The importance of Change Management Solutions

The Importance of Change Management Solutions for Manufacturing and Regulated Industries

Discussions of change management oen focus on IT operations, but there are many business pro- cesses and functions in which organizations can gain agility and stability by implementing a change management solution. This requirement is clear in many industries such as manufacturing and regulat- ed industries, where information and operations technologies oen interact in ways that create unique challenges. Fortunately, an enterprise-class change management solution can be used for all function- al areas in an organization. This ensures that company-wide standards and coordinated control and planning, along with department-level needs, can be met with a single collaborative solution.

In manufacturing, there are four standout ways that change management solutions can really pay dividends in areas outside of traditional IT operations.

According to Gartner, a staggering 80% of business outages are caused by poor change management.

1. INTEGRATING IT AND OPERATIONS

Today most aspects of manufacturing require highly specialized operations technologies (OT) to gather data from, or send information to, IT systems. The network and the systems controlling manufacturing processes and the movement of products are mission-critical. As such, changes to the IT configuration can have an impact on machinery, automation and control networks, specialized equipment, or other manufacturing tools. Poor change management can create outages or disrupt operations, aecting production

A properly implemented change management solution can map the impact of changes, enable risk analysis, coordinate the steps and review the plan. Coordinating the eort across stakeholders, identifying their roles and procedures preparing for the change is critical. This includes identifying the point for a go/no decision, coordinating their tasks, and informing stakeholders during the change. This is particular- ly important to activate the recovery plan and steps if anything goes wrong.

The result: Complex manufacturing operations are positioned to maintain smooth operations and reduce risk

2. DEALING WITH FACILITY CONCERNS

Facility maintenance teams play an integral role in industrial operations. A problem with the facility can lead to out-of-tolerance temperature, water or steam pressure, air filtration or flow, radio, and baery or other power conditions or related failures. The result can be equipment that is rendered useless or destroyed, creating potentially hazardous work conditions, all of which may aect productivity or create stoppage.

For facility teams, managing day-to-day maintenance operations can be a challenging task. This alone can be enough to require a specialized maintenance system, but the problem is accentuated when emergency situations emerge, and sudden repairs become necessary. As such, if emergency facility repairs are needed, an emergency change request can be triggered to quickly and eectively alert or even shutdown vulnerable systems and operations gracefully avoiding damage, product WIP losses, and the ability to restart operations in a quick and orderly fashion.

The result: Even in the case of an emergency, a plan and communication structure will ensure risks are minimized, losses are prevented, and equipment damage is avoided to restore operations as quickly as possible.

3. AUTOMATING PROCESSES

Business processes determine how eciently an organization operates. This is especially true when it comes to exception-based changes, out of tolerance quality issues, or special runs required due to spec or order changes. In these situations, changing the setup, flow and transitioning tasks, rework, or trans- ferring WIP product between groups oen leads to manual processing and dysfunction. In manufacturing, dierent departments are interdependent. This means that one organization group will frequently need to communicate with other teams when an action has been performed, and most importantly when a task or stage has created an exception processing. These types of exceptions require additional and oen more precise communications and management of tasks between dierent work silos. Automating these exception-based changes can lead to incredible eciency gains for just about any organization, but particularly for businesses in sectors like manufacturing that depend heavily on coordinated operations between dierent teams.

The result: Dynamic situations requiring agility and exception workflow can be done eciently and with far less disruption to operations.

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4. DEALING WITH EQUIPMENT WITH SPECIALIZED MAINTENANCE SCHEDULES

Many manufacturers depend on specialized machinery engineered to precision standards requiring highly specific maintenance processes. These preventative maintenance schedules vary by equipment type, manufacturer, duty cycles and service factors, requiring specialized skills. Organizations that depend on such systems must construct oen-complicated maintenance schedules to ensure repairs and other operations are completed on time and before machines experience unnecessary wear and tear or outages.

A change management platform can enable organizations to align their various equipment maintenanceeorts to avoid damage and ensure operations always continue at peak capacity. This can prove dicult as maintenance tasks must be completed at optimal times based on production cycles and coordinated with outside resources including parts suppliers and vendor equipment techs.

Today manufacturers work in high tech environments which creates a variety of unique disparate challenges. Change management soware can play a key role in enabling industrial organizations to align IT, operations technology, facility, vendor support and machinery-related processes.

The result: Complex manufacturing operations are positioned to maintain smooth operations and reduce risk.

Summary:

In summary, ChangeGear is a full ITSM platform that was founded on enterprise-class Change Management. It serves as your central repository for all change requests, automating workflows, hierarchical approvals, and detailed reporting. Ask to speak with a Serviceaide solution expert today. We can share use cases across manufacturing and other industries to align best practices for your environment. Explore why ChangeGear is a robust changement management solution for high performing business and IT organizations.

ABOUT SERVICEAIDE

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