MA spoke about collaboration with Benjamin Friedman, research manager, product lifecycle strategies, at Manufacturing Insights, an IDC company. Q: How do you define "collaboration" in manufacturing? A: We define collaboration as the next step in the knowledge management narrative, in that the use of collaboration tools, including chat and wikis, is the new way to maximize corporate intellectual property. Manufacturers are starting to set up their own Wikipedia-like sites and also encouraging the use of tools such as instant messaging (IM), SMS, and presence, which in the past were viewed as distractions and discouraged. Now we're starting to see an uptake in the use of these, predicated on the fact that people need to capture expert knowledge as the existing workforce shrinks. A collaborative platform also lends itself to the way the emerging workforce shares information. Q: Where do Web 2.0 and social networking tools stand between experimentation and serious business usage? A: The release of the U.S. Department of Defense's Techipedia wiki in October 2008 is [evidence] that the most serious organizations are behind this type of technology. The idea that in-field experiences are going to be useful and should be shared in a free-form environment speaks volumes to the seriousness of the toolset being used. Q: What are the top three business drivers behind collaboration efforts? A: One is that the manufacturing workforce is aging, and that the ingress and egress of knowledge don't match, so hopefully the departing workforce will use these tools to impart their knowledge to the emerging workforce. Another thing is that the infrastructure is reliable enough to run these types of tools on. It's also more cost-beneficial to use these tools to diagnose a problem remotely, or have a customer help themselves if it's an external type of tool, as opposed to sending a technician out. The idea that you can use Web 2.0 technologies to minimize the cost associated with service fleets is a powerful one. Third, as manufacturing companies have less cash capital to spend, maximizing intellectual capital becomes critical. For example, a part bought for one purpose might be used for something totally different, and collaboration tools can help companies capture and reuse that information so they're no longer re-creating something that may already exist. Q: What are the business barriers to collaboration? A: In terms of data security, many of the governance models are still immature. Getting people to contribute information, then verify that what they're contributing is valuable and actionable, and keeping that information from being used for nefarious purposes are all barriers to widespread adoption. Also, organizations in certain geographies simply don't have access to Web 2.0-type technology, although they are part of a global supply chain. Q: How important is technology in enabling collaboration? A: Technology is critical, but ease of use even more so. Because the interfaces of Web 2.0 tools are like those of IM or Facebook — things people already use in their civilian lives — they can easily be used by the entire workforce demographic, from people with a limited technical background to people who are used to working in a CAD or a PLM environment. The technology underlying what they see on their screens is presumably complex, but because the UI for the typical as well as atypical user is identical, the time to get up to speed is minimal. Q: Do you see any significant differences between large and small/medium-sized businesses in their ability to utilize collaborative technologies? A: Since Web 2.0 applications don't necessarily require an enterprise purchase and the commodity Internet infrastructure is already in place in most environments, small and large companies alike will find it's an easy adoption. Q: Where will the concept of collaboration stand three years from now? A: The idea of tying in remote service and machine-to-machine data will be the evolution of these things. Another point that speaks to the idea of communization and reuse is that SMS or IM events aren't one-time events. If someone is in the field working on a particular device or remote facility and they find and resolve an issue, they can post that issue to a community of fellow users located anywhere in the world. The idea that you can capture speed-of-thought communications, verify them, and then catalog them and make them searchable within other systems, such as ERP, I think is the next step.