Strategic Supply Chain Management - Supply Chain Online

OWENS CORNING PROFILE: Reorganizing for “a Bright Future” 137
tems organization. Don Kosanka, OC’s chief information officer, explains:
“The IS folks that we have are really not the technical folks you find in
typical IS organizations. They have a really good understanding of the
business processes that we operate, and their value comes in helping figure
out where technology can enable each process to become more efficient,
precise, or accurate. We outsource the more routine technical skill
sets required to operate the IT infrastructure.”
Kosanka is an example of the shift in thinking at OC. As he says,
“When I first joined the firm 25 years ago, fresh out of college, I thought
technology was the important driver. After a few years here, I shifted my
view to process. Now I see the equally critical importance of people.
Without every employee’s buy-in, you can’t execute the process or realize
the value in the technology. So you might say I’ve moved to a much more
integrated approach.”
What’s especially different about today’s perspective on the role of
technology, says Kosanka, is that “we actually try to solve our process
challenges without technology, if possible, and use technology when it’s
required and when it actually enhances the project so [that] it justifies the
investment.”
Kosanka has used IT to take costs out of the supply chain. “Our total
investment in IT over the last seven years has dropped every year, and as
a percentage of sales it has dropped even faster,” he says. “While we’ve
decreased the amount spent in the infrastructure, we’ve been maintaining
or growing our investment in applications to help the business units operate
their processes better. Basically, we’ve done a good job of managing
our costs to get higher performance for lower costs. We now have just a
handful of major systems that we use.” OC achieved these gains primarily
by outsourcing many operational aspects of the IT infrastructure, from
help-desk and data-center operations to network management.
Now the organization looks at technology very differently from even
seven years ago. Ressner refers to the common set of technology and
process elements as an enterprisewide toolkit. “Flexibility comes from
using that toolkit and recognizing the unique characteristics of a particular
market segment or customer. Without having the process and IT foundation
in place that we have today, it would be difficult, if not impossible,
and certainly much more expensive, to customize an approach.”
GREATER COLLABORATION WITH SUPPLIERS
As it builds better partnerships with distributors and retailers, OC has
developed a new perspective on its suppliers. “We have a point of view that