Empirical Study of Multi-party Workshop Facilitation in Strategy Planning Phase for Product Lifecycle Management System

Abstract

This paper proposes a framework of short term and intensive workshop facilitation for multi-party stakeholders in PLM strategy planning phase. We have been empirically pursuing what a valuable facilitation for the workshop is; how multi-party PLM stakeholders can build proactively a mutual consensus in as short a time as possible. PLM project promotion members always encounter a difficulty of consensus building. This is because various stockholders have different opinions and responsibilities through sales, engineering, manufacturing, and service departments. Firstly, we mention key challenges of multi-party consensus building in PLM strategy planning phase. Secondly, we propose a programmatic framework on intensive workshop-facilitation which is configured twelve steps. The key outcome of the workshop is to craft a PLM Success Value Roadmap (PSVR) which is contained various hypothesis defined by the workshop participants helping by facilitators (KPIs). For example, there are PLM vision, strategy, initiative, process, and key performance indicator. Thirdly, we mention an empirical case study conducted our proposed workshop-facilitation method for an industrial company. Seventeen stakeholders were joined as the workshop participants who were invited from three different business units. It was held as a two-day intensive PLM trial workshop. Finally, we found that the proposed workshop-facilitation as a consensus building method contributed to the satisfaction of more than 60% of the participants. 85% of the participants commented that they would encourage colleagues to participate in the workshop that we have developed. We conclude that the multi-party intensive workshop was a valuable experience that it allows stakeholders to produce a PLM strategy in a relatively short time.