Engineers, IT unite for success

If a company wants to succeed today it needs all departments to join forces to capitalize on all strengths and eliminate any weaknesses.
Just ask Rob Schlafer, director of engineering, PepsiAmericas. The second largest Pepsi bottler in the world, the company’s mission was to be the best suppler of fun food and products in the world.
“Convergence for us was supported by IT,” Schlafer said during the Manufacturing Perspectives event at Rockwell Automation’s Automation Fair in Nashville, Tenn. “Our organization is designed where there is a gatekeeper between our organization and IT.”
The company also wanted to achieve greater profitability and sustainability.
“If we can utilize our technology to become more predictable, it will continue to make us more profitable,” Schlafer said.
Jim Wetzel, director, control and information systems, General Mills, agreed. His company has been at the convergence thing since 1994, only they didn’t call it convergence. They just did it.
“We adopted IS standards in 1994 and in 1996 we formed a new department and integrated IT and engineering. In 2001, engineering had a seat at the IS table.”
That meant the company was on its way to standardizing across the board.
“At General Mills we believe in the power of one. When it gets to business processes we standardize as one. The business demanded it and the technology enabled it,” he said.
Open systems were also a major part of the equation.
“Common off the shelf products helped out,” Wetzel said. “That meant all people were using the same technology. Our challenge was to educate our IT friends what mission critical meant.”