Engineering Intelligence - Special Edition - May 2017

UNLOCK TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE: Addressing the Energy Industry Knowledge & Experience Gap

SUMMER 2017

IHS.COM

FINDING

NEXT GENERATION RESEARCH TOOLS

answers

In A Universe Of Informationi

Address the knowledge crisis in the technical enterprise.

INFORMATION ACCESS FOR THE ST 21 CENTURY The digital revolution in engineering information.

5 WAYS TO BECOME AN INNOVATION LEADER

Fresh new content daily at SDCEXEC.COM

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NOW AVAILABLE

Engineering Workbench™

by IHS Markit

Your single point of access to the engineering content and tools needed to advance innovation, maximize productivity, and reduce risk Leading organizations across industries turn to IHS Markit to ensure that their engineers achieve on-time, on-budget delivery of complex, capital-intensive projects and new products.

Engineering Workbench is an engineering intelligence solution that combines essential information for the technical enterprise with cutting-edge knowledge discovery technology and content analytics. It solves the ‘information overload’ challenge by providing a powerful yet intuitive user interface that surfaces answers from the universe of technical knowledge residing both inside and outside the organization.

Beyond Information, Engineering Intelligence

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05

Summer 2017 | SPECIAL ISSUE

CONTENTS

Engineering Workbench™

FEATURE

05 Unlock

Technical Knowledge to Address the Energy Industry Knowledge & Experience Gap

by IHS Markit

Strategies to reduce project delays, minimize risk and prevent knowledge loss.

Your single point of access to the engineering content and tools needed to advance innovation, maximize productivity, and11 reduceEXECUTIVE risk

FOCUS

Leading organizations across industries turn to IHS Markit to ensure that their Nextengineers achieve on-time, on-budget delivery of complex, capital-intensive projects Generation and new products.

08

Research

08

14 Cybersecurity in Product Design: Chasing the Threat

Navigate the vast and dynamic technology and information landscape.

18 5 Ways to

Become an Innovation Leader

Embed the art and science of innovation within your organization.

21 Embracing

Change as a Competitive Advantage

Engineering Workbench is an engineering intelligence solutionTools that combines in theessential information for the technical enterprise with cutting-edge knowledge discovery technology Engineering and content analytics. It solves the ‘information overload’ challenge by providing a powerful Workplace yet intuitive user interface that surfaces answers from the universe of technical Addressing the knowledge residing both inside and outside the organization. knowledge crisis in the technical enterprise.

Beyond Information, Engineering Intelligence 11 Information

Access for 21st Century Engineering

21

The digital revolution in engineering information.

Infuse knowledge into your change and configuration management process.

23 The Innovation Mandate

Are you keeping pace?

COLUMN

04 EXECUTIVE MEMO Information Overload

14 IHS.COM

BEYOND INFORMATION, ENGINEERING INTELLIGENCE

For more information and insights on engineering and product design, subscribe to the Engineering Intelligence Info Hub to track new developments and anticipate future trends in engineering intelligence.

AVAILABLE NOW

Learn more at ihs.com/EWB or Customer Care at 1-800-IHS-CARE Visitcontact www.ihs.com/EI

143454188-TS-0317

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SPECIAL EDITION | Summer 2017 | ENGINEERING INTELLIGENCE REVIEW

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EXECUTIVE MEMO

By Lara L. Sowinski, Editorial Director lsowinski@ACBusinessMedia.com

Published by AC Business Media Inc. 201 N. Main Street, Fort Atkinson, WI 53538 (800) 538-5544 • www.ACBusinessMedia.com

www.SDCExec.com

information

OVERLOAD

I

nformation overload is the ahead of the competition, getting closer to universal lament for many today, customers and harnessing the power of fastfrom the business world to evolving technologies. At the same time, academia and beyond. Engineers risk is a top consideration for engineers. are no exception, and indeed, are among For example, cybersecurity threats present those who feel the effects of information a myriad of risks that engineers must overload most profoundly. not only contend with, but anticipate Research reveals that engineers spend before they even occur. Meanwhile, the up to 40 percent of their time searching engineering workforce is undergoing for information, accessing an average of 13 changes. Baby boomers are retiring different data sources—each with their own while younger engineers are entering the entry point/log-in—to get workforce. Retaining best the information they need practices and so-called For engineers, to complete projects. tribal knowledge while knowledge capture, The impact of accommodating and information overload, as access and re-use adapting to new ways of counterproductive as it accessing information is improves efficiencies, essential to overall success. is to an engineer’s time and work, has a cascading accelerates research, In the following pages, effect for organizations we explore these and and drives innovation. other challenges facing and the engineering community at large, creating a drag on the engineering community, and most the timely launch of products, wasting importantly, provide solutions to these R&D funds, and producing unnecessary challenges. For example, we’ll show you and avoidable bottlenecks. how to address the knowledge crisis head According to IHS Markit, “The ability on by leveraging next generation research to quickly harness information and get it tools and embedding innovation in your into the hands of those that need it is fast organization processes and culture. becoming the most important source of While information overload may competitive differentiation and advantage. well be a permanent byproduct of For engineers, knowledge capture, access today’s information-driven society and and re-use improves efficiencies, accelerates globalization itself, it need not become research, and drives innovation.” a barrier. Just like a highly functioning Chad Hawkinson, senior vice president, and optimized supply chain, taming engineering, product design and technology information so that it’s available in the at IHS Markit, points to a handful of right time, the right place, and the right specific challenges that engineers share. form is possible.

Innovation is one. It’s the key to staying 4

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PRINT AND DIGITAL STAFF GROUP PUBLISHER Jolene Gulley ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Judy Welp EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Lara L. Sowinski EDITOR Ronnie Garrett MANAGING EDITOR Carrie Mantey ASSISTANT EDITOR Amy Wunderlin SENIOR PRODUCTION MANAGER Cindy Rusch ART DIRECTOR Kayla Brown AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR Wendy Chady AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Angela Kelty ADVERTISING SALES (800) 538-5544 JOLENE GULLEY, jgulley@ACBusinessMedia.com STEPHANIE PAPP, spapp@ACBusinessMedia.com EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD LORA CECERE, Founder and CEO, Supply Chain Insights TIM FEEMSTER, President, Foremost Quality Logistics JOHN M. HILL, Director, St. Onge Company, and Board of Governors, Material Handling Industry of America RORY KING, Analytic and Big Data Advisor, SAS Institute KAREN MASTER, Vice President of Communications, SAP Ariba WILLIAM L. MICHELS, CEO, Aripart Consulting JULIE MURPHREE, Founding Editor, Supply & Demand Chain Executive ANDREW K. REESE, Senior Portfolio Marketing Manager, IHS Markit, and Former Editor, Supply & Demand Chain Executive BOB RUDZKI, President, Greybeard Advisors CHRIS SAWCHUK, Global Managing Director and Procurement Advisory Practice Leader, The Hackett Group RAJ SHARMA, CEO, Censeo Consulting Group KATE VITASEK, Founder, Supply Chain Visions CIRCULATION & SUBSCRIPTIONS P.O. Box 3605, Northbrook, IL 60065-3605 (877) 201-3915, Fax: (800) 543-5055 Email: circ.sdcexec@omeda.com LIST RENTAL Elizabeth Jackson, Merit Direct LLC (847) 492-1350, ext. 18, Fax: (847) 492-0085 Email: ejackson@meritdirect.com REPRINT SERVICES JOLENE GULLEY, jgulley@ACBusinessMedia.com AC BUSINESS MEDIA INC. CHAIRMAN Anil Narang PRESIDENT AND CEO Carl Wistreich EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT Kris Flitcroft CFO JoAnn Breuchel VP OF CONTENT Greg Udelhofen VP OF MARKETING Debbie George DIGITAL OPERATIONS MANAGER Nick Raether DIGITAL SALES MANAGER Monique Terrazas Published and copyrighted 2017 by AC Business Media Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

