MyKnowledgeMap

Strategy Blueprint

Strategy Blueprint is a Yorkshire Forward (Regional Development Agency) funded initiative managed by the Engineering Employers Federation (EEF) in Yorkshire and the Humber and jointly developed by MyKnowledgeMap Ltd. And EBL Consultancy.

Background: As the focus of the UK economy has shifted from manufacturing towards the service sector, the traditional manufacturing environment has faced many challenges. The Yorkshire and Humber Region has suffered more than most with much of its industrial heartland suffering substantial redundancies and reduced markets for its products over the past thirty years.

In our increasingly knowledge-driven economy, a successful manufacturing company is one that can best exploit the technologies of today and tomorrow. In order to stay ahead in such a rapidly changing manufacturing arena, it is important for UK manufacturers to make the best possible use of what is their most valuable asset – their people.

Whilst there has been investment in their training, there has been less success in encouraging regional entrepreneurship, strategic leadership and business management of world class manufacturing techniques.

In early 2000 a project proposal was submitted by the Engineering, Metals and Manufacturing (EMM) Sector Board to Yorkshire Forward for funding. The working hypothesis was that the fundamental training need of the sector was for higher engineer competencies required to successfully embed world-class manufacturing culture, knowledge and techniques into EMM companies. The research conducted by Cranfield University indicated that, although integral to EMM sector competitiveness, such 'master engineer' intervention and allied skill training must be justified strategically and that business-centred strategic and planning skills must be enhanced as a priority.

The evaluators felt that key skills gaps were focused around managerial teams within the manufacturing businesses and suggested that a lack of business strategy skills is hampering their progress. "We need a better skilled, more competent workforce at all levels, able to lift their companies into a world class."

Primary Aim: To develop a strategy planning tool for SMEs in the Engineering sector which would instill a new culture of knowledge of techniques into manufacturing companies to give them the strength to compete and win against competition. This would include a skills analysis function as well as e-learning application and content.

Key Challenges:

• One of the major challenges that this project presented was in ensuring that the terminology used within the product was simple and easy to understand
• Successfully integrating the Skills Gap Analysis with the rest of the Strategy Blueprint System. This was because two different versions of the system were necessary depending on level of progress that the individual had made within the Strategy Blueprint program so that a comparison could be carried out between them
• Understanding what managers within the engineering sector really needed to know to become more competitive
• Due to the type of financial data that was required, we knew it was going to prove difficult finding a sufficient number of companies willing to pose as case studies
• Due to the amount of content and size of the site, navigation and usage were always going to prove challenging. It was essential that the end product was simple to navigate and use even with the vast amount of content that was present

Solution: The Strategy Blueprint is an interactive business and learning support tool to help owner/managers in the engineering sector of Yorkshire and the Humber develop strategic plans for their businesses. It is available free of charge to individuals and companies. The programme is available either online or in CD-Rom format. As such it can be used as and when convenient for the user.

All the learning material has been written in plain English and is divided into manageable sections. In addition, users have access to a selection of articles written by key management gurus, such as Michael Porter and Tom Peters, these are taken from the Bloomsbury Business Database. The user can move around between the various sections of the programme as it suits their style of working. This means that the Strategy can be a team effort produced over a lengthy period of time. The Strategy Blueprint tracks progress and allows re-working of the Plan. The Strategy Blueprint is available either online or in CD-Rom format.

It has 5 basic components:

• The Learning Process - a clearly written and illustrated theoretical framework
• Working Example - a hypothetical case study that reflects and follows the theory with the "real" issues of a typical engineering business
• Real case studies - examples of actual businesses that have adopted a strategic approach but have not adopted, perhaps, all the techniques
• Non Executive Director (NED) - a resource that provides more detailed theory, references, training & consultancy provision.
• Your Plan - a supported programme for the user to write his/her own Strategy Plan that allows on screen reference to the relevant sections of any of the above components

Post Implementation evaluation:

• Complex subject made accessible - Strategy can be a daunting subject particularly some of the terminology. The Strategy Blueprint demystifies the jargon without devaluing the concepts. It is designed for "hands on" managers to access the tools of Strategy with clear language, diagrams and multimedia support
• Transferable - The Strategy Blueprint offers significant potential for the engineering sector but can also be transferred to other sectors/clusters, regions and beyond
• The Learning present within Strategy Blueprint needs Flash Player to be installed, this was not sufficiently signalled in the first CD version and subsequently we had to change this and help people through any problems they may have had in the meanwhile
• Older computers did not have sufficient memory to install the entire file from the CD all at once as it was too large. MKM therefore produced a CD that divides the content from the databases so that 2 medium sized files could be downloaded instead
• Some people had problems initially with their dial up connection as the images and Flash movies available online were too large and taking too long to download. This has been solved recently by breaking down some of the Flash movies into several smaller files