BUS603: Managing People

Previous research works refer to provide flexible integration of tools for the purpose of business process and workflow process definition. In addition, with integrating individual synchronous tools such as multi-user editors and virtual whiteboards, into a process executed in a workflow management system. Other works also referred to the integration of similar technologies like the scalable middleware framework, which can support high-degree decoupling between workflow and groupware. Our main interest and proposal is focused and dedicated more in the integration of Business Intelligence (BI) using dashboard's functionality (cycle time, aging, and product inventory's levels on hold), with workflow management, and parts' tracking system's operations in a web-based IT infrastructure, to provide of a mechanism for an effective communication and collaboration for a virtual work group in a manufacturing process. The inclusion of dashboard functionality not only allows for monitoring the levels of the KPIs in order to keep process' control, but to contain issues faster within using historical information, optimize the process through analyzing and detecting bottlenecks and repeated patterns of problems that may arise. In addition, it can move forward to keep updating the system with hidden user needs obtained also from the system, and issues found within the information collected, that allows improving the overall system and process together in a continuous process improvement cycle.

A study that has been performed to analyze the current status of cooperative applications in Latin American corporations (where the company of this study is geographically located) referred that e-mail and shared data access are ranked 1/16 and 2/16 respectively, and use both by 96% of the organizations that possess some groupware tool. Meanwhile, collaborative tools are being ranked 9/16 and being use by less than 30 % of the organizations surveyed. In this same study, the average operative time has been 5 years in tools like electronic mail and information exchange utilities, while the average for collaborative tools have been 3 years. The training time of electronic mail is little more than 1.6 weeks and collaborative tools are little more than 1.2 weeks of training. Since the gap in both results (especially in popularity and years of use) are for consideration, it gives an idea of what it represents in regards to the learning curve, knowledge and experience for this initiative to shift from electronic mail to collaborative tools as proposed, and the insights obtained from this study.

By another hand, there has been reported that collaboration in the manufacturing sector is difficult to implement. It requires the parties involved to make adequate preparation including analysis on various aspects to ensure its readiness to be engaged in such a demanding relationship. In this context, this project exposes a practical case that could help (within other related works), to understand better collaboration in the business segment (EMS: electronic manufacturing services) in order to support and establish a common framework for virtual work group and web-based collaboration.

However, this study don't propose a different approach, or a new foundation for virtual team collaboration, but also it contributes performing a quantitative analysis based in historical information collected during the period of use of the prototype implemented, that it was made possible applying DWH and OLAP technologies, that acquired, integrated and transformed the data stored when using the collaboration system in multidimensional data, that allowed to obtain an overall perspective, valuable information, and knowledge, described in the results section. Therefore, it provided a method to analyze information in a deeper and faster manner from collaboration systems that could serve to obtain further insights for this and other research studies.