Xi An Changqing Technology Engineering Co., Ltd. Xinjiang Chemical Design Institute Changling Refining Yueyang Engineering Company Changsha Design and Research Institute Lu Hua Engineering Technology Co., Ltd. Shandong Pharmaceutical Industry Design Institute China Oil and Gas Pipeline Engineering Co., Ltd.
In order to win business opportunities in the international market competition, Wison Engineering (China) Co., Ltd. clearly realized the importance of strengthening the informatization level of enterprises, especially the informatization level of project management. Huisheng has built an enterprise-level project management platform-Huisheng WEPM platform, which adapts to the market environment and the needs of enterprises by learning advanced international management methods.
Huisheng WEPM Platform Towards Internationalization
—— Interview with Lin Zhong, Deputy General Manager of Wison Engineering (China) Co., Ltd.
Wison Engineering (China) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Wison") belongs to Wison Holding Group and is engaged in the construction and technical services of petrochemical, coal chemical and oil refining equipment projects. Since its establishment more than ten years ago, the company has always maintained the momentum of rapid development, starting from a construction unit that can only undertake small-scale decoration projects and developing into a comprehensive large-scale engineering company with considerable strength in China. "We are not satisfied with the status quo. As our business continues to expand overseas, we will strive to become an international engineering company with intensive intelligence and technology. " Lin Zhong, deputy general manager of Wison Engineering (China) Co., Ltd. said.
In the 1990s, the engineering design industry responded to the slogan of "throw away the drawing board and design" put forward by the state, and basically achieved this goal in 1997 and 1998. In the world, one of the development trends in the field of architecture is to "hand over the project to a professional team". With the reform of project matrix management and the implementation of project supervision system and engineering project management system, the amount of data that needs to be reported inside the organization has greatly increased in the process of completing a project. In order to win business opportunities in the international market competition, Huisheng clearly realized the importance of strengthening the informatization level of enterprises, especially improving the informatization level of project management. Huisheng has built an enterprise-level project management platform-Huisheng WEPM platform, which adapts to the market environment and the needs of enterprises by learning advanced international management methods.
Towards internationalization
The positioning of the enterprise is an international engineering company. According to this development strategy, enterprises should not only build projects at home, but also go international. During the enterprise information planning period, the company inspected the engineering companies that are in the forefront of information construction and compared some professional software. To sum up, they come to the conclusion that it is difficult to copy other people's systems, and no professional software can fully meet the needs of enterprises themselves. Huisheng needs to establish a project management platform with its own characteristics, which is Huisheng WEPM platform. Lin Zhong said: "After investigating some major suppliers and evaluating their comprehensive strength, we chose Shanghai Jinhui Software Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as" Jinhui Company ") as the strategic partner of the platform project, and gradually started the design and implementation of the platform system in the second half of 2009. Its purpose is business integration and data integration. " In the early stage of construction, Huisheng's positioning of the platform is: learning and drawing lessons from international advanced management methods, finding a characteristic road that conforms to its own enterprise situation, and creating an advanced and practical project management platform. Data is the information summary of a whole set of business implementation process of an engineering company. It's not difficult to enter data, but it's difficult to filter data. What data needs to be entered, whether the data is accurate and reliable, and who is responsible for proofreading and auditing the data are all solved by the business forms and other functions of WEPM platform. Only by understanding the original vouchers of data and the ins and outs of various processes can we make scientific decisions through the results of data output. However, many advanced software abroad do not standardize the data entry process. Huisheng proposed that every data should be filled in and entered according to the requirements of ISO9000 quality certification system. Huisheng WEPM platform is an enterprise-level management system around the whole life cycle management of engineering construction. On the whole, the whole process of project production management can be carried out from investment analysis, project establishment to completion and delivery; From the details, we can realize the engineering business details such as cost, schedule, quality, procurement, construction, contract, materials, communication and coordination, and realize the whole cycle and all-round management of the project. After sincere cooperation and active efforts with Jinhui Company, during the period of 20 10, the platform completed management functions such as design, procurement and construction one after another as planned, and the company's