Industrial integration

WHEN CTO PHYLLIS MICHAELIDES took the helm of megaconglomerate Textron two-and-a-half years ago, she stared across a sea of software with more tentacles than a jellyfish.

Textron's history of acquisitions and global manufacturing operations that span E-Z-GO golf carts, Cessna Aircraft, and industrial fasteners manifested as an IT hodgepodge. The Providence, R.I.-based corporate giant was swimming in legacy and silo-style packaged applications, disconnected directories, innumerable data formats and definitions, and rigid, point-to-point application connections -- not to mention the cost of maintaining it all.

Taming this "technical spaghetti" first required getting Textron managers thinking with an "enterprise mind" by selling business managers on large-scale integration and working to articulate business processes up front, Michaelides says. Only then did an IT plan emerge to loosely tie systems into a central architecture using a combination of messaging middleware, a unified LDAP-based directory, an enterprisewide portal, and a shared datacenter.

"We really wanted to have one executing company enterprise, rather than a collection of companies. And this gave our project a business impetus and a good reason to connect things," says Michaelides, who is currently in the middle of the massive integration project.

Integration mandate

Harnessing Textron's far-flung software empire into one cohesive, manageable infrastructure is indicative -- on a large scale -- of the type of challenges facing manufacturing CTOs as software integration moves up the IT priority ladder.

An AMR Research report released in May reveals manufacturing companies are spending an average of $1.9 million annually on integration projects. Of that amount, 79 percent is plunked down on internal EAI, while 21 percent is allocated for business-to-business integration with partners and suppliers. The highest tier manufacturers are forking out an average of $3 million per year on integration, the research indicates.

Meanwhile, the widespread acceptance of XML as well as emerging standards for Web services such as SOAP, UDDI, and WSDL might remove some of the trepidation about launching complex projects. "We're already using XML across the board and we will eventually use the Web services standards as they mature," says Michaelides, whose first technical integration chore involved cleansing all data so it mapped across systems.

Cutting costs

There are compelling reasons for CTOs to jump on the bandwagon. Integrating systems is a surefire way to leverage their existing IT assets. Plus, supply-chain automation, EAI, and b-to-b each promise ways to streamline internal and external operations, drive efficiencies, and lower costs -- benefits made all the more attractive to CEOs in today's trying economic times.

Six years ago it took General Motors 48 to 50 months to design and produce a new vehicle, from paper blueprint to assembly line. The Detroit automotive giant has cut that time to 18 months by integrating systems including workflow and business processes, digitizing design, and engineering development.