OT: Communication, between manufacturing plants

geniusintraining

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How many of you out there have sister companies? How do you converse with them? Do you ?

I am trying to put together a ‘team’ with several engineers and technicians from our sister companies world wide, but specifically the US

We make the same products and use similar if not exactly the same equipment, but I would like to share ideas and support each other, support from the manufactures (ours) are terrible at best, they are all on the other side of the pond and are allways on holiday...

Do any of you do this? Does it work? And how do you communicate?


To all: What are some of your ideas?
I have thought of a website and emails…maybe a news letter?

PS: I have the big cheeses blessing to do this
 
Hi GIT,
We normally achieve this using net meetings and our companys dedicated Intranet for projects,However information sharing seems to one way at the moment!

Hope this helps
 
If you have corporate intranet, why not set up a discussion forum using a bulletin board software. Up until just recently, the facility I work at was partly owned by a large multinational, that had amny similar facilities. The process control group was setting up just such a board. Unfortauntely a change in ownership at our facility meant I lost access. It looked like it would have been a great way to share ideas.
 
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The company I work for not only has several sister companies, but also several divisions and locations. We have a marine engineering department that produces designs for customers and shipyards around the world. We also have our own shipyard, that not only produces designs from the main engineering headquarters, but also has a local engineering group that sometimes "competes" with main engineering for design ideas. We also have sister companies that we sub-contract certain design portions, who also produce similar designs and products for other customers. Our parent company is one of our primary customers, and they have an engineering group as well that likes to get involved in design decisions.

I previously worked at the shipyard doing "field engineering", and have recently been promoted to main engineering at corporate headquarters. Believe me, communication among the engineers in this company is a horrifically tangled mess. There are not even consistent design standards common to the different locations and departments. And worse yet, the system for releasing and approving designs into production is unbelieveably complex and beaurocratic. Making a change around here is like trying to turn the Titanic.

There are some good things, like shared intranet servers where most designs are kept, but few people acutally utilize this. I'm trying to be pro-active about working with other groups, especially within my own company. I will even go so far as to do work for other departments, if in the future I might possibly use an aspect of that design or product.

I'm lucky that in my new position, I'm close to the top level of engineering, so I have pretty good access to information and people. One of the keys is having clearly defined goals, responsibilities, and tasks. This is the job ultimately of the division VP, but I try to personally keep myself well organized. And since I know exactly who and how my work will impact other departments, I take the first step to establish communication and keep everyone in the loop....by sharing ideas and soliciting suggestions.

Hopefully things will continue to get better. The more we work together, the more efficient our company will be.

Teamwork is the key.

$
 
Thanks for the replies

Efficiently is what im after, I have a lot of experience on a new large process that they are getting and they have a lot on my new one as well, over the last 13yrs I have learned (the hard way) about these machines, we are the same company…so I would like to help them in return I need help, these are large processes but the learning curve can and should be drastically reduced if we collaborate the ideas.

We are basically 3 companies that have merged and have merged our processes

I am looking forward to more ideas...thanks
 
We have 4 plants here in the US, and communication used to be sketchy at best. Our corporate headquarters assigned a couple of engineers who's only job was to look at the different plants, and pick out the best features of the different plants, and help ensure that these features were implemented across the board. As part of this process, each plant had a couple of people join the "team", and every six months a different plant would host a meeting, with all team members attending. This continued for about three years.

Now, we have people in every plant who knows someone in the other plants, and communication is much better. We have a decent idea who to ask questions, and people on the other end actually feel guilty if they don't get back to us in a timely fashion. :)
 
GIT,

I work in a pretty big company, we have 6 North American plant and many more South American and Asian. We have tried many things, including sharepoint, web pages, newsletters, conferences, training, and more. It all boils to each individual person and how well all their managers support this. The best thing that I found is actually going to the other plants and meeting the other engineers and looking at what they do (genba genbutsu). From there, it is more of a personal effort for you and the other engineer to communicate.

No matter what, this will all seem to take a back seat when the projects start to pile up and the production starts to back up. It is very easy to forget to share the knowledge when you find the small "fixes" or improvements. If you nor the others have to time to just talk to each other, then all the other fancy stuff (like sharepoint, webpages, newsletters) won't get done either. I do wish you luck and hope you share what you find works best with all of us.
 
brucechase said:
...hope you share what you find works best with all of us...

FYI...Thanks for the replies

I developed a website and sent a corporate wide e-mail, I got some praise from the higher up's and a few good responses from a few colleges but still not the response that I had hope for.

I thought sharing would be a good idea. I am the type that will show you my cards and still try to win the hand because I enjoy it... it seems that most are not interested in showing what they have accomplished or proud of there achievements, I have not given up yet and will keep everyone interested up dated on any progress
 
I once worked for a company that would get everyone together once a year primarily for this purpose, however, it usually turned into a sales pitch because they would invite vendors to come in and put on presentations on their equipment, and the guys doing the presentations were usually sales people. Often they would bring a tech or engineer with them and you could pick their brain between presentations.


Otherwise, the majority of the idea 'sharing' came at the end of the day when we were all sitting around having a few beers. So, my suggestion would be to get everyone together once in awhile over a couple beers, let them build relationships and share knowledge (hopefully they remember what they learn, not too many beers) Then, when someone has an idea or a problem, they aren't afraid to pick up the phone or send an email to someone in a sister plant to bounce ideas off of.
 
All of our plants are connected by a T1 connection. We use Lotus Notes.
Everyone from the CEO to the Janitor is on there. Every location also
has multiple servers (microsoft network, INSQL, Linx server etc.)
works really well, plus connection out to the internet.
 
Generaly the way we do it is the guy who built the wiget goes and installs it. This way he can get one on one with the guys who are going to be running it. Most everything I do now I try to network so if there is a problem I can go online with the machine and look around. Like other have said it really depends on the people you are dealing with. Conference calling with web cast has been real helpful in the past and we continue to use it.
 
GIT..this may sound silly but try a forum just as you are in..if you look into it a forum dosent cost that much..you can purchase or rent the code..then you can different forums for different machines..if you relay want to make it a "throw your ideas into the pot" then make it a username forum..that way people can hide under a different name for there ideas..you would supprised at the amout of good ideas that go to waste becouse someone was afraid of scorn from there peers
 

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