projects under construction and newly signed projects were centrally managed by the system. At present, the platform is in the initial stage of use. Speaking of online systems, there are many feelings in the forest. "After a year and a half and nearly two years of work, I have the experience that the process of platform development itself is the process of standardized management of enterprises." In the past, the business process was solidified in the regulations, and it could be adjusted if it was not implemented. Now, the business process must be executable. Business forms need to be signed and approved at the first level, and then saved as files after they become effective, and the recorded data are classified into the database. This objectively requires enterprises to first sort out business processes and plan and adjust management processes. Please remove the management process from the book and restore IT to the IT interface in the platform for further promotion. Talking about this year's achievements, Lin Zhong told reporters: "So far, the process of a single project has been fully opened, including the whole process from project bidding, quotation, design to construction management. Just like patients go to the hospital to get medicine, a whole process from prescription to medicine is running in the software system, and patients no longer have to run around between departments with prescriptions. "
Effectiveness of WEPM platform
WEPM platform promotes the standardization of enterprise management foundation. Through the construction of the platform system, Wison has completed a lot of standardization work of management foundation, such as "enterprise coding specification, standard work items, standard work packages, working hours quota", and through the system solidification, implementation and supervision of these standards, it has laid a solid foundation for rapidly improving product quality, cultivating talents and establishing a more just evaluation system.
On the whole, WEPM platform fully embodies the value and function of "integration". Through the integrated WEPM platform, all the business work of an enterprise, such as daily office, marketing, material procurement, project management, financial reimbursement and manpower deployment, can be integrated into an integrated work platform, which realizes the integration of "information flow, workflow and capital flow" and brings benefits to the overall all-round work of the enterprise.
The dynamic query of WEPM platform provides good support for data classification, statistics and utilization. The platform system provides multi-level query and statistics, which can be classified and counted according to various conditions, providing data basis for the company leaders to arrange the work in the next period and the future development direction of the company. And through the platform system, you can also provide various reports for company leaders in real time, and leaders only need to input query conditions according to their own needs.
Highlights of WEPM platform
In the process of exploration and practice, WEPM platform has formed the characteristics of management mode, business form, process drive, data dynamics, platform configuration and system integration.
management mode
In project management, many factors, such as project investment, project scale, owner's situation, construction period, geographical location and so on, determine that the management mode of the construction unit presents diversified characteristics. As an enterprise-level project management platform, it needs to be able to "suit the right medicine" and adapt to the different management modes and business processes adopted by enterprises for different projects, which is also the requirement of Huisheng for WEPM platform.
In order to meet the above requirements, in the process of system design, Huisheng and Jinhui project team first established a complete and unified project management platform based on the international PMBOK project management system, including the entity data system with WBS as the core and the project management business system with five process groups and nine knowledge fields as the core. Then based on the unified project management platform, different project management modes are configured according to different project requirements, which embodies the concept of ISO9000 quality management system in process management and standardizes the project management process.
Lin Zhong said that project management should not only face different owners, but also deal with different departments of the company. Management modeling is equivalent to generating a set of standardized tables. For Owner A to start Form A, Owner B adopts Form B, or develops Form C again. The format and content of the form vary with different project types and tasks. A business corresponds to a set of delivery forms, and the WEPM platform allows various patterns to be stored in them. A set of forms is a management model. The organizational form of the enterprise has changed, the requirements of the owners have changed, and only one mode needs to be changed. Every time a project is carried out, a pattern will be accumulated. If you encounter the same project in the future, you only need to change some table contents or adjust the order of the tables.
Business formalization
Although some large-scale professional management software, especially foreign software, is very powerful, it is often difficult to be fully popularized and popularized in the process of domestic use because of its complex functions and interfaces and relatively high prices. Moreover, due to the lack of operators and data sources, the real value of these professional software is generally not fully exerted.
