From Andrea Franco :
Dear colleagues,
made separately after a chat with some of you during the coffee breaks of the past few seminars and exchange of e-mail, I thought it appropriate to share and broaden the discussion on the Systems Engineering (SE ) in Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to foster our community and gather further input and opinions.
Background and objectives
As I have said on more than one occasion, the personal and professional experience has led me to realize how little is known of the role of SE.
This statement is derived from the results of a screening, continued for more than a year, for listings of recruitment of staff, (actually limited to the area of \u200b\u200bRome) from which it shows a picture of how, with the exception of large multinational companies, our job profile is virtually ignored.
Considering that the Italian production, as well as other countries recognize us, is largely the sector of Small and Medium Enterprises, we come to the conclusion that there are large areas in Italy where the application of systems engineering in its various forms of expression, can be employed.
Results from this awareness of the media business should hopefully lead to a growth on one side of the competitiveness of firms and the other (utopian?) An increase in requests for profiles related to the area of \u200b\u200bSE, thus encouraging growth of new employment opportunities.
summary of the context
In this section I would like to share some personal elaborations on the analysis of the context might arise from any action aimed at promoting the role of SE in Italian SMEs.
Small, large, the financial crisis
few weeks ago, in an article in Sole24Ore, Romano Prodi noted that, unlike other nations, "the system (!) Italy" has proved relatively resilient to an altogether ' impact of the financial crisis, thanks to a production system is still strongly driven by the SME sector. The explanation is to be found in the fact that while the large industrial groups affect and are themselves heavily influenced by financial speculation and maneuvering to balance accounts and cash flow, SMEs based their income substantially on the profitability of what they produce.
In practice ended as the economy of a country that is firmly tied to the manufacturing sector (represented by SMEs) than that of the services - or at least where the weight of the first and second are well mixed - provides a guarantee solid foundation to survive in similar financial storms.
The reason that SMEs are now suffering then is due mainly to the difficulty of access to credit and not for a lack of structural model of this production system.
reading this, I remembered how at a seminar I attended today was alleged that the objective of a company is not make profitable products but satisfy their shareholders, to reflect well in recent years the governance (rewarded in their own company's shares) for certain industrial groups, characterized by boxes of Chinese companies and subsidiaries or financial alchemy, have accustomed us to decisions that appear to be increasingly taken on the basis of the shareholders. The fate of the leadership is therefore doubly bound to the performance of the Stock Exchange company that runs itself.
In an SME but the role of "master" can be identified unambiguously, and so the entrepreneur, who lives the product of his business, exposes himself (if not in many cases the whole family) with decisions related to running the company, all decisions that affect the size of the life cycle of the products it produces to the sphere of support processes to business management. All in a market environment characterized by constant change and magmatic and chains of cause and effect of increasing complexity involving the application of the leadership of the entrepreneur and his staff skills mix of vision and knowledge that is specific to large spectrum.
Entering the SE in SMEs: managing complexity in support of decision-making
The conclusion of the previous section on the management of an SME is in my opinion the two sides of the coin. In support of my rambling resort to some other article of Sole24Ore: a director of the Italian Family Business (AIdAF) and an interview with the President of the Union of Industrialists of Rome (UIR).
The first was the degree of reluctance that has to resort to an SME managers to be introduced in executive functions, which are outside the "clan" owner. Even with the knowledge that the contribution of experience to figure Middle / Senior Management in a multinational even grown (as some experts SE) addressing the need to grow the company and its competitiveness, however, the main obstacles are discernible in:
• fear that the owner of the deprived and emptied see that today holds the power of decision regarding the fate of his company
• the diversity of cultures and views the entrepreneur (specifically focused on the company) and the manager (who has perhaps a more far-reaching if only because he was accustomed to reason on a scale several orders of magnitude) to result in reports contrasting
• the cost associated with the recruitment of professionals at this level
The second interview , commenting on an investigation into the degree of innovation of SMEs in Rome, underlined their status to family and as in some cases still are found "managerial failures along the innovation process," saying also that "it would be blind by employers cut hours resources for innovation and high professionalism, rather streamline processes." Finally asked the SMEs to overcome the limited scope that distinguishes their activities, through more convincingly to the regional districts, whose mission is to promote the synergistic action of several companies that share areas (but also needs) related, according to the old adage that "unity is strength."
Conclusions About the qualms expressed by the first article, I resort to a metaphor. Among the crew of the sailboat racing is competing in both the tactical and the skipper. The first inspects the surface of the sea in search of the blasts and suggested, therefore, the race tactics. The skipper, however, is the one who has his hands in the rudder and the final decision on which route to follow is up to him. Similarly, the SE should be considered as a support to the process and strategy decisions (eg product or process) which remains the prerogative and responsibility of the entrepreneur, who some degree of delegation will have his collaborator in the SE Party tune.
Although it is acceptable and desirable, the exhortation the President of the UIR to consider the investment not only in technology but also as a force for innovative human resources again, it can not be overlooked that the condition for this is that any entrepreneur would like to have evidence of a business case that justifies this step. You should then be quantified as the cost of investment in training, or even take an SE has been offset by increased efficiency, reduced costs, or obtained, for example with a review of organizational processes or with a greater focus on management risk or with the application of more structured methods or strategy for a successful product. To mitigate
the costs of that investment, I do not know if and how technology districts (currently active in the Region are three: to the material and cultural activities for the bioscience and aerospace and defense) and support the institutions responsible for them, this could make the effort to grow and enhance figures of SE within SMEs cheaper, thanks to their forces and the sharing of common programs. Andrea Franco
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