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Summer 2017 / SPECIAL EDITION

5/15/17 7:49 AM

By Rebecca Henry

FEATURE

UNLOCK TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE

to Address the Energy Industry Knowledge & Experience Gap

O

il and gas companies, already challenged by fluctuating oil prices, rising capital costs and increased regulations, are confronting enormous demographic and experience shifts as older workers exit the business leaving a void of senior management and experienced engineers.

To maintain safe, efficient and reliable operations while also boosting innovation and profitability, oil and gas and other energy companies are seeking better ways to tap and leverage their organizational knowledge – and looking both within the industry and across other sectors for knowledge management tools and best practices.

At CERAWeek 2017, international energy industry executives and leading members of the policy, financial, industrial, and technology communities, as well as leading institutional investors, gathered to discuss “The Pace of Change: Building a New Energy Future.” A cross-industry panel met to discuss “The Race for Knowledge” and exchanged ideas and lessons learned in the area of knowledge management.

Panelists Nabilah al-Tunisi, Chief Engineer with Saudi Aramco; David Meza, Chief Knowledge Architect with NASA; Jeff Patterson, Chief Operating Officer with ASME; and Michele Trogni, Executive Vice President with IHS Markit, identified common knowledge challenges shared across their industries including: ❯❯ the need for readily accessible information ❯❯ consistency in how information was gathered and stored ❯❯ keeping up with technological advances; and ❯❯ obtaining support for knowledge management.

Panelists recognized the direct impact of knowledge loss on a company’s bottom line and also underscored that executive leadership was more apt to champion proactive knowledge management when knowledge loss demonstrably impacted finances and/or productivity. In the oil and gas industry, up to 75% of offshore

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drilling costs are due to engineering productivity constraints, such as frequent and last-minute project change orders and “broken learning curves,” according to McKinsey.

OIL & GAS KNOWLEDGE CHALLENGE #1:

The Big Crew Change is sapping the industry’s corps of experienced engineers Knowledge management has long been a central component of competitive strategy for companies across industries, but for oil and gas companies the need to discover and repurpose engineering expertise is particularly acute. Up to 50% of the existing workforce is anticipated to retire within the next seven years, thus “the Big Crew Change.”

In addition, the oil and gas sector anticipates adding 1.2 million jobs over the next 13 years, requiring a significant transfer of knowledge.

Studies show that it can take up to eight years or longer to get a new worker up to speed and making nonstandard, original technical decisions. In the meantime, new engineers spend an inordinate amount of time hunting and pecking for information to help them make decisions. The cost for this inefficiency is staggering: PetroSkills estimates that $35 billion is wasted, annually, in exploration and production due to The Big Crew Change.

Strategies to reduce project delays, minimize risk and prevent knowledge loss

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FEATURE OIL & GAS KNOWLEDGE CHALLENGE #2:

Technical knowledge remains scattered across the enterprise

Organizations waste up to 30% or more of their engineering and R&D resources duplicating work or repeating past mistakes.

To improve engineering productivity and efficacy, oil and gas companies must provide tools and knowledge that help engineers and other technical staff build upon past projects and lessons learned to solve problems faster and better. Despite significant investments in content management, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and other enterprise systems, engineers continue to struggle to pinpoint the information they need. Finding and accessing information stored in repositories scattered across an organization is difficult at best. Yet, this knowledge is critical in an increasingly complex environment, where information from past projects is often buried in decades-old, non-integrated enterprise systems.

In fact, engineers can spend 40% or more of their time searching for information, often scouring a dozen or more systems to find the answer they seek – or worse, failing to find information critical to the project or task at hand.

Knowledge management initiatives can help engineers get at the information they need, when they need it, so that they can solve problems and deliver projects faster.

TYING VALUE TO KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT INITIATIVES CERAWeek panelist David Meza shared how access to relevant information saved NASA two years and $2 million because it kept engineers from having to reinvent the wheel; nearly one-third of all R&D resources are wasted redeveloping existing solutions. Nabilah al-Tunisi explained that knowledge management saved Saudi Aramco at least 20% of project costs when data was readily accessible and usable to project teams. Jeff Patterson of ASME concurred, and emphasized how their standards are essentially best practices— based on project experience—and designed to be easily accessible by organizations. All of the panelists elaborated on how advanced knowledge discovery technologies should be implemented to capture data and make relevant technical knowledge easily discoverable.

KNOWLEDGE CHALLENGES LOOM FOR THE ENERGY INDUSTRY Oil, natural gas and petrochemical industries are facing skills shortages in the recovering market.

Demographic Gap

Experience Gap

An estimated

71% of the energy workforce is 50 years old or older Source: American Petroleum Institute

6

Knowledge Gap On average, it takes a new engineer

50%

8.2 years

of workers may retire in the next five to seven years leaving a void of senior management and experienced engineers.

to gain sufficient experience to make nonstandard, original technical decisions

Source: American Petroleum Institute

Source: SBC’s 2012 human resources benchmark study for the oil and gas industry

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DRIVING SUPPORT FOR AND ADOPTION OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS CERAWeek panelists unanimously agreed that information and technology were inherently viewed differently by older and younger workers.

To date, companies have invested millions of dollars in tools, platforms and information databases—yet their engineers and scientists still can’t find the information they need when they need it. Younger employees expect data to be readily available through phone applications, intranet and internet sources. Clearly, technology needs to be able to uncover relevant knowledge wherever it resides.

To address the challenge of getting employees actively involved in the knowledge management program, Saudi Aramco established key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure and tie knowledge management to organizational and employee performance. Other organizations tapped into gamification to encourage employees to actively participate in knowledge transfer and mentoring.

To date, companies have invested millions of dollars in tools, platforms and information databases—yet their engineers and scientists still can’t find the information they need when they need it.