How to give full play to the value of professional software, at the same time, give consideration to the management mode and work habits with its own characteristics, and promote the wide-scale popularization and use has become a problem that Huisheng must face and solve when building WEPM platform. After many discussions and analysis, Wison decided to adopt the business form solution. All the contents are run through the form, and the data entry work is unified in the form, which is simple and easy to use without changing habits. These forms can be the same as those in the company management system documents, which are not only easy to be accepted by everyone, but also friendly in interface and quick in operation. At the same time, it can ensure that all kinds of management records are automatically generated from the system, and avoid the waste of resources caused by filling in a large number of documents in the later stage.
Business formalization has another meaning, which solves the problem that IT and business are difficult to understand each other. IT doesn't understand business, and business doesn't understand IT, which is a problem that puzzles many enterprises. Business personnel sort out a complete set of forms, combined with business knowledge, you can know where each form started and how it was circulated. Compared with hospital prescriptions, through the standardization of the process, doctors clearly fill in the types of drugs, treatment methods, auditors, dispensing personnel, etc. , and listed in a clear form. When the process needs to be changed, sometimes it is only necessary to change the signature order. During the operation of the project, once employees find that the business process is infeasible or difficult to run, they have the right to put forward the irrationality of the business process, and submit the improved form to it personnel for improvement. The responsibility of business personnel is to ensure that a set of forms is feasible; The software personnel will write the form into the software. Once formalized, business people no longer need to think about how it works.
Process driven
"Through this platform, we will assign the tasks of WBS structure to each employee's desktop," Lin Zhong told reporters. Process-driven is mainly embodied in three aspects: push mechanism, workflow visualization and collaborative work. Through the push mechanism, the system can automatically push work tasks, schedules, message reminders and other matters to relevant personnel, reducing and avoiding forgetfulness and procrastination that often happened in the past. It used to be "people looking for a job", but now it is "looking for a job". In the actual work process, enterprises often pay attention to the pushed work, process execution stage, stagnation stage and so on. WEPM platform provides workflow visualization function, which can intuitively and conveniently display the overall execution status of workflow and detailed execution information at each stage, such as approval opinions and approval forms.
Complex workflow will contain many branch processes, different processes are intertwined, and different people and roles are woven together by different processes. Therefore, under the WEPM platform, we form a collaborative work platform through intertwined workflows. For example, a set of management mode contains 50 forms, and the project manager fills in the 10 form when appointing personnel. These forms are automatically pushed to the work center, and the next level personnel are in place. By filling in the working hours and work arrangements, we will continue to deepen and refine the tasks, and finally send every request to everyone who does it. In the past, assignments required meetings, and specific arrangements were made by telephone according to the company's standards. People who are not familiar with company standards may not know what work to finish today. With this platform and communication process, subordinates can better do things arranged by superiors.
Data dynamics
Dynamic data mainly refers to three aspects: dynamic entry, dynamic association and dynamic presentation. In Huisheng WEPM platform, the data entry process is not limited to operators filling in different business forms; Data such as approval information, process information, reservation information and decision information formed in the process of pushing forms with business processes will also be dynamically and automatically collected to the unified data center of the system platform for storage like snapshots, which greatly enriches the data sources of the system.
There are abundant data sources, and if the data are not correlated and reorganized, more junk data will be generated; If they are all associated manually, it will add a lot of extra work. Therefore, Wison requires software companies to establish multiple sets of data models within the platform according to the concepts of project management and enterprise operation management. When the data enters the system, it will automatically establish an association relationship with other data according to the data model and weave a data relationship network.
With the above two aspects as the foundation, we can achieve the purpose of dynamic data presentation. For example, you can dynamically and real-timely associate OBS, CBS, QBS and other related information through a node in the project WBS. In addition, through dynamic display, it is convenient for enterprise-level, functional-level and project-level leaders to query. Because of the different emphasis and statistical requirements of these three levels, Wison not only uses the method of data drilling and mining to show them layer by layer, but also draws lessons from the characteristics of some business intelligence BI, providing rich visual expressions.
