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1.        Introduction

Strategies and roadmaps direct involved people towards their longer-term goals and business objectives. The purpose of this IT Strategy and Roadmap document is to achieve just this; to ensure that members of the IT organization head towards clearly defined business goals, through shared vision and approach. A necessary common vision (or rather the lack of it) has been highlighted in several feedback sessions and team meetings. The importance of this document for the IT organization should therefore not underestimated. Chapter two and three specify the scope and owner of this document, respectively. Chapter four elaborates the strategic direction currently applicable to our organization, in which compliance with PD directives is emphasized. Chapter five explains the current application portfolio and highlights changes and trends. Chapter six and seven elaborate automation, information, and project plans. Chapter eight provides an overview of our IT organization. Chapter nine shows our current resource situation with special emphasis on the resource constraints. Chapter ten highlights the plan of training and “upgrading” current employees in order to achieve our business objectives. Chapter eleven, lastly, provides an overview of operational policies and guidelines for our IT organization. 

2.        scope

The IT Strategy and Roadmap applies to the IT department and its members of Company. From IT manager to pc support, it is important that all members of the IT department share the similar long term strategy and direction for guiding their daily activities.

3.        owner

Company, IT.

4.        strategic direction

4.1.    Business objectives

The following business objectives provide guidance to the IT department and justify its existence:

  1. To provide information and tools to enable Shanghai site to manage its business in a most efficient and effective manner, thus enabling the business to compete and prosper in a highly competitive and volatile high technology business sector, at present and in the future.
  2. To ensure that IT becomes a business enabler and that the management team understands and recognizes its value and supports it accordingly.

4.2.    Strategic direction and approach

In order to ensure that the business objectives are achieved, IT will strictly comply with the following strategic directions and approaches:

  1. To follow Company IT directives. Which has provided explicit direction to IT in areas of application support ( e.g. ERP (enterprise resource planning)) and infrastructure support.
  2. To establish application competence and function expert teams within the IT department in order to support all levels of the organization.

4.3.    IT Budget

On the Shanghai site level, the average approved Budget for IT is approximately 4% of the total site’s cost of organisation, including the IT Personnel, Equipment and Application cost.

4.4.    Outsourcing strategy and direction

IT calls for outsourcing of technical tasks to consulting firms and company approved vendors. In addition, IT Organisation will comply with Corporate direction when adopting any outsourcing activities.

5.        Application roadmap

5.1.    Enterprise resource planning

MFGPro will continue to be our core functional ERP system through October 2004. Currently the SAP project is in progress and scheduled to go live November 4, 2004.  This release will cover the functions of FI CO Purchasing, partial material management, and interfacing with MFGPro to support the business. At that time, MFGPro will be taken out of service.

5.2.    Supply chain planning

Supply Chain Planning system is our supply chain planning system to support an integrated supply-demand planning and management.

5.3.    Human resource information system

We will continue to use local HR package but will integrate the support and data center operation with the IT.

5.4.    Manufacturing execution

SFC system is our shop floor control system that supports our production floor control and management. This initiative is now fully completed for Shanghai.

5.5.    Product data management

For product data management, we currently are using a Lotus Notes System as our common product data repository and technical data management system. It also supports our most critical product development (innovation to market) process. In the future, this system will also support the technical workflow and process with electronic signature feature.

5.6.    Project management and time tracking

Portfolio management has been implemented and used to support multi-site project management for the technical community as well as IT.

6.        Automation and information plan

6.1.     Software and hardware requirements

6.1.1.     Desktop computers and associated software

  • All new purchases will be reviewed and enforced to comply with the standard configuration.
  • PCs used in production line are special cases and may not be required to comply with standard configuration. These PCs are not allowed to be connected to LAN in any way.

6.1.2.     Servers

  • Sun Solaris servers to host MFGPro.
  • NT servers/W2000 to support network DNS, DHCP, and file sharing.

6.1.3.     Software

  • Oracle as the primary choice of DBMS.
  • SQL Server can also be used for DBMS.

6.2.    Constraints

6.2.1.     Budget

The IS budget amounts to approximate 0.23% of the turnover. This is very small comparing to industry’s mean expense. We have, however, been prudent and resourceful, and still provide our customers with basic services as we can. In next year, the IT will be allocated $xxx (excluding salaries and depreciation) to spend in order to achieve its business objectives.

6.2.2.     Staffing level of IT

Currently Shanghai IT is grossly under-staffed. Due to the business condition, we have not been able yet to fill the opening at this moment. IT management has made justification for more resource to strengthen IT in order to support the expanding organizations.

6.2.3.     Knowledge and expertise level of IT staff

IT staff have adequate infrastructure knowledge (i.e., network, desktop, servers, emails, etc.). There is room for improvement but the basic knowledge is in place.

Particularly, the application system knowledge and analytical skills need to be uplifted. Currently only one staff member has the expertise and knowledge to support MFGPro system. In general the business process and system analysis ability is extremely limited, if in existence at all.

Moreover, project management skill is very lacking. Staff usually handles work at task level and the mindset of follow-up and accountability has been very week, although somewhat improved for the past year or so. This has been despite of formal PM training in which selected members of IT have participated.

