what they’re achieving and line up with other plants. Say your on-time delivery is 97 percent. That may be good, but three other plants may be achieving 99 percent. Let’s find out what’s different.”

One area of collaboration that’s growing is in product development. Teams join through collaboration tools to move products quickly through development. “Collaboration slices down time-to-market and alleviates risk,” says James Horne, senior director of business development at Centric Software Inc., an SaaS collaboration provider in Campbell, Calif. “The benefit is that you instantaneously discover there’s a problem and you address it before a little spark becomes a fire. That visibility can allow you to get to market on time.”

Collaboration can have a significant impact on the time it takes to get a new product into production. “Many companies have gone from three years down to four months for getting a product to market when everybody is collaborating,” says Rory Granros, director of process industries at Infor, a relationship management software company in Alpharetta, Ga. As well as product development, he points to collaboration used in the plant. “You need collaboration between formulating and packaging,” says Granros. “The formula people don’t have to know all about the packaging, but they do have to know if the acid is too hot for the bottle.”

While collaboration began with phone and fax, its full power didn’t appear until Internet tools made it safe and efficient. “The collaboration today is only possible because of the tools that are available, not just across the boundaries of departments, but also across geographic and time boundaries,” says Eric Sterling, vice president of enterprise software at Siemens PLM Software, a Plano, Texas-based division of Siemens Automation and Drives. “That only exists today because of the tools that are available.”

Collaboration was embraced mostly quickly by companies that are leaders in innovation. “Best-of-class companies are probably two to three times more likely to standardize on collaboration tools,” says Sterling. “The collaboration has to be across the portfolio and product teams to the systems and process teams.”

Not all collaboration is partner-to-partner or plant-to-plant. Internal collaboration in a single location also improves manufacturing. “When the production schedule comes down, we know where it’s going to be executing on which piece of equipment,” says Kevin Tock, vice president of business development at Wonderware, a manufacturing software provider based in in Lake Forest, Calif. “The MES (manufacturing execution system) knows what’s going to happen.”

Security issues

 One of the biggest concerns in collaboration is making sure the sensitive information being shared cannot be accessed by competitors, hackers or counterfeiters. “Security is our core business. We make sure our security is higher than the level of security most businesses have in place,” says Eran Aloni, vice president of product at Clarizen Inc., a San Mateo, Calif., company that offers a SaaS collaboration platform. “Even within an organization, not everyone is authorized to see everything.”

Many manufacturers work across the globe now, whether internally, plant-to-plant or company-to-company. Collaboration has become critical for global companies, be it phone, fax or e-mail. Yet, the issues of security and efficiency have become more pressing as sensitive data is shared and the time-to-market for new products gets shorter. Plants are addressing these issues by turning to collaborative tools that protect information and facilitate quick and efficient sharing.

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