APICS Southwest District Meeting

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APICSSouthwest District Meeting

• Fostering Chapter Collaboration through Best
  Practices

Doug Howardell San Gabriel Valley
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Coming together is a beginning keeping together
is progress working together is success. -
Henry Ford

• District meetings are where we have traditionally
  come together
• But between quarterly meetings
• Do we keep together?
• Do we work together?

Are we all succeeding?
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Our Challenge

• Some chapters are very good at
• Education
• PDMs
• Increasing membership
• Relationships
• Some chapters have
• Large boards
• Experienced boards
• No chapter is perfect
• We can all learn from each other

All chapters can benefit from greater
collaboration
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My Proposal
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful,
committed people can change the world. Indeed, it
is the only thing that ever has. - Margaret Mead

• Create a way to facilitate chapter collaboration
  between district meetings
• Have chapters create share best practices
• Foster knowledge sharing between chapters

Knowledge is sticky Without a systematic process
and supporting environment, it wont move.
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Collaboration is About Connections and Results
Results

• Decrease time to competence
• Make better, faster decisions
• Improve motivation
• Reduce cost
• Improve performance
• Increase efficiency

People to information
People to Processes
People to People
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Communities of Practice
Groups of people who come together to share and
to learn from one another face-to-face and
virtually. They are held together by a common
purpose they contribute to a body of knowledge
and are driven by a desire and need to share
problems, experiences, insights, templates,
tools, and best practices. Community members
deepen their knowledge by interacting on an
ongoing basis.
APQC Building and Sustaining Communities of
Practice with Richard McDermott
Communities of Practice
Program Management
Product Development
Patents
Supply Chain
Manufacturing
Sales and Marketing
Product
Drug A
Drug B
Drug C
Drug D
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District Communities of Practice
V.P.s Directors who come together face-to-face
and virtually to create share best practices.
They are held together by a common purpose they
contribute to a body of knowledge and are driven
by a desire and need to share problems,
experiences, insights, templates, tools, and best
practices. Community members deepen their
knowledge by interacting on an ongoing basis.
Communities of Practice
Anaheim Chapter
Los Angeles Chapter
Tucson Chapter
Las Vegas Chapter
San Diego Chapter
Ventura Chapter
Product
CPIM
PDM
Membership
Marketing
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Whats in it for participants?

• A sounding board of mentors and experts
• Quicker, more efficient access to proven tools
  that can be applied to your efforts
• Attract, develop retain talent
• Network with experts
• Mentor, shorten learning curve
• Improve overall quality efficiency
• Re-use knowledge
• Avoid duplication of effort
• Identify new products next trends
• Problem solve, innovate train
• Identify intellectual property opportunities

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Information via Technology

• Real Time Interaction
• Conference calls
• Virtual meetings
• CoP Community Site
• Roster of CoP members
• E-mail
• Post and share documents (collaborative space)
• Taxonomy of commonly used categories
• Search function by object, subject, full text

Problems can become opportunities when the right
people come together. - Robert South
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10 Traits of Successful CoPs

• A compelling, clear business value proposition
  for all involved
• A dedicated, skilled facilitator or leader
• A coherent, comprehensive knowledge map for the
  core content of the CoP
• An outlined, easy-to-follow knowledge sharing
  process
• An appropriate technology medium that facilitates
  knowledge exchange, retrieval, and collaboration
• Communication and training plans for members and
  others outside of the CoP
• An updated, dynamic roster of CoP members
• An agenda of critical topics to cover for the
  first three to six months of existence
• Several key metrics of success to show business
  results
• A recognition plan for participants

Wesley Vestal, Ten Traits of Successful
Communities of Practice,KM Review, January 2003
Alone we can do so little together we can do so
much. Helen Keller
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What does success look like?

• Enthusiastic participation in CoPs
• Well-networked team of professionals
• Demonstrated progress against benchmark data
• Increased member satisfaction and volunteer
  retention
• Increased revenue or lower operating costs
  through shared knowledge
• Meet targeted goals

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Next Steps

• Human beings, who are almost unique in having
  the ability to learn from the experience of
  others, are also remarkable for their apparent
  disinclination to do so. - Douglas Adams
• Agree we want to
• Increase chapter collaboration
• Create share best practices for important
  disciplines
• Share knowledge between chapters
• Define where we want to start
• Define initial members

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Potential Topics

• Education
• CPIM Courses
• Fundamentals
• CSCP
• Lean
• In-house
• Instructor training
• Membership
• Attraction
• Retention

• Board management
• Attraction
• Development
• Finance
• Programs
• Company coordinators
• Student chapters
• Marketing/Web sites

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Design Framework for KM Approaches
Result
Tactical Sustain Phase
Linkage to business results and continuous
improvement
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Phasing the Rollout of KM
Near Term (3 mos)
Medium Term (4-12 mos)
Long Term (12-18 mos)

• Recommendation
• Briefing and gaining visible executive support
  for pilot areas.
• Identify resources, tools, skills to design
  pilots
• Identify design team for VM CoP super users group
• Knowledge map for appropriate AAR resources with
  Deloitte/ RMS blueprint knowledge
• Identify roles, resources, and technology needs
  for SAP KM implementation to support pilots
• Outline measurement scheme and key metrics for
  each pilot
• Implement and launch pilots

• Recommendation
• Modify and implement AAR/LL process for all
  implementation projects
• Develop to-be self service tools for overall
  implementation
• Create and implement standard best practice
  replication process.
• Identify next opportunities for KM implementation
• Track and measure pilots
• Communication plan and implementation about KM
  pilot (and program) progress
• Expand and support pilot efforts to other
  relevant areas.

• Recommendation
• Track and measure pilots
• Assess health of KM efforts and pilots
• Full portfolio of knowledge management approaches
  to support all aspects of SAP and strategic
  enabler implementation
• Performance evaluation language around K-sharing
  and reuse.