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Vol 25 - No 08 - October 1999 What is ROME? The ROME acronym stands for Remote Operations Management Education and when it is fully launched at the end of 2000, ROME will be a unique distant learning package for industry... ROME's aim is to provide staff in operations and supply chain management with up-to-date knowledge and skills they can use to improve their own and their companies' performance while at the same time acquiring a professional qualification, the Institute's Introductory Certificate in Production and Inventory Management. ROME's budget is just under £1 million, forty-five percent of which has been funded by the European Union through the ADAPT and ESF programmes. The balance of the funding is provided by the Institute, the University of Huddersfield and the partner companies. ROME is being developed by partnership between the IOM and the School of Engineering at the University of Huddersfield together with a number of industrial companies. ROME thanks these partner companies, and the Institute members who represent them on the ROME Project, for their contributions during the planning phase and looks forward to their support during the development, piloting and launch phases. AstraZeneca (Bob Foster) A number of individual members of the Institute are also contributing significantly to the project and particular thanks are due to Tony Wild, Norman Lees, Robin Goodfellow, Peter Catton and Rod Moulding. ROME NEEDS YOU: Review ROME Material The key to the ROME concept is the Rometex virtual factory - a computer generated, interactive world that functions as a gateway to the content of the ROME course. The content will serve as a sort of handbook, helping users understand the situations and solve the problems they encounter in the virtual factory. You can find an example of what is being developed on the ROME pages on the IOM website (http://www.iomnet.org.uk/rome.htm). The links that users will follow from the virtual factory to the content are called Problem Pathways. Put simply, each Problem Pathway is a series of events, connected situations or cause and effect relationships that lead from the virtual factory to the relevant topic within the course material. A number of pathways are currently being developed and are at various stages of completion. In order to ensure that these pathways are realistic and relevant, we have set up Problem Pathway Working Groups. These groups will: WHY ROME? From The Voice Of The Customer To Rometex In the beginning there was ROME - The Customer Requirement. Last year, as the millennium began to close in even faster, the IOM asked itself a blunt question. "Are we meeting the training needs of industry?" The honest answer was, "Yes - but with two reservations." "Yes," because the IOM was already providing excellent training to industry via the Introductory Certificate and Diploma level courses offered through day-release at colleges and universities, by public and in-company. But what about those employees, particularly in SME's, who can't be spared or simply live and work too far away from a centre where these courses were available? "Yes," because the IOM's courses have long been recognised by UK industry as professionally relevant. But in modern manufacturing, isn't relevance a constantly moving target? The IOM has devoted considerable time and effort to addressing these issues. At a specially convened two-day meeting in York last November, we asked production and operations professionals, academics and IOM members the key question: "What is relevant today and what do you think will be relevant tomorrow? Then there was ROME - Remote Operations Management Education. The York delegates' answers about what manufacturing and supply chain staff need to know have formed the basis of a Body of Knowledge. This in turn, is the basis for the revision of the ICPIM syllabus currently underway. Combine the Body of Knowledge, the ICPIM syllabus and an innovative, Internet-based method of delivery, and you have ROME - Remote Operations Management Education delivered where you want it, when you want it. Tomorrow there will be Rometex - ROME's virtual manufacturing company. Rometex is integral to the ROME concept. Imagine. Housed in a virtual factory floating somewhere in the ether of the Internet, Rometex is making lawn mowers. Like all manufacturers, Rometex is faced with certain situations. Call them 'problems' or 'opportunities for improvement' or simply 'reality', these situations will be there before your eyes in the Rometex virtual factory. Some might be more obvious than others, and you'll need to use your powers of observation and investigation to uncover them all - much as you would playing a modern computer game. Solving the problems, exploiting the opportunities and coping with reality will require the knowledge found in the course content of ROME. "But does the market really need a lawn mower computer game," you wonder. At the IOM, we believe it does. Our consultations with our partner companies indicate that industry does need new thinking, skills and techniques. And because many employees do not currently have access to training, industry also needs a new way of getting training to the people who can apply it every day to do their jobs better. By exploiting Internet and multimedia technology, ROME will meet those needs by providing a training resource that is relevant, useful and (we hope) stimulating and fun to use. After all, what would you rather do - forecast next year's demand for lawn mowers or play Tomb Raider? VIRTUAL FACTORY BLUEPRINT APPROVED In May, ROME editor Bob Irwin and designer Kevin Beynon presented a practical demonstration of ROME to the project's Steering Committee. The presentation began with an explanation of the concept - which uses a virtual factory to present real-life manufacturing situations and then uses the situations themselves as gateways to the course content. After outlining the overall structure of ROME, Bob and Kevin showed how users will navigate - both within the virtual factory itself and from the factory to the course content and back again. The ROME Demo focussed on the Goods Out Department of Rometex, the project's fictional lawn mower manufacturer. What did the Committee see there? Exactly what many manufacturers unfortunately see every day. The good news was orders to fill. The bad news was insufficient stock, excess stock and redundant stock. By following the links from these problem situations to Work In Progress chapters on Forecasting and Master Production Schedules, Bob and Kevin demonstrated how the ROME users will be able to use the course content to understand real-life manufacturing problems. The Steering Committee expressed its unanimous approval of the virtual factory concept and figuratively signed off the blueprint. The challenge now is to turn the blueprint into reality. The virtual factory is under construction. The focus at the moment is on the development of ROME's Problem Pathways - the name given to the interconnected situations, problems and opportunities for improvement that will eventually link to the supporting, explanatory content of the course. Meanwhile, special Working Groups have been established to review the pathways in detail. ROME Factory Visits As part of the ROME development process, editor Bob Irwin and designer Kevin Beynon have visited a number of factories - all with a view to gaining exposure and insight into real-life manufacturing situations and solutions that can then be incorporated into the Rometex virtual factory. So far Bob and Kevin would like to thank Ideal Caradon (boilers), Numatic International (vacuum cleaners and cleaning equipment), Lansing Linde (electric lift trucks), Cussons UK (soap), Wyeth (pharmaceuticals) and especially Atco-Qualcast, a division of Bosch (lawn mowers) for their generous support. ROME On The IOM Web Site You can keep up-to-date with the development of the ROME project on-line by visiting the dedicated ROME pages on the IOM web site at www.iomnet.org/rome.htm TRY THE ROME DEMO YOURSELF If you would like to try the ROME Demo yourself, you can download it from the ROME pages of the IOM web site at www.iomnet.org.uk/rome.htm Full instructions for downloading, installing and running the demo are provided. We would welcome your comments. Related Topics:
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