys facilities in India. The relationship expanded from 15 Infosys engineers on a single project to a team of 220 four years later that are used on multiple programs. Management of design collaboration between the companies includes three team components. The customer has an outsourcing director that oversees their project leads and teams. Infosys then provides an on-site engagement manager that oversees the on-site Infosys team. Finally, there is an offshore team in the engineering center with its own leadership and program managers.
Flexible engineering capacity is the main goal for creating this engineering center, and the re-use of trained resources across programs makes the company more productive. The teams support design activities, including structural design and analysis and knowledge-based engineering. For manufacturing, they support tool design and methods development.”
Source: Develop and Manufacture Anywhere To Reach Global Markets and Optimize Product Supply Networks, Tuesday, August 04, 2009, Michael Burkett, AMR Research Inc.,
Even today, many organizations believe that Global Engineering is about ‘engineering off-shoring’ and the primary focus is to reduce costs through labor arbitrage. But this is NOT the case. The real benefit of global engineering comes from breaking down and distributing large complex tasks. Global engineering allows organizations to innovate better through access to a vast pool of global talent, which ultimately results in overall program effectiveness.
By demystifying Global Engineering, many leading organizations realize reduction in Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) that is many times higher than the mere labor arbitrage benefits. On the other hand, unfortunately, many global engineering initiatives fail due to the excess focus on labor arbitrage benefits. Some of the key factors organizations should focus on to be successful with their Global Engineering journey are:
· Strategy alignment and well defined road map definition
· Measurable performance milestones and Key Performance Indicators (KPI)
· Focusing on continuous value ascendency and innovation
· Openness to re-engineer legacy processes and methodologies
· Encouraging cross-pollination of ideas from multi-industry backgrounds
· Leveraging lean engineering practices for effective and efficient Global Engineering
Let us know your views…
Comments
Absolutely Val. Unless organizations focus and demand impact on their products through global engineering, they are not going to achieve it. It is also equally important that the Engineering Service Providers guide their customers towards achieving value ascendency (*not just labor arbitrage*) through their global engineering best practices.
Posted by: Muthuvelan ST | September 29, 2009 4:54 AM