Our firm has long had the privilege of documenting American manufacturing innovation in the course of producing customer testimonials for Siemens and other technology clients. These articles and videos have in the main reported the application of emerging motion control technologies to next-generation machine designs. Along the way, we’ve interviewed dozens of titles ranging from CEOs to machinists, across many sizes of companies, and they share a common trait: These are growing, winning companies whose engineering teams are encouraged by top leadership to ask “What if…”
These are also companies with higher expectations -- of everyone.
When you interview these manufacturing professionals, they convey an understanding of collective purpose, because their leaders have worked to build brand identity; and that identity is guiding employee performance, helping the organization to cash in on market opportunities. For these American manufacturers, things ARE getting better. The glass IS half full -- and it’s rising! These are companies that are building winning teams at every level and within every discipline, whether your job is engineering, sales -- or dare we say, IT.
Yes, IT – a discipline potentially as innovative as design engineering, IT must get on board if American manufacturing is going to really hit its stride. But here again, such change is dependent on leadership. Ten years from now, the best-led companies will boast IT efforts that move beyond information security management and infrastructure maintenance. Among the best-led manufacturing firms of the future, IT will be vitally supportive of brand building, marketing, sales and customer relationship management.
In other words, IT leadership has a long way to go.
Information Week recently published their first-ever “IT Spending Priorities Survey”. You can get the full report free with registration at informationweek.com/reports/itspending
One of the findings was that the CIOs surveyed were mainly concerned about getting more money to improve security, increase server virtualization and to pay for network infrastructure upgrades. In contrast, endeavors related to the larger purpose of the organization -- that of creating and keeping customers, were below the CIOs’ radar. For example, only 2% of them mentioned the need to upgrade or launch an enterprise social networking platform in the coming year.
Among better-led American manufacturers, you can bet IT will be expected to do more in the coming year as their companies collectively will their way out of this recession.
You can bet IT will be challenged to vitally contribute to the endeavors of engineering, manufacturing, branding, marketing, selling, and customer relationship management. As this happens, the objectives of IT will move beyond improved information security, increased server virtualization, and the upgrading of everyone’s laptops to Microsoft Office version 2010, which includes SharePoint.
As though SharePoint can suffice for leadership, higher expectations, real innovation, and organizational change.
jb
www.centrifuge-now.com
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