Training has been considered as a proper way of improving employee knowledge and expertise, and consequently, IT management is committed to provide necessary training to IT staff to improve skill, business process knowledge, PM skill, and the necessary follow-up mindset. Training (internal and external) target has become part of the KPI target for IT.

6.2.4.     Complexity of business process and ERP

To IT staff, and many of our users, business process re-design and optimization is a very complex task. In the coming years, we will need to improve this knowledge and analytical skills in order to meet the challenging task of SAP implementation.

Regarding MFGPro change control, it is understood and concluded that current MFGPro system functionality and capacity cannot meet the requirements of a business marching toward $xxx. While this is not an outright ban on enhancements, any such request will be reviewed and scrutinized carefully to determine its validity. MFGPro enhancements focused on business control issues will certainly have more legitimacy than others.

7.        Project plan and IT outlook

7.1.    Objective

To achieve business objectives and to maximize the yield of improvement with the available resources and given our resource constraints.

7.2.    Automation target

  • Stabilize MFGPro system:
    • Hardware platform enhancement (completed).
    • Historical data archive (in progress and being expedited).
    • Database reorganization (awaiting archive activity).
    • Better monitoring by installing night shift watch (installed).
  • Stabilize HR system and enhance functionality and reporting:
    • HW enhanced and the new function project is in progress.
  • Network bandwidth improvement
  • MFG/PRO functional enhancements:
    • Fixed Assets (installed).
    • Warehouse scanning for FG (in analysis).

8.        IT organization

8.1.    Three core groups

Under the IT organization, there are three major groups that provide support on business applications, manufacturing systems, and IT services management.

8.1.1.     Business application

This group focuses on providing application and competence support on the core business applications in order to fulfill business needs. There will be three function expert teams under this group to take care of the three main areas of business application.

  1. Planning application team: provides support and analyst support on the planning system to support Ind. Ops. operations.
  2. ERP application team: provides daily application support for the ERP system (MFGPro and SAP) with a major focus on finance and logistics activities.
  3. General application team: provides support to the general applications, e.g. HR system, etc.

8.1.2.     Manufacturing systems

This group provides application support and acts as the SFC competence center. Its major focus is to provide operation support to Ind. Ops. The manufacturing systems group is also responsible for the SFC implementation.

8.1.3.     IT services management

This will be a site-specific function to act as the demand manager. This group will be responsible for validating and justifying site users’ requests for IT services so that it will be in line with IT policy.

8.2.    IT organization

The IT organization is based on a matrix-structure, incorporating both the advantages of a horizontal and vertical organizational design. Vertically, members of the IS organization report to their function superiors. Horizontally, specific members report to the designated leaders of project teams to which they belong (S = Security Team, S-O = Security Team Officer, S-L = Security Team Leader, IA = Internal Audit Team, IA-L = Internal Audit Team Leader, IA-A= Internal Audit Team Auditor, 5S = 5S Team, 5S-L = 5S Team Leader).

9.        resource planning

9.1.    Current situation

It is recognized that the most important asset in IT functions are the human resources.  Only with competent people, we can start to move forward and eventually achieve our business objectives. Nonetheless, the current resource situation is far from adequate to support ERP (MFGPro) and the upcoming complexity of interfacing with SAP. IT management is currently working on the re-assessment of resource requirement and will present to the management the urgent needs to increase IT resources. Being confronted with such resource constraints, the previous IT department has taken the approach to hire direct labor employees from the production department. These DLs have been trained to carry out basic PC/phone, helpdesk, and network support for Sites. Some of these DLs are now part of the new IS organization, whereas others have been transferred to join SAP. Finally, the IS department has hired an intern from the Netherlands to be assigned to process analysis and documentation work, which is currently seriously underperformed (if at all) in our organization.

10.    high level resource training plan

We need to plan and execute the following training plan specified for each individual member:

    • Project management
    • Business communications and mindset
      Oracle and SQL server administration
    • Vlan and security subjects
    • Linux
      ERP concept and fundamental
      PC and MS Office basics and advanced
    • Documentation and filing

11.    IT operational policy and guidelines

IT management

     – Policy:

  • Open door, open communication
  • Management expectation:

– Flexibility
– Motivation
– Team work
– Subject area competence

  • Practice:

– Appropriate level of communication
– Let staff participate in management decision making, contributing in the shaping and making of a mature IT organization.

  • Weekly status report

– Each IT staff member will report the weekly work status on a standard format. The idea is to communicate, and more importantly, to be accountable for the assigned tasks and to plan for the work ahead.

Weekly Team meeting:

  • Every Thursday for 1-1.5 hours
  • Rotating chairperson for the meeting among all members
  • The purpose of rotating is to allow all staff to experience the responsibility, coordination, and the moderation and management of effective hosting of meetings.
  • Meeting minutes on key points will be recorded and filed.

Reviews and self-audit:

   – Weekly – in the weekly IT meeting

  • Computer room log
  • Application migration log (Webplan, MFGPro)
  • Application server activity log
  • Archive, DB, and system performance
  • System capacity review

    – Monthly 

  • Virus cleaning review and audit
  • User access requests audit
  • Application Change request process audit
  • Application migration request audit

    – Quarterly

  • Security measures audit
  • self-audit

     – Yearly

  • Security measures
  • Self-assessment

12.    References

N/A

13.    Appendix A: IT Organization (with headcount)

TBD