Another unanticipated byproduct was the ease with which younger employees adopt new technology. What once was limited to the use of spreadsheets had become a real technology issue for companies, as younger employees take it upon themselves to create their own programs for accessing and sharing knowledge. Standardizing general parameters, for example, helped most companies maintain accessibility of the knowledge databases. For example, NASA limited the programming language used and established standards for how to embed documentation within

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Benefits of Knowledge

Management to Oil & Gas Industry WWMore rapidly develop new and improved processes to retrieve and process reserves

WWReduce costs and improve operations for better ROI on capital assets, sites, and technologies

WWMitigate loss of graying workforce through capture and reuse of internal expertise

WWEnhance technology solutions to stay ahead of competitors and deliver greater differentiation

WWMinimize risks by ensuring compliance and not repeating past mistakes

the programming language. This allowed for easy transfer of information when an employee left the agency, retired, or moved to another department.

OIL & GAS INDUSTRY MUST ACT NOW TO MITIGATE THE IMPACTS OF KNOWLEDGE LOSS AND SKILLS GAPS Knowledge management is a vital and substantial long-term asset to an organization’s growth. There is a genuine concern that lifelong experience will leave as a large section of the workforce retires. As such, it’s time to implement good knowledge management.

Leading oil and gas companies are implementing knowledge management initiatives and the latest knowledge discovery technologies to: ❯❯ Reduce project delays by targeting the single biggest use of an engineer’s time – searching for information. ❯❯ Minimize risk by avoiding duplication of efforts and finding tried and true solutions vetted internally. ❯❯ Transfer knowledge effectively to more junior engineering staff, new project, and program members; hedging against knowledge loss and slow ramp up.

Capturing best practices, lessons learned and project data and ensuring it is easily accessible and relevant are the keys to reducing adverse effects of the Big Crew Change and ensuing brain drain, while also decreasing the learning curve for new engineers.

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EXECUTIVE FOCUS

{ NEXT-GENERATION RESEARCH TOOLS}

By Dave Schubmehl, IDC

NEXT-GENERATION RESEARCH TOOLS IN THE ENGINEERING WORKPLACE Addressing the knowledge crisis in the technical enterprise

M

anufacturers and other engineering-intensive companies are facing unprecedented challenges from the overwhelming amount of information that is available to them, but often unusable in its current form.

Companies have invested billions in structured data applications like Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), but these systems aren’t delivering the benefits that organizations require. They are usually driven by a manufacturer’s IT organization with applications built around structured and semi-structured data. Unstructured information, such as reports and emails, isn’t handled well by these applications.

8

INFORMATION EVERYWHERE, MOST OF IT UNSTRUCTURED Although unstructured content accounts for 90% of all information, organizations have generally either significantly underinvested in processes for addressing unstructured content or invested in substandard processes.

Most organizations feel they have addressed general-purpose search, but for the most part, these search applications don’t solve the problems of relating information across repositories and helping understand specialized content such as research documents.

IDC’s research shows that for most organizations in general, and manufacturers, in particular, unstructured information remains fragmented and spread across the enterprise. This information is locked

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NEXT-GENERATION RESEARCH TOOLS

in a variety of formats in network file shares, content management systems, intranets, bespoke applications, and other repositories that knowledge workers have to access directly. In addition, in global organizations, this content is literally scattered across enterprises in many different locations and is usually written in several different languages.

Enterprises need to be able to find, access, and use unstructured information as easily as they are able to find, access, and use structured information. However, organizations have typically underinvested in technologies that utilize unstructured information. Instead, unstructured data often sits apart from structured data.

In addition, for most IT organizations, unstructured information is something to be put in a repository rather than used to help with innovation.

Advances in information technologies are pushing many domains of human activity into an era of increased software and machine intelligence.

IDC believes that within a decade, a majority of enterprise research applications will be enhanced by the use of technologies such as machine learning, automated content aggregation, natural language processing, and advanced semantic capabilities. These enhancements will provide the next generation of research tools, offering significant benefits for enterprises.

IDC expects that engineers and other knowledge workers will have intelligent

assistants providing information and recommendations to assist them throughout the course of their daily work. The key questions for engineers and engineering leaders focus on how to prepare for this transformation and identify available solutions for early adoption.

BOOSTING ENGINEERING PRODUCTIVITY IDC has seen that many functions within a manufacturing organization benefit from and leverage broad information access and location technologies. For example, many global manufacturers need to organize all customer service, maintenance, and repair information for field service engineers, as well as information on third-party parts and manuals.

Relevant information can be scattered throughout numerous sources and locations and found in many different formats. This type of information is often not unified within an organization and is therefore difficult and time consuming to find, frequently requiring separate searches in disconnected systems.

Organizations that can tap into this kind of information and add structure to unstructured information to improve its “findability” will often see dramatic improvements in repair and diagnosis times. These advanced access solutions can expose critical information about a potential repair via a single portal through which engineers can

ADVANCES IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES ARE PUSHING MANY DOMAINS OF HUMAN ACTIVITY INTO AN ERA OF INCREASED SOFTWARE AND MACHINE INTELLIGENCE.

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Cognitive system technologies can aid engineers in numerous ways One key function is active document management and sharing that helps suggest documents and emails that engineers should be looking at when working on a project. Another is having engineering assistant tools that help engineers do research and locate information while suggesting new sources and information — both inside the organization and from trusted third-party content sources such as patents and journal articles.

These functions provide a kind of assistive collaboration where software tools become part of the engineering team and provide everything from recording services to suggesting new lines of thought to helping find and apply new research to the problems at hand.

All of these emerging capabilities are part of the future of AI in the engineering workplace.

The benefits include accelerated research, more robust research and investigation, and reduced risk of mistakes and missed opportunities.

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NEXT-GENERATION RESEARCH TOOLS

THE GOAL FOR MOST ENGINEERING LEADERS IS TO DO MORE AND DO IT FASTER USING FEWER RESOURCES.

This content originally appeared in the IDC Analyst Connection publications How Information Access and Analysis Technology Can Address the Enterprise Knowledge Crisis, Recommendations for Addressing the Enterprise Knowledge Crisis and How Machine Learning Can Enhance the Engineering Process.

All IDC research is © 2017 by IDC. All rights reserved. All IDC materials are licensed with IDC’s permission and in no way does the use or publication of IDC research indicate IDC’s endorsement of IHS Markit’s products/or strategies.

ABOUT IDC International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. IDC helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community to make fact-based decisions on technology purchases and business strategy. More than 1,000 IDC analysts provide global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries worldwide. For more than 50 years, IDC has provided strategic insights to help our clients achieve their key business objectives. IDC is a subsidiary of IDG, the world’s leading technology media, research, and events company.

You can learn more about IDC by visiting www.idc.com.

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systematically locate the information needed to perform their jobs. Other examples include research, process engineering, maintenance and repair, and numerous other engineering functions within a manufacturing organization.

Many technologies are already finding their way into leading applications in the engineering and manufacturing space.

For example, cognitive and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies such as text and relationship extraction/analytics, the creation of knowledge bases using aggregated knowledge, and machine learning–based recommendations and predictions can be found in some of the best engineering research applications.

In addition, some engineering, modeling, and design applications are beginning to use knowledge aggregation and deep machine learning to help engineers develop better products. For example, IDC is seeing the advent of large-scale data collection and machine learning helping with predictive maintenance and forecasting potential part failures so that engineers and manufacturers can work to prevent problematic situations. In addition, IDC is seeing the embedding of knowledge across the product life cycle in engineering workflows such as engineering change order management, requirements management, and concept design and development.

