Aligning a collaborative resistance model with a change management process: a case study in automation in industry

This paper presents a case study conducted to understand the change management process for a large-scale automation implementation in a manufacturing environment producing highly complex products. Through a series of fifteen interviews of eight engineers, a model is created to understand how the company of study changed a manufacturing activity while noting obstacles identified in the process. This model illustrates the duration, sequencing, teaming, and complexity of the project. This model is compared to other change process models found in the literature to understand critical elements found within change management. The case study aligns with both a design process and a traditional change management process defined in the literature. Finally, a collaborative resistance model is applied to the process model to identify and estimate the resistance for each task in the process. Based on the analysis of the collaborative situations, the areas of highest resistance are identified. By comparing the resistance model to the interview data, the results show that the resistance model does identify the challenges found in interviews. This means that the resistance model has the potential to identify obstacles within the process and open the opportunity to mitigate those challenges before they are encountered within the change management process.