IBM launches automotive Jam consulting service to drive new forms of collaboration
By Jim Fulcher, contributing editor -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 5/1/2007 12:00:00 AM
To some people, the word “jam” brings to mind images of the Allman Brothers live at the Fillmore East. But for 2,000 people from 150 organizations in the automotive industry, it recaps a 72-hour online brainstorming session that took place in March.
The Jam Consulting Service arm of IBM Global Business Services collaborated with the Original Equipment Suppliers Association (OESA) to hold the first-ever Automotive Supplier Jam, a series of moderated discussions about the North American automobile industry. According to IBM, a Jam gives organizations the means to develop ideas that drive business innovation.
Says Sanjay Rishi, global automotive industry leader for IBM Global Business Services, “We've used Jams at IBM to identify new ideas and then rally around them. Automotive is a critical industry that clearly faces challenges ranging from the collaboration gap among partners to environmental concerns. When we formed an advisory committee to gauge interest in an automotive Jam, industry executives were excited about potential idea generation because breakthrough innovations are sure to spring forth from that type of dialogue.”
IBM's Jam Consulting Service leverages IBM Research's eClassifier, a real-time text analysis and data-mining tool that highlights emerging trends and distills actionable results. Jams can help organizations create new methods for collaboration with partners, uncover industry best practices, solve supply chain issues, enable employees to establish corporate principles, and generate actionable ideas for industry innovation.
“We're very pleased because there were some exciting discussions during the [automotive] Jam,” Rishi says. “It was quite heartening to see the level of participation because it truly was top-down and bottom-up. On the one hand, there were C-level executives, but engineering, manufacturing, and plant-floor personnel also took part.”
The March Automotive Supplier Jam comprised four key themes:
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Driving growth;
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Achieving profitable prosperity;
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Addressing relationships within the supplier value network and the means to gain more benefit from them; and
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Enabling supplier reconfiguration and evolution by discovering new business models, and promoting corporate and social responsibility.
The next step, Rishi says, is for IBM and OESA to review the dialog and analyze all the ideas and discussions—and then develop a transformational agenda.
“We are planning structured discussions to develop that agenda,” Rishi says. “That's the takeaway that companies can apply to their businesses. The transformational agenda shows how things can be done differently to address challenges and improve performance.”