The goal for most engineering leaders is to do more and do it faster using fewer resources. The amount of information that engineers and other knowledge workers have to deal with is continuing to expand at an exponential rate, and budgetary constraints leave most managers with more work to do with fewer people.

Engineers need access to a wide range of external data and information including product manuals and data sheets, patents, standards, and technical journals. Researchers need access to reference and research databases as well

as academic publications. Researchers and engineers also need competitive information about vendors and their products. In an ideal world, engineers and researchers should be able to find and access information in these and other trusted data sources transparently and easily with no extra steps needed to sign on or visit particular websites. This is possible with some information access solutions or engineering intelligence systems, where both internal and external data is available for use seamlessly as part of an engineer’s research.

Providing engineers with smart tools that incorporate cognitive systems and AI can go a long way toward alleviating these pressures. Using these kinds of tools, engineers don’t have to spend a lot of time looking for information or even organizing and synthesizing it when using automated assistants or smart applications. This provides engineering managers with opportunities to increase revenue by getting products out more quickly with less effort. These kinds of applications can reduce costs while providing a level of service that is similar to or better than the level of service provided in the past. Engineering change order process time is reduced, late-stage changes are minimized, time to market is accelerated, and risk is mitigated.

Organizations that can combine, reuse, and share information more effectively than their counterparts, thereby eliminating rework and increasing productivity, are five times more likely to experience business benefits that exceed their expectations than companies that don’t.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR DAVE SCHUBMEHL is research director for IDC’s Cognitive Systems and Content Analytics service. His research covers information access and artificial intelligence technologies including content analytics, search systems, unstructured information representation, cognitive computing, deep learning, machine learning, and unified access to structured and unstructured information.

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{ THE INFORMATION ACCESS REVOLUTION}

EXECUTIVE FOCUS

By Lara L. Sowinski

INFORMATION ACCESS

FOR 21ST CENTURY ENGINEERING The digital revolution in engineering information

T

he means by which engineers access, consume and exchange information today continues to evolve in tandem with equally impressive and innovative media technologies.

A major milestone in this progression occurred in the latter part of the 20th century with the introduction of digital media, in particular CDs and DVDs, which provided the engineering community with a powerful new way to catalog and search industry journals and other printed material.

According to Fred Filler, director, product management, engineering content, at IHS Markit, “Previously, journals had been delivered in print, mostly to corporate or academic libraries, then disseminated to different people within those organizations.”

As journals migrated to CDs and DVDs, then eventually to the Internet, it suddenly opened up an exciting new world, he says. Engineers could now easily and quickly access older journal issues and other publications.

“Most importantly, it allowed them to use search tools. At first, these tools were very basic, but today we can offer very advanced search capabilities that can mine vast amounts of information and deliver exactly what someone is looking for very quickly,” says Filler.

Books have likewise been largely converted to digital, yet there still exists a unique place for printed books and manuals. For instance, they remain popular with people who purchase them for their personal libraries and with some organizations, while college textbooks are still a significant part of the academic world.

Nevertheless, given the amount of information that engineers need to work with, the ability to mine vast technical libraries to reach a solution in seconds is a significant factor driving organizations across industries to further embrace digital collections.

APPEALING TO A NEW GENERATION OF USERS The appeal of digital media extends beyond the ability to use sophisticated

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search capabilities to quickly find precise answers within huge amounts of information. Similar to many other industries, the demographics of the engineering sector are changing as younger professionals enter the workforce. Not surprisingly, the younger cohort is very comfortable with digital media and understands well how to use it to their advantage.

Moreover, retiring engineers are taking with them a vast amount of industry experience and expertise, creating a void for younger professionals who not only are left without mentors but now have the added burden of becoming largely self-reliant in their effort to gather information and conduct research.

Steve Chapman, publisher, international & professional group, McGraw-Hill Education, says that the expectation among the engineering community today is that any information you desire should be accessible digitally.

In addition to the digital media advantages already presented,

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THE INFORMATION ACCESS REVOLUTION

Chapman offers an interesting angle.

Specifically, when an engineer has a plethora of information at his/her fingertips via computer, it eliminates the disruption in workflow and extra time that would otherwise be required to stop and consult a massive, printed reference book. The impact of this interruption is compounded when the engineer is working off-site or in the field, he points out.

There is also a measureable cost to not finding the information you are looking for. International Data Corporation states that an enterprise employing 1,000 knowledge workers wastes $48,000 per week, or nearly $2.5 million annually, due to an inability to locate and retrieve information (see below).

INFORMATION ACCESS THAT’S INTERACTIVE, DYNAMIC McGraw-Hill Education’s AccessEngineering (https:// accessengineeringlibrary.com), which Chapman says was launched in 2012, is a comprehensive online engineering reference tool for professionals, academics, and students, featuring instructional videos, calculators, interactive tables and charts, as well as personalization tools allowing users to organize crucial project information as they work. AccessEngineering is one of several databases indexed on IHS Markit’s cloud-based Engineering Workbench (www.ihs.com/ewb), a technical reference solution that combines a variety of engineering content with sophisticated search capabilities.

While the sheer size of the AccessEngineering site is daunting, with more than 700 books and hundreds of thousands of pages of content, “that’s not even its biggest advantage,” remarks Chapman. “It really rests on the power of the search function.” Engineers can search and 12

find very specific information in mere seconds, he says, “Which is obviously a much better experience than browsing through a 100-page index and a 2,800page book.”

He says the analytics feature is also very valuable to users, given the “multidisciplinary nature” of the engineering sector. For example, “A construction engineer building a house must consider the architecture piece, the electricity piece, the foundation and so on.”

This type of skillset is the norm today, according to the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), which states that, “Engineering roles, particularly in projects, manufacturing and utilities are becoming less defined and require incumbents to have a broader knowledge of engineering disciplines beyond their initial training and education.” In addition, “Engineers are increasingly finding themselves working as part of interdisciplinary

teams on projects that require more than one technical specialism.” For example, in the automotive sector, an engineer working on electrical components needs to understand the overlaps with the mechanical aspects of a given platform.

For this reason, tapping into an extensive repository that spans multiple disciplines aided by a powerful search function “is a huge advantage for an individual engineering team or a product team,” says Chapman.

Another feature of AccessEngineering is its data visualization tool: DataVis. This feature was actually created in response to feedback from users and focus groups.

“It allows you to change the variables and see the picture change as a result,” explains Chapman. “You can understand how changes in the math will affect whatever phenomenon you are dealing with,” he says, which is especially useful for engineering students.

THE HIGH COST OF NOT FINDING INFORMATION

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THE INFORMATION ACCESS REVOLUTION

Input from users and focus groups figure prominently in the perpetual enhancements made to the platform, says Chapman.

At the same time, all of the content on AccessEngineering is thoroughly checked for accuracy. “It goes through our normal content acquisition review and vetting process,” he says, emphasizing that McGraw-Hill Education is known for its stringent vetting process, which gives users confidence in the product and its content.

in late 2015).

