Virtual Technology: Creating Change

           

             Companies are now realizing the endless amount of opportunities that virtual teams can bring to a business.  Virtual teams are “teams in which members may be a great distance from each other, but still are able to collaborate intensively” using technology such as chat programs, email and video-chat.  The article “How to Manage a Virtual Project Team” discusses how this growing trend, could lead to a demand for workers that are skilled in virtual communication.  In turn, this could lead to major changes in education, businesses and employees lifestyles in general, which      

            By implementing virtual teams in a company, they can tap into various resources that otherwise would have been impossible.  Location is no longer an issue, so if there are talented individuals located across the world they can become part of the team.  Virtual teams can also help employees by enabling them to work from home, and allowing them to avoid transportation time and costs.  Without having to worry about this employees gain more family time, free time and can even save money.  Although this could cause problems too such as employees not feeling included in the company or slacking off on work which can cause major setbacks for the company.

            I think that this is a great new tool, but it is best in most cases with limited usage because I think that would equal the greatest amount of productivity.  Employees who are allowed to work at home face far too many distractions and too much freedom isn’t always good.  Although on certain days, such as in the case of inclement weather this is a great tool because the employees are safe and dont need to worry about getting to work, yet the productivity of the company is still performing up to standards.  On the other hand, in reference to communicating internationally, I think this is a great tool because the benefits are overwhelming, companies no longer need to travel internationally or deal with long distance phone calls when they can skype online in an instant.  Ultimately this growing trend has and will continue to drastically change the way business works. 

http://www.cio.com.au/article/368495/how_manage_virtual_project_team/

QFD Online

                 Quality Function Deployment is a “comprehensive process for improving the communication and coordination among engineering, marketing and manufacturing personnel.”  It helps compare what the customer wants against product attributes to help them make decisions.  Using quality function deployment a company can look at all of the potential improvement projects and then see how they will impact the different things a company needs to achieve to drive improvement within a business.  By going through a scoring matrix, and organizing them a business can see what is most important and allows them to easier prioritize what to do first. 

                QFD helps to provide a framework for the decision making, and many maintain that one of its “most valuable characteristics is its positive effect upon cross-functional communication and, through that, upon cycle time and the product/customer fit.”  QFD Online is a company who has taken these ideas and turned them into a business idea where they have developed programs to help companies easier implement quality function deployment.  They have recently announced the beta release of their online QFD software, which is browser based and allows companies to build unlimited rows and columns, sort by many different functions and allow multi-user collaboration.  The company currently offers free trials of their software and asks for feedback from customers.  I think that this is a great way to get information back on how the program is working as well as recruit companies to use it in their daily work. 

http://www.qfdonline.com/qfd-builder-online-software/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfD3oZgZN5c

Schilling, Melissa A. Strategic Management of Technological Innovation. New York: n.p., 2008.

Organizing for Innovation: India

In a recent story entitled “Enterprises en Route Growth and Innovation: Survey, published by Silicon India on October 17^th, 2010, they demonstrate how important companies in India deem innovation to be as they try to rise from the recent global recession.  During a recent survey 84 percent of executives agreed that innovation was very important to their company’s strategies.  Yet many of the survey’s respondents indicated that their “companies don’t make good use of specific tactics” and only a third said that their companies were “effective in setting formal priorities for innovation during the strategic planning process.”

This means that the degree of formalization in these firms may be what is causing them to be less successful at innovation.  According to the textbook, Strategic Management of Technological Innovation, by Melissa Schilling, “if a firm codifies all of its activities with detailed procedures, it may stifle employee creativity” and likewise if they lack structure, they can also lose employee motivation.  Many times firms found that when human and financial resources worked together the companies were able to achieve better results, so by decentralizing and spreading out who was making decisions, the outcome was more beneficial to everyone.

Almost all of the respondents thought that more organization would lead to a more innovative company if the company’s were more standardized, yet the textbook mentions that this can also be stifling.  As the solution can differ depending on the company, each would have to work to achieve the correct balance of standardization and freedom so that they would feel free to be creative, yet they also would not become careless, creating a situation where innovation fails to flourish.      

http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/Enterprises_en_route_growth_and_innovation-nid-72754-cid-3.html

Outsourcing Effects on American Business

              Outsourcing, which is “when a firm hires another firm to manufacture its products,” has been increasing rapidly in the last 20 years.  There are many effects of outsourcing which can be both positive and negative so companies must think carefully before they choose to outsource.  Some positive effects of American Businesses outsourcing include cost savings, access to operational expertise, a reduction in the time to market, tax benefits and many more.  Yet there are also some negative effects such as decreased data protection, different time zones and heavy internet reliance.   

            According to a prediction by Forrester Research, “despite the fact that only 60 percent of Fortune 1000 companies have yet begun off-shoring, over the next 15 years 3.3 million U.S. service-industry jobs and $136 billion in wages will be relocated abroad.”  This could well be true and the effects of this on the American Economy as well as foreign countries’ economies will be tremendous.  There could be numerous jobs that could potentially be outsourced, which could increase profits dramatically for companies, yet there are bound to be problems that surface as well.

Boeing, who was set to release their 787 Dreamliner, ran into all sorts of problems when they decided to outsource.  Their approach was intended to result in a simpler assembly line as well as reduce final assembly time from 12 days to 3 days, yet they encountered major setbacks when their global contractors did not perform as expected.  They ran into problems concerning language barriers such as directions written in Italian and many of the companies they outsourced to decided to outsource the work to even smaller companies.  This resulted in parts being manufactured in over 15 different locations in 10 countries.  Currently the planes release has been delayed till early 2011.

This exemplifies the negative effects that outsourcing can have on a company if it is not done right.  Boeing stretched themselves too thin, and with manufacturing so spread out it is not too surprising that they encountered problems.  If other companies learn one thing from this, I think that they need to realize that communication is one of the most important things that they must have with the businesses that they are collaborating with.  If they are unable to communicate effectively, then their chances of being successful are significantly slimmer.   

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v88S5sYzHjI