Abstract

The “information age” has finally produced tools capable of supporting a variety of employment and business models that previously were infeasible.The convergence of socio-economic factors, workforce composition, accelerating product obsolescence and technological advances has created an unparalleled need and fertile opportunity to redefine the workforce model.These new technological capabilities alone are insufficient to reinvent the business models.Management must, through vision and solid commitment at all hierarchical levels, migrate its values, reinvent precepts, coalesce processes, and redefine its workforce models to remain financially viable in the emerging compressed timelines.The tools are at hand; economic realities make corporate change a financial requirement; and the changing values, goals and social composition of the workforce apply pressure to create a new, network centric workforce model.These converging pressures make rethinking the corporation viable and necessary.How rapidly these changes occur will be determined now by old-fashioned rates of human / corporate acceptance of change.Compression of the market timeline may force significant, perhaps unrecoverable fallout among those companies that are slow to take up this challenge.

1.CONVERGING FACTORS

The stage is set for change.The initial stages of the information age, instead of freeing us – as promised – from a sea of paperwork; has in fact deluged workers with data and paper. Inexpensive copiers, scanners, printers, fax machines and most of all, e-mail systems have taken all effort out of sharing vast quantities of data with a wide audience.Making 100 copies of a memo is now as easy as a single copy.E-mail group lists make copying every employee a single operation, not even requiring a person-by-person review of the recipient list.

Wireless technologies have been equally important in defining the information age to-date.Laptops; remote log-ins; wireless PDAs; car phone/fax/e-mail systems; global pocket-sized telephone and paging services, many now offering remote internet access are a few examples of the advances in technology which have impacted the workforce model.

Shortened timelines add worker stress.The result has been a compression of decision making time, an increase in the number of tangentially relevant people adding input to decision making, and a loss of employee free-time.Employees are now available 24 hours/day whether they are in their car, at a little league game, or thousands of miles away on a business (or pleasure) trip.The screening, scheduling, and prioritizing functions once performed by administrative assistants has often been replaced by electronic applications that provide similar tools directly to the employee.This change has been aided and in some cases required by the last decade’s downsizing trend.The savings were easily quantifiable as whole positions were replaced by distributing tools and responsibilities among all workers.The costs of this aspect of downsizing are harder to quantify but are becoming increasingly apparent in daily business.

Additionally, employees are now asked to be a veritable jack-of-all trades since the traditional support staff is slim to non-existent in many companies.Employees, who once were paid to focus on strategy definition are now required to define the strategy, contact and organize the meeting attendees, produce meeting handouts, create the graphic elements, and even locate and schedule a free conference room.This means highly paid specialists are earning the same rate for performing less-skilled tasks such as meeting room scheduling as they are for developing project strategic plans affecting the bottom line.Looked at from the point of view of what a task is worth, the cost of so fully distributing such tasks to highly compensated employees becomes an expensive prospect.

Another well documented side-effect of the downsizing age is a loss of motivation in a workforce burdened with twin stressors of “survivors guilt” about remaining employed while so many around them lost established positions coupled with anger and resentment about being given the duties and responsibilities of all of those disbanded positions typically without any additional compensations.

Downsizing’s decimation of middle-management ranks leaves employees with a less defined promotion path, less old-style decision-making structures, and less clearly defined authorities.The advent of collaborative tools has been used to attempt to stopgap the decision structure and authority holes by involving more people in committee-based decisions.This has created its own stressors on the workforce by distancing employees from top management strategies, and adding a feeling of inability to effect change.

Shrinking Workforce.The aging of the baby-boomer generation now creates a natural loss of workforce through retirement in addition to the reduction in force occurring through downsizing and other factors. “Brain Drain” is a popular term used to described a workforce decimated in recent years by:

·RIF’s (Reductions in Force)

·Downsizing

·The “graying of America” as baby-boomers reach retirement age

·A small–post baby boomer generation.

·Movement of domestic jobs off shore

The huge baby-boomer generation that spurred a vibrant expanding economy is being followed by a much smaller generation.Numerically, the available workforce is shrinking.Both industry and the military are beginning to feel a shortage of experienced staff in certain fields.This shortage will worsen under current employment models as the baby-boomer retirement curve peaks.Many obstacles are in place to prevent the extension of work beyond traditional retirement ages and re-entry into the workforce by retired staff.

The economic boom of the 1990’s has created a financial freedom based upon investments rather than solely retirement plans and social security income for many baby-boomers.This financial independence spurs aging boomers to retire early and to be less tolerant of perceived restrictions and obstacles at work.Many people of this generation enjoy working but are willing and able to give it up if the employment picture is not enticing.

