Process Stewardship - Beyond Millwide Systems for Survival in the 90's, 1992 TAPPI Conference Proceedings

The much heralded "new world order" is far from a uniformly benign development. What little protection was previously afforded business by national boundaries, cultural preferences, and trade barriers is evaporating. To survive in this hostile, highly competitive environment will require the best tools, the best organization, and the best people.

For over a decade, the paper industry has trumpeted the arrival of ultimate competitive tool... "millwide" systems... but where are the results? In fact, where are the systems? What are touted as millwide strategic process management solutions are, upon closer examination, often a hodge-podge adhocracy of loosely interconnected equipment with no central focus and nothing approaching seamless integration. Beyond the clumsiness of these tools, not enough attention has been paid to the operational needs of managers, supervisors, and plant operating personnel in their design and implemenation. What was initially promised as a panacea to plant operations has become the generator of a mind deadening deluge of irrelevant and inconsistent data.

One symptom of this tragic confusion of means with aims has been the perverse promotion of CIM to our industry and to other process industries. CIM has its roots in the discrete manufacturing area and is an acronym for Computer Integrated Manufacturing.

Whether in discrete, continuous or batch CIM is really a non-sequitur. Computers are a tool ("a means"), just as a hammer is a tool, not an objective (an "an aim"). No one would embrace "hammer integrated carpentry" but the magic of computers (amazingly, even today!) and the endorsement of CIM by a select cadre of accounting firms and computer suppliers has lent Computer Integrated Manufacturing some credence.

Whether implemented with computers or distributed microprocessor based systems, an integrated, responsive, accurate process information management and control system can produce excellent operational benefits. To obtain these benefits we clearly need to refocus on the real needs of operators, supervisors, managers, and shareholders and away from tools in identifying potential gains and in designing systems. A new direction based on needs and benefits should result in systems that allow us to take command of our processes, plants, and total enterprises and truly manage.