Wiki, Wiki Ways

The company is also embracing Web 2.0 technologies, with a wiki managing all Windchill support documentation. "We had between 50 and 100 documents, which people needed when they came on board, so we consolidated all of this information into a single knowledge base using MediaWiki," Barnes says. "Even better is that all of our help links in Windchill are linked directly into our wiki so my group, and others, only ever have to keep one place up to date and the user will always get the latest help information."

Cochlear is using the open source Joomla! and MediaWiki Web applications for its content management system (CMS) and wiki respectively, and because people "knew about" wikis from the Wikipedia online encyclopedia, Barnes says there was no need to do any training. All links for Windchill's help pages are housed in the internal "Windpedia".

"It's really cool," Barnes says. "It has made the user acceptance better for us, particularly for our overseas and interstate users. We can see the pages being hit the most and can focus training on that topic." Barnes says the portal will be very useful and will represent the first time Cochlear's complete product portfolio has been accessible from one place.

While Cochlear is growing accustomed to using Windchill for controlling all of its product information, there is still a strong use of paper in two areas: other types of documentation and in manufacturing.

For non-product related information, Cochlear has separate document management systems in other regions so there is a "huge opportunity to go global", Barnes says, but the scope is more specific to each global region.

Cochlear will take its manufacturing operations paperless in the years to come, which will mean a core change to the way it works on the assembly line as operators will review electronic designs. Such further transformations may be years away but are already being considered in new product development projects.

SIDEBAR: Out with the Old, In with the New

Step by step the business fell in love with its PLM system

Redefining Cochlear's core business process involved not only acquiring new software but also inducting a cultural change within the organization that had become so accustomed to its own incumbent methodologies.

Cochlear initially performed user acceptance testing involving 37 people across five business units. It then had more than 150 people go through training, which documentation systems manager Brent Barnes says was a big commitment from the business, and as many as 250 users could potentially be trained to use the system.

"There has been a lot of cultural change as people move from paper to electronic documents," Barnes says. "We are able to much more effectively implement changes, and we have more rigour over how we do that. The review processes are clearer and the learning curve is not as steep."

According to vice president of quality and regulatory Bronwyn Evans, as part of managing the change the team looked at what was needed to get a communication plan that addressed all of the people and tools that were available. "We did a good job of viral marketing by putting posters around the office," she says, adding it became clear to staff that something different was happening and people were ready to hear about it.

Before the new system went live, employees were asked to assess the perceived benefit of the tool in the short, medium and long terms. The consensus was that in the short term it may be a bit painful but in the long term it will be better.

"To me the success of it was it was a very structured project using standard tools, and the company not seeing it as an IT project, then combining that with project management. It involved getting in early enough with stakeholders and not letting their ego get in the way when problems happened," Evans says.

Barnes and Evans agree that in time there was a turnaround in staff perception from: "You are killing us with this new tool", to: "It is actually making a difference", and: "How do you do this?"

— R GEDDA