Insider Newsletter from Information Mapping

December 2006

IMI Live Webinar Series: "Getting Compliance Under Control"

January 2007

IMI Live Webinar Series: "Identifying Communication Failures in Your Organization"

February 2007

"Making Web Content Work" at the Society for Tech. Communications (STC) Online Special Interest Group, in Burlington, MA

IMI Live Webinar Series:
"DITA, Topic-Based Authoring, and Information Mapping: What Authors Need to Know"

"Compliance, Risk, & the Art of Policy & Procedure Writing" at ASTD (local chapter)

"How to Write Usable Content for Multiple Audiences" at Training 2007 in Orlando, FL

March 2007

IMI Live Webinar Series: "Improving Customer Service Through Effective Communications"

May 2007

"Modular Writing and Reusability" at the Society for Tech. Communications (STC) 54th Annual Conference, Minneapolis, MN

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December 2006	www.infomap.com	Vol. 14, No. 4

Case Study: Hexion Specialty Chemicals

By Cynthia Whitty, Public Relations Specialist

Throughout a series of mergers and acquisitions, Hexion sought to instill and maintain a cohesive culture through project management training.

Hexion Specialty Chemicals, Inc. (www.hexion.com) is the world’s largest producer of thermosetting resins, with sales exceeding $4 billion. The company’s products are used as binding, bonding, and coating agents in a diverse range of industries, such as automobile, construction, and electronics. Based in Columbus, Ohio, Hexion employs approximately 7,000 people and operates 104 manufacturing and distribution facilities worldwide.

In the mid-1990’s, one of the components of Hexion, McWhorter Technologies, Inc., was formed by combining portions of the resin businesses of Cargill and Valspar. McWhorter found itself with deep experience and expertise but also with the need for a cohesive culture that would strive for efficiency, speedy product development, and profitability.

When any two companies or departments merge, they bring together employees who have different priorities and ways of thinking and doing their jobs. These differing cultures can lead to staff confusion and frustration, noncompliance with requirements and regulations, and higher costs of business through operating inefficiencies.

Greg Alexander, a Six Sigma Black Belt in the coating resins product line, says that McWhorter employees, or “associates” as they are now called, were extremely innovative, but they “worked in isolation; they didn’t have a clear sense that they should prioritize and work to a schedule. There was not a lot of cross functional communication or integration of soft and hard skills. They didn’t have the tools for project planning.”

To solve these business problems, Doug Rahrig, then vice president of technology and marketing in the coating resins product line at McWhorter, recruited Alexander from the Monsanto Company (now Solutia). Alexander was a certified trainer in the Information Mapping method. He learned mapping in the early 1990’s while at Monsanto, where he trained 120 people in the method. One of his projects included mapping documentation for a corporate business pilot plant for ISO 9000 certification. The mapped documentation received praise for ease of auditing.

New Skills Needed
Rahrig saw that project management was a key skill needed across the organization in order to increase the success of new product development and to be able to manage a portfolio of new projects effectively.

Rahrig brought Alexander to McWhorter, in part, to help instill a project management culture. Alexander was asked to create a training program and materials for project management with a focus on innovation and project development.

The training involved three key pieces: project management; core team cross-functional skills, like decision making, meeting management, and communications; and statistics, helpful in building the project plan. In addition, Alexander wanted the associates to have a useful manual to take away with them for reference.

To create the training, Alexander relied on a combination of books, articles, and personal experience, using the Information Mapping method “to organize his initial thoughts, to help decide where to drill down into reference material for specific content, and to present the material.” As McWhorter went through its various acquisitions, mergers, and divestitures, Alexander continued to refine the course material and deliver the project management training to new associates in technology, engineering, and marketing.

Since the initial rollout at McWhorter, Alexander has trained approximately 150 associates in the various companies that ultimately formed Hexion in 1995 (McWhorter, Eastman Chemical, Resolution Specialty Materials, and Resolution Performance Products). The recently hired chief technology officer at Hexion, Rich Myers, has made project management a key focus area for all of its product development, and is evaluating the course and the manual for possible deployment throughout the relatively new company.

Information Mapping: Key to Success
Rahrig says that Information Mapping “effectively divided the written information into useful pieces and made it easier to understand and digest. Mapping made the information more retrievable for people after the training.”

At McWhorter Rahrig knew that Alexander was a certified trainer of Information Mapping but didn’t exactly know what that meant. Through Alexander’s application of the method in developing the training and materials, Rahrig and others began to use it to develop their design documents and process instructions. “I’ve seen value in the mapping concepts, such as the 7 +/- 2 limitation being all that people can really absorb and the importance of making sure that instructions are complete and, that if things are not going as planned, describing what actions to take,” says Rahrig.

What do the associates think about the training? Rahrig says, “They love it. We have historically not invested in a lot of development training, but this is one piece of training that fit our business objectives, allowed us to change our culture, and was very effective in helping our staff become more productive.”

“Greg has been an outstanding advocate of the power of Information Mapping. I’d be interested in seeing how Information Mapping and Six Sigma, for example, could be brought together to nail down learnings,” says Rahrig.

According to Alexander, “It is widely acknowledged within the legacy McWhorter business that training, reference material, and management commitment led to a project-based culture for our product development. Now, there is a rigorous tracking of project hours by project managers so that we have a clear picture of how we are spending our time. This is reviewed by the business team who evaluates consistency with overall business strategy.”

Greg Alexander was this year’s IMAP Award grand prize winner for his training manual, Project Management 101.

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