Some of the features built into Engineering Workbench based on user feedback includes the ability to save queries and searches, and watch lists that allow users to be alerted to document updates. Another includes enhancements to the communication aspect of the platform.

Therefore, we need to provide users with a sense of context about where they’ve landed and what it can do for them. This is something that is very front of mind for us at the moment.”

DESIGNING MEDIA TECHNOLOGY FOR TOMORROW’S DEMANDS

— STEVE CHAPMAN, PUBLISHER, INTERNATIONAL & PROFESSIONAL GROUP, MCGRAW-HILL EDUCATION

McGraw-Hill Education’s Chapman and IHS Markit’s Fred Filler agree that the migration of engineering information from printed publications to highly interactive, searchable, online platforms yields tremendous benefits for users. However, it takes a deep commitment on the part of both providers to make ongoing improvements and additions to their respective sites, while simultaneously assuring that the user experience meets or exceeds expectations.

For example, Chapman mentions that one of the biggest challenges currently is that users often come to AccessEngineering from an external search. “They may be within the IHS Markit tool, but then they are brought to a content page within a book on AccessEngineering,” he says.

“Therefore, we need to provide users with a sense of context about where they’ve landed and what it can do for them. This is something that is very front of mind for us at the moment.”

For his part, Filler sees Engineering Workbench as a “living, breathing product that we are constantly updating” to meet the engineering community’s demands. “We’re still in the early days (the platform launched

“Engineers spend a lot of time communicating, whether it’s within their own teams, to management, or to the outside world,” says Filler. A recently added feature to Engineering Workbench allows users “to send out search results to your team or to anybody you choose to in the organization so you can all be on the same page.” This is very helpful when engineers are working in different locations or in different divisions of a company.

Meanwhile, “The bigger activity we’re undertaking right now is incorporating more of IHS Markit’s products and information onto Engineering Workbench. For example, we launched the platform with an emphasis on digital reference books, ‘e-publications’ and patents, but now we have built in capabilities specifically aimed at working with our vast library of standards, codes and specifications.

This allows users to search across one platform for answers in all these different types of content and discover the information they need quickly, regardless of where that information ‘lives,’” says Filler.

IHS0517_11-13_InfoAccess.indd 13

“We’re also branching out to different databases – for example, materials properties databases, chemicals properties databases – information that engineers can interact with and put into programs that allow them to search for a structure across a chemistry database and so forth.

This development is in response to

feedback coming from our customers and engineers, particularly around the materials properties side.”

Other prospective platform enhancements: the ability to export data into other software, as well as additional translations of the platform’s interface for the benefit of a global customer base.

New content partners are also being added, he says. “Users constantly ask us to add a certain publisher, industry professional association, or other sources, and growing the platform assures users that they can find what they need, when they need it.”

The vision for Engineering Workbench, Filler says, is to provide single-source access to the answers that engineers need, regardless of where the source information resides.

“We launched the platform in 2015, but we’ve put out successive releases on a regular basis, including the latest version that launched on May 1. We’ll continue to talk with our customers about their needs and work to further develop the platform to meet their evolving requirements.”

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{ CYBERSECURITY IN PRODUCT DESIGN}

By Lara L. Sowinski

CYBERSECURITY IN P – Chasing the Threat

Navigate the vast and dynamic technology and information landscape

T

o fully appreciate how important cybersecurity is to keeping the world’s industrial, transportation, communications, and energy systems secure and functioning, consider the vast array of devices and networks that have been hacked.

In a 2017 Forbes article, Cesar Cerrudo, a professional hacker and the CTO of IOActive Labs, said that “most technology is vulnerable and can be hacked.” His list of examples include: automobiles, a popular U.S. smart home alarm system, implantable medical devices like pacemakers, aircraft systems, critical infrastructure like power grids and dams, mobile banking apps, smart city technology, and a traffic system in Washington, D.C., which he personally hacked.

This presents a sobering landscape for engineers whose job it is to design mission-critical systems and products that support an integrated global economy highly dependent on technology, while simultaneously assuring public safety and security.

TRANSFORMATIONS DRIVING SECURE ACCESS There are four primary transformations shaping this landscape, notes Jeff Wilson, research director, information & communications technology at IHS Markit. [see Fig. 1] The first is device proliferation.

There are an increasing number of 14

devices that are connecting to networks and the Internet. In turn, “the Internet of Things (IoT) fundamentally changes how you have to think about developing cybersecurity solutions,” says Wilson. “As the number of end points and potential end points connected to the Internet has gone from thousands to billions and trillions, the scope of potential attacks has likewise increased exponentially.”

He cites the Mirai botnet distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks of 2016 as an example. Simply put, these types of attacks are designed to overwhelm a resource, such as a network, and make it stop working. “This was not something that we ever needed to worry about in the past,” Wilson notes.

Secondly, while new architectures such as cloud technology offer significant benefits in terms of scalability, “the cloud also has major implications for security,” he says. For this reason, there are certain regulated industries that will not allow customer data to reside on the cloud. “The way you buy into point security completely changes when it’s not a physical resource that you own and control on your site, but is an amorphous resource out in the Internet somewhere.”

Companies and organizations that want to take advantage of cloud technology are wrestling with how to deploy security, acknowledges Wilson. “Everybody from engineering teams to product management teams

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CYBERSECURITY IN PRODUCT DESIGN

N PRODUCT DESIGN are architecting new solutions that can deal with IoT scale and work in cloud environments, but it is a huge engineering challenge.”

At the same time, the accumulation of multiple security suites, platforms and fabrics over time contributes to cybersecurity challenges, he adds.

“Over the past 20-plus years there has been a buildup of a multi-product, multi-vendor and multi-solution unconnected product environment.” In response, companies and organizations are working to reduce the number of cybersecurity vendors and products in their arsenal. Likewise, “engineering and product design teams are looking at how to build platforms that are extensible instead of building single, standalone solutions that solve single, stand-alone problems,” because, “security doesn’t work that way,” says Wilson. “Most of the big attacks that you hear about have multiple vectors that patch different solutions that don’t talk to each other.”

Banks, retailers, and health care providers are among the variety of commercial enterprises that have been hit by cyberattacks. The cyberattack on Target Corporation in December 2013 ranks as one of the largest data breaches ever reported. According to the Consumer Bankers Association and the Credit Union National Association, the attack cost the retailer $148 million and cost financial institutions $200 million. Target’s profits fell 46 percent in the fourth quarter of 2013, while the company’s reputation also took a long-lasting hit.

According to Wilson, the cyberattack started with a phishing email to a Target contractor who was

involved with the point-of-sale (POS) systems. Once the contractor gave up his credentials, the cyberattackers were able to get a foothold in the Target network and install malicious software on the POS systems.

“This phishing attack was one vector on one company,” explains Wilson.

The attackers were able to further penetrate Target’s systems because the company either did not see, or ignored, alerts that were generated along other points. Three different security solutions in all detected something out of the ordinary, but none of them could talk to each other, Wilson says. This clearly illustrates why companies first need to “slim down the number of platforms they have and make sure the ones they do have are talking to each other,” advises — JEFF WILSON, Wilson.

