Top Down vs Bottom up Techniques in Manufacturing..The debate continues-2
Previous post: Top Down vs Bottom-up Techniques in Manufacturing… The debate continues
While identifying areas for standardization during implementation is relatively easier to achieve, it is difficult to define and implement acceptable standards for identified business processes. The degree of differentiation in the business process - identified for standardization, across the entities implementing the process could vary. This calls for an assessment to determine the approach to standardization. A high degree of differentiation will require a phased approach to standardization. This phased approach involves defining the standard process, acceptable limits for differentiation from the standard and a plan to converge from the variants of the standard to the standard process over a period of time.
A Package Enabled Business Transformation exercise is suggested to derive the first iteration of the To Be Process enabling maximum utilization of the underlying package processes. Multiple iterations for the To Be process are carried out over a period of time within the limits of acceptable change to ensure the balance between common and global processes. This can be very well managed by highly sophisticated ERP packages - most of them now support integration of best-of-breed software for each area through robust middleware integration like BPEL in Oracle and NetWeaver in SAP.
A commitment to process standardization need not always be achieved at the cost of customization. It is important to accept the inevitability of customization in a global implementation to account for regional and legal requirements. As stated earlier, a compromise on customization for the purpose of standardization will surely affect the acceptance and usage of the implemented system. It is extremely important to analyze the impact of the customizations since it has a one-time impact during the implementation but has a continuous impact in terms of maintainability.
For some organizations, the instilling discipline into the process has posed to be a greater challenge than standardizing the process itself. It has been observed that individuals who knew how to beat the system have been most effective in the legacy environment. This is a near impossible task with ERP implementation after an analysis of several post-implementation scenarios and looking into the complaints raised by users about the additional time taken to process transactions and the ERP implementations not living up to the commitment of improving cycle time, closing time and fulfillment time. In order to effectively reap the benefits of standardization, the top down approach helps where all employees need to be in line with future objectives for which the standardization was done.