Platform configuration
A complex management system should be able to flexibly adapt to the needs of various changes and make timely adjustments and changes. The WEPM platform contains nearly 100 different business forms and various complex workflows, and the probability of adjustment and change is very high, which requires the software system to respond and adjust quickly, which puts high demands on the configuration of the software system. Huisheng WEPM platform is mainly planned and designed from the following two aspects to meet the above requirements.
First of all, the concept of "building blocks" is fully embodied in the platform function and database architecture. According to the concept of project management, some management elements are realized as "building blocks" (functional components) as far as possible, and the data information corresponding to these elements is also planned to be stored in the data center, and then these "building blocks" are combined into different styles according to the needs of specific business forms and workflows. As the saying goes, no matter how the business requirements change, because the core data structure is unified and the business logic of the project management core is unified, it can be flexibly combined through various building blocks.
Secondly, the platform also provides a large number of configuration tools to meet the above-mentioned "building blocks" requirements. For example, there are process customization tools, form customization tools and permission definition tools. Through these tools, we can reduce or even avoid code writing, let IT departments operate directly, and lower the threshold of system adjustment and maintenance.
system integration
Before the construction of WEPM platform, Wison had a large number of professional software, among which the larger software mainly included project procurement and material management software (Marian), document management software (EDMS), project plan management software (P6), enterprise portal system (Websphere), etc. Wison independently developed office automation system, personnel deployment and man-hour collection system.
These professional softwares at home and abroad have complex relationships, application integration and data sharing are difficult, and many information islands have been formed within the enterprise. Therefore, Wison plans to use WEPM platform as the integration platform of application systems, and all the existing software systems mentioned above need to be integrated on this platform. In the design module, design coordination and management including proofreading will be realized in the platform, and the interface between the platform and application software platforms with entity data management as the core (such as VNET platform of AVEVA and Smartplant Foundation of Intergraph) will be considered from a technical point of view. The material procurement module integrates the current MARIAN and reflects all procurement work and management including MARIAN's comprehensive information and processing; The document management module integrates the current EDMS and reflects all document management including the comprehensive information and processing of EDMS. The project schedule module integrates the current P6, which reflects the comprehensive information and processing of the project schedule management including P6.
Cooperation to achieve * * * win-win situation
Huisheng WEPM platform system involves all production managers, so it is naturally difficult to implement. Therefore, the determination and attention of the company's leadership is the first. "Since the general direction is right, Wison will try its best to solve various problems encountered in the implementation." Lin Zhong said, "In order to implement the platform, we have combined the annual assessment indicators of various departments with the promotion and use of the platform, and informatization has been placed in a prominent position. We allow you to put forward amendments, but we don't allow you not to use them. We cut off many repetitive processes and blocked the offline path, so we have to go online. " With this persistence, Wison standardized more than 100 business processes and formed thousands of business forms, which laid the foundation for enterprises to move towards standardized management and internationalization.
In terms of project team, Huisheng and Jin Hui Company * * * set up a project team headed by the project manager and led by business backbones and department heads of various functional departments. The role of each member is clearly defined, and their responsibilities are also clear. Both sides face pressure and difficulties together and solve problems together. Jinhui Company sent a number of personnel with rich experience in system development and implementation to participate in the whole business research, system development and trial operation stage. When the project schedule is tight, they can be stationed at the scene to work, answer the phone and solve various problems in time. Huisheng and Software Work jointly develop the platform needed by the enterprise based on the principle of cooperative development and win-win. When encountering major issues such as the scope and depth of functions and the adjustment of technical solutions. They can communicate well with each other.
"Although the platform system has been put into use, it has also played its due role and brought good results, but the management informationization work is a long-term and continuous work, which can be said to be only the beginning, not the end. Therefore, Wison's system will continue to develop in depth and breadth on the existing basis, such as performance appraisal, cost management, quota management, data mining and so on. At the same time, with the accumulation of time, we will continue to enrich the enterprise knowledge base, and we are full of confidence in the follow-up work and the problems we face. " The forest is over.