Yet, this also presents a difficult challenge. Vendors that do not necessarily work together are being asked to share information or open up APIs or protocols so that solutions can share information.

“Therefore, getting down to a much more rational set of solutions that can communicate with each other to cover all the holes in between attacks is the third major driver that affects development and employment of commercial cybersecurity solutions,” says Wilson.

“This is what really sets cybersecurity apart from everything else,” he continues.

“For instance, when you are building a new Ethernet switch or new networking

EVERYBODY FROM ENGINEERING TEAMS TO PRODUCT MANAGEMENT TEAMS ARE ARCHITECTING NEW SOLUTIONS THAT CAN DEAL WITH IOT SCALE AND WORK IN CLOUD ENVIRONMENTS, BUT IT IS A HUGE ENGINEERING CHALLENGE.

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IHS MARKIT

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product, you’re typically fighting against the math, physics or something tangible.

But when it comes to cybersecurity, you are developing against human ingenuity.

In other words, the attackers are always one step ahead of the people who are looking to stop them.”

This leads to the fourth primary transformation driving secure access, which is evolving threats, or stopping the attack that you don’t know about yet, and the Mirai botnet attack is a perfect example, says Wilson.

Furthermore, it’s also why technologies such as machine learning and behavioral analytics are increasingly folded into security solutions as a way to better predict the unknowable future.

TWO PARALLEL PROCESSES FOR DESIGN Wilson sees two parallel processes coexisting in the engineering community when it comes to designing for the new paradigm—system architecture and threat detection/ mitigation—and both camps are required to work together closely.

System architecture essentially covers “what you need to think about and do in order to build things like firewalls, routers or switches,” says Wilson. “However, what is unique about security and system architecture is that a lot of what you have to do is very processor-intensive.”

He gives the example of a .pdf file embedded with malicious code. While a system may correctly identify it as an attack, the real challenge comes down to how quickly the system can make the identification and execute a subsequent response, which requires a “super highperformance system architecture.”

CYBERSECURITY INNOVATIONS AND TECHNOLOGIES MOVE AT A LIGHTNING PACE, AND STAYING ON TOP OF THE LATEST TRENDS AND DEVELOPMENTS IS NOT AN EASY TASK FOR THE ENGINEERING COMMUNITY. Meanwhile, engineers working on the threat detection and mitigation side of cybersecurity have a number of industry resources where information and intelligence can be gleaned.

The first are threat-sharing information consortiums such as the Cyber Threat Alliance (CTA), which includes founding members Fortinet, Intel Security, Palo Alto Networks, Symantec, Check Point, and Cisco.

Member companies share information

THE CYBERSECURITY INFORMATION LANDSCAPE ‘BLEEDING EDGE’ (Buyer Beware) current but often unvetted sources such as blogs, online forums, vendor materials, and conference proceedings.

16

‘LEADING EDGE’ (Peer Reviewed) books, pamphlets, articles, and periodicals, written relatively quickly that encompass developments in the past year or months, but with some level of vetting and peer review.

‘TRUSTED BUT LAGGING’ (Consensus Developed)

trusted and fully vetted Standards, Codes, Regulations that might take years to develop and release.

about threats and the technologies they are developing, such as new signatures, to combat cyberattacks.

In addition, there is an entire “shadow world of threat intelligence that happens on a very loose level between the vendors, governments and others,” says Wilson. “People involved in critical infrastructure, like running a water treatment plant or making sure trains run on time,” are examples of those who exchange information in this manner.

Next are subgroups, he says. These are commonly industry-oriented groups, e.g., people in the oil refinery sector, for instance, and governments share relative cybersecurity information with these subgroups.

Lastly, there are commercial solutions such as those offered by McAfee and Trend Micro. These and similar companies have their own teams of “white hat” hackers who actively target so-called “black hat” hackers in order to understand the latest threats.

TAPPING INTO A VARIETY OF INFORMATION RESOURCES Cybersecurity innovations and technologies move at a lightning pace, and staying on top of the latest trends and developments is not an easy task for the engineering community.

Steve Noth, director, standards products and content, IHS Markit, notes that there are a variety of information sources, all of which have their pros and cons.

“Standards can take two to three years to write in a committee structure.

The process includes working to gain consensus through balloting and making sure it’s an open process,” says Noth. It is a time-intensive process that yields standards and codes for basic technologies and processes like network architectures and structural network protections.

Another source of information are journal articles and other more timely

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TRANSFORMATIONS DRIVING SECURE ACCESS WW DEVICE PROLIFERATION. Smartphones, tablets, M2M, IoT, and IoE drive fundamental changes in how, where,

and why security technology is deployed. There are security solutions for every part of the device chain: hardware, software, and network. More devices mean more traffic on the network and more need for network visibility.

WW NEW ARCHITECTURES. Security technology isn’t evolving in a bubble; it’s tied to network architectures, and the emergence of virtualization, SDN/NFV, and cloud services. These drive significant changes in IT infrastructure and network architectures, and these changes have a major impact on how security technology is consumed.

WW SUITES, PLATFORMS, AND FABRICS. Defense tools and strategies have been

built over time, layering new technology on top of old as new threats emerge, leaving most companies with a complicated infrastructure with many holes. Everyone from the smallest business to the largest carrier is trying to collapse defense layers and simplify security architecture Device and protection to make it more effective.

Proliferation

WW E VOLVING THREATS. Security technology innovation is driven by changes in the threat landscape, which is ever-changing.

Security technology solutions have to be engineered to defeat human ingenuity, not physics or math, and as a result there is a cyclical pattern of threat protection technology development.

New threats emerge, new technologies are built to combat those threats, those technologies are absorbed into larger platforms, and the process repeats infinitely.

publications and periodicals.

For example, “There are books and pamphlets being written relatively quickly that encompass developments in the past year or months. They provide a more real-time sense of what’s going on,” says Noth. These types of publications are typically peer reviewed as well.

Meanwhile, the most leadingedge information, albeit least vetted, comes in the form of blogs, online forums, conferences and other industry gatherings. With this information, “you always have to consider your source and how much trust you are willing to put into it,” Noth cautions.

This leading-edge information can provide engineers with “hints about where to go and how to approach things. But it requires engineers to perform their own validation,” he says.

“It definitely falls under the ‘buyer beware’ category.”

Organizing and centralizing these various sources and kinds of information into “knowledge bases” is equally important for the engineering community, which continually looks

New Architectures

for solutions that can streamline and optimize their search across multiple, disparate sources.

The Engineering Workbench solution from IHS Markit (ihs.com/ ewb) is an example of a cloud-based/ SaaS tool that can be customized to access subscription libraries, such as those for standards or technical reference content, along with internal content and/or disparate sources from the Internet.

According to Noth, Engineering Workbench has the potential to index information, particularly the leadingedge information, for engineers to access quickly. In the future, he envisions expanded capabilities that would allow a subscriber to create of custom index of sources.

