“The best jobs we’ve had are the ones that have everyone involved up front, sitting down together at the beginning to discuss the project. Operations folks should also be engaged before the project starts. Get champions identified earlier on.”
Craig Cooper, Engineering Account Manager, and Jason Phelps, Project Manager, recently authored a in a blog post for Automation World on the psychology of change and how to best prepare when taking on a project upgrade:
Here’s a scenario—we’re contacted by a company to help them with a system upgrade. The client wants a system upgraded with Ethernet, databases, historians, etc. We provide a proposal, and upper-level engineering love it. Then, the project kicks off. But the boots-on-the-ground operations people hate it. They spend much of the project execution trying to make the new system exactly like it was before. Throughout this process, we try to coax the operations folks to see our way is better, and to show them why it’s better and how it will help them. It feels like a constant sales presentation. This results in a lot of rework, because we want to make them happy. And then as they adjust, they go back and forth on changes. Sound familiar?
Often when companies approach an upgrade project, they go straight into the technology, functional requirements, and business needs. These are all very important considerations, but an important piece of the puzzle is missing: the psychology of the change itself and how best to manage it.
To an operations team with production goals and other metrics to meet every shift, change is not exactly embraced with open arms. Change can mean adaptation (which takes time that they think they don’t have), it can be scary (even the best ideas can be poorly executed with catastrophic results, and they’ve probably seen that before), and it can seem pointless (it was working this way, why are we doing it differently now?)…
Encouraging Collaboration & Cooperation During Times of Change
Cooper’s article goes on to explain how a control system integrator can avoid these pitfalls and encourage a healthy, productive experience during the transition to a new or upgraded automate system. He discusses best practices for approaching your upgrade with the psychology of change in mind:
Include your key stakeholders before the project starts.
Typical of many big moves in a company, commonly only upper-level management is involved at the outset of a project. But that leaves out the people who are actually going to use the system day after day – both their concerns and their needs. Include everyone at the outset, and keep management apprised throughout the project so they can manage expectations and encourage adaptation. A big part of resistance to change is fear of the unknown; open and inclusive communication is key to any successful automation project.
Pre-work sets you up for success.
Operational people should be involved before the project is even fully-proposed. Get to know what’s happening on the facility floor and design the integrated control system based off what you’re seeing and what they’re telling you. Being included in a process that directly affects daily life on the production line will help people become more comfortable, and even excited, about changes that could improve their processes.
Integrators need to drive the process.
While the process should be collaborative, it should by no means be democratic. Integrators, as the people who are experts in control system design and implementation, need to take the lead. But that also means taking cues from the operational staff, and keeping upper-level management both involved in the process and consistently communicating with the team. Automation companies don’t just integrate control systems; they should help integrate the human hierarchy on the project as well.
Think about training ahead of time.
If you’ve managed people’s apprehension to change throughout the project but haven’t prepared for training when the system is finally up, things will not go smoothly. Having operations, HR, safety, and maintenance involved throughout the project will help you plan a training program that puts everyone on the same page, ensuring the workforce is able to hit the ground running on the new system.
Remember what it’s really about.
We’re managing more than new control panels, software updates and a system reconfiguration; we’re managing the people who are going to be using those things every day for decades. Upper management should find ways to make these changes less shocking and more attractive. And everyone should remain positive and cooperative, because the more secure and valued everyone feels in the process, the better automation system we can design, and the more you’ll get out of it once we’re done.