Ford Motor Company IT Operation And Maintenance Management Research

With the growth of automobile manufacturing industry reliance on IT information systems,IT systems are implemented in all aspects of the automotive industry,including design,procurement,production,sale,service etc.,and these systems operation will highly affect the business,the IT system operation and support becoming particularly important in the auto industry.Information technology has received unprecedented attention,but the long-term sustainable construction and development of inertia leading enterprises generally existing "emphasis construction,slight operation and maintenance","emphasis technology,slight process" and lacking of professional operation process.The implementation of construction 20%of the system life cycle,while the remaining 80%of the time is its operation and maintenance and support,so operation and maintenance is the critical stage in whole IT system lifecycle.If the system operation does badly,the large investment in the implementation of the system will not be able to bring the expected benefits.This thesis takes Ford's production information system operation as the research subject,and based on ITIL and IT governance theory to discuss how to provide effectively and businesslike IT operation from two aspects.The first is to study how to transit the system from development or deployment stage to operation stage properly,to ensure that all installation,configuration,technical information from the development/deployment team can be smoothly handover to IT operation team,so that the operation and maintenance team has enough information,data,knowledge and skills to provide ongoing operation and maintenance services.A complete and effective IT system transition process can minimize the impact of system defects,as well as ensuring that that all transition content is sufficient to support the operation.This thesis gives the analysis for the original transition procedure in the management,planning,funding,communication,governance structure and work out the solution to improve them.The second is to research how to establish an effective operational support system to mitigate or minimize the impact of IT system failures on the production.Ford introduced the ITIL architecture framework approximately ten years ago,making a huge change to the organization,processes,and IT department function based on the ITIL management lifecycle definition.ITIL implementation has brought about positive changes.IT team work efficiency,employee motivation and system stability have been significantly improved.While some processes change not go far enough and some details are neglected resulting in some operation management issues existing still,which affected the practical effect of ITIL and customer satisfaction.I led and participated in the improvement on these processes.This thesis introduces the shortcomings of previous IT operation model from the perspectives of IT governance,IT services,organizational structure,staffing,and team skillsets,after that,identifying the cause of these issues,working out the solution,and fixing these issues,so as to improve operation efficiency and customer satisfaction with a more efficient operating system to ensure IT systems running in a continuous and healthy status for bringing more value on benefiting and protecting business.