“Imagine a company that identifies various clearing houses of information, or a couple of really valuable and trustworthy forums. They believe these sources are well managed with good information,” says Noth. “A custom index could support the creation of these powerful types of knowledge bases.”

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Evolving Threats

Suites, Platforms, & Fabrics

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{ BECOME AN INNOVATION LEADER}

By Andy Reese

WAYS TO BECOME AN

INNOVATION LEADER

D

Embed the art and science of innovation within your organization

18

efined as “the act or process of introducing new ideas, devices, or methods,” innovation is very often easier said than done in the business environment. Challenged to continually meet operational, customer, and shareholder demands, organizations tend to lose sight of the big picture and wind up falling short of their long-term innovation goals.

And while small innovation gains may seem inconsequential, the firm that sets its sights on continual improvement in this area reaps large rewards over time. In fact, as a corporate imperative that requires discipline, creativity, and commitment, innovation gives organizations clear competitive advantages in a corporate world where many leaders are too busy putting out daily fires to be able to unleash and capitalize on new ideas.

The question is, how can companies become innovation leaders in an environment where creativity and imagination are the keys to ongoing success and growth? For answers, IHS Markit worked with Supply & Demand Chain Executive magazine to conduct its 2016 Success in Innovation Survey. Based on survey responses from 174 innovation leaders and insights from its top innovation experts, IHS Markit developed five practices that companies can use to become innovation leaders in their respective industries.

MAKE YOUR MARK ON THE INNOVATION LANDSCAPE One look around the business world reveals a climate that’s ripe for innovation, but also one where established firms are steering clear of this opportunity. As domestic and global competition continues to increase — with a larger swath of firms chasing a static, evolving group of customers — even the Fortune 500 isn’t immune to this trend. In fact, Edward E. Lawler III and Christopher G. Worley, in their book Built for Change, noted that 40% of the Fortune 500 companies in 2000 were no longer there in 2010 – and they projected that trend to continue. One reason for the increasing churn: Where many companies might previously have contended with a handful of competitors, primarily based within their local or adjacent markets, today they’re seeing dozens of challengers from around the globe coming after their customers.

Add the fast pace of technological advancement to the mix, and the environment looks even more daunting. Companies that overlook this fact quickly find themselves going head-to-head with entities that put the time and effort into becoming innovation leaders. But innovation isn’t a given: Key roadblocks include the cost to develop or introduce innovations, insufficient collaboration with vendors and/or customers, and the

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BECOME AN INNOVATION LEADER

2

lack of a culture of innovation within the organization itself.

Also hampering innovation is the fact that related failures are often viewed negatively by the organization – a stigma that could prevent individuals from embracing the reality that “failure is a necessary part of innovation.”

The good news is that the survey results point to clear lines in the sand separating innovation leaders and laggards. Using the survey to identify those differences, IHS Markit developed the following five best practices that all organizations can follow on the path to becoming innovation leaders.

DON’T BE AFRAID TO FAIL FAST, AND FAIL FORWARD

One in five professionals says that innovation failures are viewed negatively in their corporations. And while embracing constant failure isn’t good either, there is a clear delineation between how leaders view failure and how laggards view it. Forty-six percent of leading firms, for example, say that failure is viewed positively, whereas just 26% of laggards feel the same way. Clearly, it’s easy to say “innovate or die,” but say cost is the principal it’s difficult to live this motto reason that innovation as a culture in your company. solutions are rejected That’s because you can’t just pay lip service to the idea; you have to foster that culture of not being afraid to fail fast and fail forward. If your culture is conducive to innovation, report that innovation and if workers aren’t afraid to failures are viewed stick their necks out and try negatively in their something new, the innovation organizations mindset will come.

34%

1

1in5

DEVELOP A CORPORATE CULTURE THAT ENABLES AND SUPPORTS INNOVATION

In developing a culture that fosters innovation, company leaders must make it easy for engineers and other team members to find information they need to get their jobs done quickly, so they can leverage best industry practices and solve problems faster. Employees must also be able to tap into a broad set of content relevant to their industry and/or field, work on different types of projects that require knowledge of different fields, and get up to speed quickly on new topics, projects, and processes.

3

TAP INTO THE INNOVATIVE STRENGTH OF INDIVIDUAL ENGINEERS AND DESIGNERS

People want to work at innovative corporations, they want to contribute their individual ideas to these corporations, and they very often view corporate culture as the single

% of respondents citing these as top innovation success factors

47%

42%

culture of innovation within the organization

collaboration with vendors and/or customers

IHS0517_18-20_InnovationLeader.indd 19

42%

strategic focus on innovation in the organization

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Half

78%

of organizations consistently allocate budget for innovation discovery

say it’s personally important to them to work at an organization viewed as innovative

90%

1in4

view innovation as being essential to their organization’s success

say that interactions with colleagues are the leading source of innovative ideas most important success factor enabling innovation. In fact, one in four professionals surveyed says that interaction with colleagues is the leading source of innovative ideas, and about half of them say their companies consistently allocate a budget for innovation discovery.

4

FOCUS ON BREAKING DOWN THE BARRIERS TO SUCCESS

Being an engineer in today’s business world isn’t easy. The barriers to success are getting higher and higher, and the number of projects these professionals are working on is consistently increasing. According to our survey, 50 percent of engineers are working on more projects than they were just a few years ago, but with fewer and fewer resources. These barriers to success can impede innovation and cause organizations to fall behind their competitors. Focus on breaking down these barriers to success and creating an environment that supports and nurtures innovative thinking.

5

LEVERAGE STATE-OF-THEART KNOWLEDGE SOURCES AND TECHNOLOGY TOOLS

Leading companies don’t just leave innovation up to chance. Instead, they utilize knowledge sources and 20

technology tools to support ongoing innovation and discovery. They help their engineers and designers by implementing a solution that provides: ❯❯ Single-source access to a comprehensive universe of third-party content (standards, handbooks, manuals, journals, patents and other references) and internal documentation scattered across disparate corporate sources; ❯❯ Next-generation search technology that allows individual users to quickly surface precise answers within all that content; ❯❯ And advanced analytical tools specifically tailored for engineers’ needs, such as analyzing patents to identify trends in technology developments or competitive activities.

By focusing on the enabling technologies that support innovation, companies can literally build innovation into their corporate DNA and make it a cumulative factor in their organizational success.

GETTING ONBOARD WITH INNOVATION Innovation drives the world forward, but it will also drive right over any organization that doesn’t embrace the future. When a company fears innovation – or is unable to embrace the changes necessary to enable engineers to pursue innovation – inevitably that organization will fall behind because one or more competitors will step forward to take the leap into the future. But innovation isn’t just about doing things faster and better; it’s also about finding the right time in the development process to infuse innovation into the mix. By incorporating the right tools, resources, and support structures, leading firms are embedding innovation disciplines upfront in the development process and then nurturing it through to the finish line.

