Teams vs Collaboration: What are the effect on Capabilities Required from a Operational System?

As discussed on many occasions the ability to harness the operational team in a well aligned, action orientated and decision in the NOW team is key to having an agile operational business. It became aware to me that not everyone was on the same page as to what capabilities are required in the “operational/ automation system” to achieve this effective team.

One person talked about collaboration services, and I asked " what did capabilities did he include in this? " The answer was “Skype like capabilities the ability to speak, chat easily with another member”.

Certainly this is not what I had in mind, and therefore I thought it worth a discussion:

 Key with an aligned team is:

1/ Team awareness: requiring that the state, availability and easily understanding the skills of the team around me at any moment so I can filter to a set of team members whom a have a certain skill and are available, no matter their location. As a local worker feel empowered to engage with experts for advice in making timely decisions.

 

2/Natural communication: It is not hard to communicate, I do not have to look up a number, just click and either chat, email, voice etc. The ability to set up team, multi user meetings to discuss a point and I am on plant, this is quick and natural from within the application.

 

3/ The ability to share links, information with notes etc: to be able to ad hoc analysis, identify a situation of interest, add some notes and share with someone else or a team to discuss all in one to two key strokes is crucial. An example Google Documents provides this collaboration powerfully, but to add to this to snapshot of a current plant screen, trend tool and evolve. Providing views to allow fellow team members to get to the same view quickly, applying their skills in a collaboration of skills in real-time in a virtual world.

 

4/ The ability capture events and notes: so that actions and situation of an event are automatically and manually captured to allow use by other following teams. Eliminating time for searching for materials and waiting for response, the system has the information and in an easily well structured format for consumption.

 

5/ The ability to manage tasks: work items with knowledge between the teams, people and across skill sets with efficiency and drive towards resolution as fast as possible. The work item is set up automatically, or on request from a worker and associated operational practices are associated with it, with the item execution tracked until resolution. Avoiding losing items between teams.  

 

6/ Knowledge sharing and capture: so that teams are able to be fluid across sites and tasks, drawing upon existing knowledge and expertise with ease. As users solve problems or resolve work items, the capture of data and resolution methods easily for later use. Users can add knowledge and information on the fly, capturing notes, situations, photos etc easily, so it is a natural part of a days actions not and exception. The promotion of “crowd sourcing” by a user being able to search and see topics and then contribute and extend easily.

All of these are facets of “team” system capabilities, enabling and effective interaction and transition between and across teams and members within a team. The boundaries of departments and locations are removed enabling timely decisions and actions. All of the capabilities while available in different forms today, but the modern operational/ automation system will naturally accommodate these within the environments in the near future. Key is for companies and engineering houses to bring team collaboration into their design of a system, as well as culture the leading companies are seriously focusing on this area today as the next significant step in operational effectiveness.