Employers seeking the Generation-X employee have recognized a profound shift in priorities within this generation.Although not financially independent like their baby-boomer predecessors, they share a desire to experience more balance in their work and personal lives.Additionally, recruiting has had to resort to more creative offers to lure this generation of workers.Perks such as fitness club memberships, ability to telecommute at will, even ability to bring pets to the office share a common trait with the desires of the boomers – change the workforce model to make the work experience more rich, accommodating of personal life and enjoyable.

Accelerating Obsolescence.Especially hard-hit by the tighter labor market will be those products with long design to production cycles and those with long active life terms.Military aircraft are one such product.The accelerating rate of obsolescence in the electronics field means critical replacement parts are not only no longer made, but the companies owning the part specifications and designs may be out of business.Stockpiles acquired during initial provisioning for airplanes such as the C-130, F-15, and commercial planes such as the Concorde are dwindling as these planes flying life begins to exceed two decades.At the same time that specific parts used in these planes are becoming obsolete and increasingly unavailable, the technology needed to make the parts may also have become obsolete and commercially unobtainable.Cannibalization, reclamation, life of type buys, part substitution, reverse engineering, and replacement with newer technology or elimination through redesign are all methods being used to deal with obsolete parts[i].Even limited life extension becomes difficult to sustain without decreasing the number of operational units.

Proactive component lifespan evaluation in the design stage needs much improvement to prevent inclusion of parts nearing the end of their lifecycle in new designs.Determining a parts' future availability is more difficult than indicated.Designers often find parts that are familiar, and commonly in use, are rapidly moving towards discontinuance[ii].Even the most recent, 1990's generation upgrades to the F-16 General Avionics Computer (GAC) use some components on the verge of technological obsolescence including 8-bit MPU and STTL components.

These components' availability is waning and both are already only available sole source. Another telling example of the impact of long system life is demonstrated by the C-17 lifecycle.This system, first delivered in 1993, is expected to remain in service beyond the year 2040.During this same time span the technology lifecycle of parts is expected to decrease from an already short 3.5 years to 1 year – further increasing DMSMS problems.[iii] The table illustrates just how significant the extension of aircraft lifespans are in the context of generating DMSMS problems.

Building upon this illustration, lets examine a single system within one of these planes.Each of the 940 F-15’s uses an APG 63 Radar unit.Already 20% of the parts for this one system are not available.Estimates predict a cost of more than $70 Million dollars to maintain the avionics for this plane just until the year 2001[v].This cost will escalate at an even faster rate as the plane nears the end of its service life in 2020. [vi]

Improved parts procurement, flexible, upgradeable designs and other support methods may be able to meet the material aspect of maintainability but overlooks the critical knowledge aspect.Having a complete toolset or parts selection alone is insufficient without the “how” and more importantly the “why”. Lack of an understanding of the “why” aspect can easily lead to disaster.

During WWII, Battelle scientists worked to determine the cause of crashes of Japanese built planes which had been built based-upon reverse engineering and stolen US technology.Subtle misunderstandings by the Japanese had led to the stamping of part numbers onto gears in a place that created metal fatigue, stress, wear, cracks and eventually failure.Otherwise, the parts were a nearly identical replica of the original.This is just one example of the dangers of not understanding the “why”’s involved in the design.The aging of the US workforce and other factors above result in a tremendous loss of corporate knowledge.

Much of this knowledge is never passed on to newer employees due to issues as simple as a lack of duties overlap, a fractured promotion chain, and generational gaps.The rate of technological change continues to force academia to produce waves of graduates versed in the current or emerging technologies, yet who have little understanding or knowledge of previous technologies.

Older workers face similar challenges trying to keep abreast of the ever-changing technologies.

2.NEW WORKFORCE MODELS.

Innovation occurs where market realities force it to. Start-up companies, especially in the information fields, have proven that the same dispersed tasks, use of collaboration tools and decision-making, and collegiate or peer–group structures instead of traditional hierarchies can produce effective, viable, and profitable corporations.A major difference is the perceived closeness in vision between the workforce and top management at many start-ups. The often smaller quantity of people involved creates a real and perceived feeling that each employee being an important cog in the realization of the result.

These start-ups have access and skills to implement robust technology-based infrastructures and but often do not have the cash flow to allow them to follow traditional models.In addition, the lack of company history reduces the observance of “status quo” thinking.

A small workforce increases each player’s impact upon the organization and creates a situation where management is grateful for employees to be tackling tasks rather than as in some existing organizations where the focus is on whether the employee is conforming to existing processes. New companies are frequently more open to experimentation and to “what works” whereas established companies are biased towards established procedures, roles, and internal political divisions of labor.

Employee Leverage Increases and Employee Demands Change.To counter the risks of working for an unproven company, their employees demand and are able to receive more flexibility in their work model from the startups.Flextime is only the beginning of such requests.

Equal treatment (both perceived and