Integrating Systems Engineering Departments

The Business world is a place of constant change, what with all the mergers and acquisitions we hear about in the news everyday. Change is all around us and it is accelerating at an alarming pace; more and more organizations are having to introduce and then manage change; this due to constant pressures on costs, the relentless drive of new technologies and, increasingly the impacts of global markets. The need to consolidate departments and services while going through the merger and acquisitions must be recognized by all executives, functional management as well as the workforce. The purpose of the research paper was to look at the integration of Systems Engineering departments of two companies purchased by the Boeing Company. Look at in detail the effect the integration has on the efficiency and management of the workforce. Find the issues the management and the workforce is facing during the integration process. The findings and proposed solutions from this research will be presented to management to assist with building a more cohesive Systems Engineering department across company. Most of the information for this research paper was gathered from a survey conducted at two different sites of the Boeing Company. Various levels of the workforce were polled via interviews and discussions. Literature reviews were also done on the internet and various books written on the topic of managing change in the workplace. While performing this research I discovered that there was definitely a difference between what the management believed and what the workforce knew to be true. The management believed that the certain roles and responsibilities were defined, but the workforce felt that the information was not flowdown. The majority of the workforce has observed the effectiveness of the System Engineering function be limited by the lack of common SE practices. Based upon the information gathered from this study, it is recommended that when considering integration of System Engineering departments we should benchmark processes and tools across sites; develop common standard processes and tools while allowing for tailoring for programs. Flow down the common standards to through training. Finally audits need to be performed on a regular basis to make sure that drifts have not occurred from the established standards. Common Processes and Systems will definitely enable us to improve cost efficiency, improve cycle time and increase quality of product, process and system. This will also allow to plug and play employees across the enterprise, give new programs fast startup with core set of processes and tools. Leverage site and program innovation across Boeing and finally become one enterprise. All this should be done to provide our customers confidence in the way we do business