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{ CHANGE AND CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT}

EXECUTIVE FOCUS

By Rebecca Henry

EMBRACING CHANGE

as a Competitive Advantage

Infuse Knowledge into your Change and Configuration Management Process

I

ARE YOUR ENGINEERS WASTING VALUABLE TIME?

n today’s competitive business environment, there’s no room for errors, delays, or missteps when it comes to building and maintaining products. That’s why the change and configuration management process plays such an important role in every manufacturer’s ultimate success (or failure).

Unfortunately, engineering change orders are also costly and time consuming. Continuous revisions and changes consume valuable resources – taking them away from higher-value activities. And, the cost of design changes increases exponentially the later a change is addressed in the development lifecycle.

Focused on solving problems and developing viable solutions, engineers can spend 40% of their valuable time searching for the information. On average, these professionals consult with 13 or more unique data sources and can spend up to 30 to 40 minutes locating a single document on any given day.

And while one-third of engineering change orders are seen as being “critical,” with the potential to endanger overall project success, it’s not unusual for an engineer to have to log into five, 10, or more separate systems in order to handle a single engineering change.

LEADING MANUFACTURERS CITE CHALLENGES WITH EXISTING ENGINEERING CHANGE ORDER MANAGEMENT PROCESSES, REPORTING:

85% 30-50% management system is broken

of engineering capacity

20-50% 39%

cite frequent design changes biggest obstacle

of tool costs

IHS0517_21-22_ChangeMngmnt.indd 21

Not only do engineering change orders consume 30-50% of engineering capacity and 20-50% of tool costs, but they also present critical challenges for the organizations that rely on a steady flow of new and “renewed” innovations.

According to a recent Aberdeen Group survey, for example, 85% of the respondents classified their change management systems as “broken.”

Put simply, the majority of companies operating in today’s competitive world know that they have a problem, but have no idea how to confront it or fix it.

A SMOOTH CHANGE MANAGEMENT WORKFLOW Of great significance in the manufacturing field, change management helps companies effectively confront the many changes being driven by increased global competition, advancements in technology, and an increasingly demanding customer base. In systems engineering, the change management process involves: ❯❯ Requesting the changes ❯❯ Determining attainability ❯❯ Planning, implementing, and evaluating the system changes using: • A change request, or a document containing a call for an adjustment of a system. A

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change request is declarative (i.e. it states what needs to be accomplished, but leaves out how the change should be carried out).

• Engineering change orders (ECO), which are used for changes in components, assemblies, or documents such as processes and work instructions. They may also be used for changes in specifications. ECOs are also called an “engineering change note,” engineering change notice (ECN), or just an engineering change (EC).

In an effort to improve their change and configuration management approaches, organizations have made investments in product lifecycle management (PLM) and other technology platforms. An Aberdeen Group survey cites a high number of “broken” change management systems.

As this high number indicates, none of these platforms adequately tackle the critical challenges associated with change and configuration management.

HARNESSING THE DATA REVOLUTION Infusing knowledge into the Change Management Workflow boosts engineering efficiency, including: ❯❯ Creation of the change description and notes ❯❯ Verifying that no prior ECO/ ECR exists for this change ❯❯ Identification of all documentation impacted by the change ❯❯ Understanding the impact to parent, child, and other component items ❯❯ Establishing levels of impact – who must review and approve, and why ❯❯ Research to obtain information about the EC 22

OPERATIONAL VALUE

33% reduce product development cycle time ❯❯ Extensive investigation and research in many areas depending on impact of change, and area of expertise: (i.e. Compliance analysis, structural analysis, manufacturing analysis, etc.)

In return, organizations gain in these three important areas:

BUSINESS VALUE ❯❯ Improved customer satisfaction ❯❯ Reduced product costs/ improved margins ❯❯ Quick response to market opportunities and demands ❯❯ Reduced warranty costs ❯❯ Reduced operational costs

❯❯ Reduce the time required to process a change order (ECO cycle time) ❯❯ Improved understanding of the complete extent and impact of the change ❯❯ Execute a more effective change with less risk of additional change orders

PRODUCTIVITY VALUE ❯❯ Reduce time spent in research at each stage of the workflow ❯❯ More robust research and investigation of impact of change ❯❯ Reduced risk of mistakes and missed opportunities By conducting impact analysis, communicating accurate understandings, managing the change process across all impacted domains, and supporting complete traceability, organizations can improve customer satisfaction, reduce product costs, and more quickly respond to market opportunities and demands.

GLOBAL AIRLINE MANUFACTURER STREAMLINES CHANGE ORDER PROCESS Leveraging curated content including standards and product manuals among other data sources, available via Engineering Workbench by IHS Markit, one global airline manufacturer has drastically reduced the amount of time its engineers spend on change orders.

Using data to improve the understanding of the quantity and scope of tests needed to qualify a critical system, engineers quickly leverage schedules for new product parameters, for example, thus eliminating the need for repeated tests.

By leveraging drawing and design data, the engineering team minimizes resourcing and program costs and has reduced the number of man hours spent on change orders by 14,000 per year (across a typical 2.5-year-long design process).

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{ ENGINEERING SOLUTIONS}

EXECUTIVE FOCUS

The Innovation Mandate:

ARE YOU KEEPING PACE?

70%

Product/service innovation is critical: It’s the fastest growing initiative (+10% growth) in importance to the C-suite.

of Fortune 1000 companies will be replaced in the next few years.

40% of the Fortune 500 companies in 2000 were no longer there in 2010.

Source: Deloitte

Source: Edward E Lauder, Built for Change

Innovation leaders generate more than as much of their

7x

revenues from new products as laggards.

Patent applications on the rise

Applications have risen more than 2.5-fold since 1995.

2016 2.88 million

Source: WIPO

1995 1.05 million PATENT APPLICATIONS 1995-2016

IHS0517_23-24_InovationInfogrphic.indd 23

IHS Markit Engineering Intelligence Solutions help companies understand the competitive landscape, identify trends in technology advancement, assess market needs and outinnovate the competition.

93%

of executives believe their company’s longterm success to be tied to its ability to innovate and out-perform competition — and yet 82% of executives do not believe their company’s innovation efforts deliver a competitive advantage.

Source: Accenture

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Stop making engineering decisions in the dark Make better decisions faster – no matter how big the decision In global manufacturing and process industries, there are no small engineering decisions. Yet, more than half of all decisions are made with incomplete or inadequate information.* The Engineering Intelligence solutions from IHS Markit help companies bridge this knowledge gap with an exclusive combination of trusted, engineering-rich content, advanced research capabilities, and strategic problem-solving tools.

IHS Markit gives engineers and technical professionals the information and insights they need, when they need it, so that companies can achieve operational excellence directives, enter new markets, and speed time to market by accelerating and informing decision-making.

‒ Boost engineering productivity ‒ Reduce project and product delays ‒ Leverage and reuse enterprise technical knowledge ‒ Ensure compliance and minimize risk ‒ Stay abreast of the latest technologies and advances in materials ‒ Understand the competitive landscape

Learn more at ihs.com/ewb, or Call 800-854-7179 143162538-JH-0317

*Infocentric Research AG

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Copyright © 2017 IHS Markit. All Rights Reserved

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