By Deborah New, Publications Editor — CCI
	Collaboration: n. the action of working with someone to produce something. Wiki: n. a website or database developed collaboratively by a community of users, allowing any user to add and edit content.

What do Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg and TRACC have in common?
Collaboration is the unanimous answer. 'Vintage' qualities of sharing for the sake of the greater good have been making a serious
comeback in recent decades. Toyota sharing their Toyota Production System (TPS) principles is one such example. So are the Gutenberg
Project, Wikipedia and 'wiki' technology. Collaboration is all about pooling our thoughts, resources and learnings — having a view that
stretches further than ourselves or our immediate organisation. TRACC embraces this concept, providing platforms and vehicles for our
clients to do so too.

Why collaborate?
Let us take Wikipedia for example. It is easy to ignore the collective effort - estimated in 2008 as 100 million man hours — that went into its now 3.81 millionstrong article bank. Yet when we 'Google' a term, it's likely that a Wikipedia entry appears in the top five search results. We click the link and are taken to an article carrying relevant information, related links and sources available at our fingertips, and all of this because over 100 million man-hours were collaboratively given for free by its 31.7 million registered users (2009).

While it is known that 'anyone can upload anything at anytime to Wikipedia', did you know that there are hundreds of thousands of volunteers who curate the content? Some upload, some edit, some curate, some moderate, some even arbitrate. Furthermore, some users give of their time to write code that sends 'bots' out to search each and every new upload. Each 'bot' then sends a message to the relevant review board and members if the content is deemed inappropriate, biased, self-promoting or 'unencyclopeadic'. Review boards debate and moderate the content, and attempt — in collaboration with the original writer — to bring the article up to scratch, deleting all inappropriate content. If this is not possible, the article is wiped from the face of Wikipedia within about a week. What is more, appropriate articles are put through a rigorous editing process where various 'Wikipedians' edit them to correct grammar and spelling, and to ensure they are in the correct language style, etc.

All of this is done on a voluntary basis by hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of collaborators who believe in the idea of collaborating for the greater good. It must have been difficult in the early days, where editors seemingly pushed their articles into cyberspace not knowing if the project would take off. These days, few topics or words cannot be found in the encyclopaedia, and most — if you do some research — carry true fact and a fair amount of credibility.

Initiatives of similar sentiment seem to be popping up all over the world and in cyberspace: Project Gutenberg is another project which demonstrates the benefit of collaborative efforts. Founded in the 1970s — the insight for this project is astounding given the relatively low computer usage around that time — it is the oldest digital library, now with over 38 000 items in its collection. Volunteers for the project digitise and archive full text versions of public domain books... and this long before the e-reader was ever conceived of. Furthermore, some collaborators read these works into their computer speakers at home; others edit and upload the sound files, making these works available as audio versions.

This is the beauty of collaboration — the noble act of creating and sharing for no other reason than for the greater good of the collective whole.

How you can collaborate with TRACC:
Clients collaborate with one another
Last year TRACC client Molson Coors hosted five TRACC events across their facilities in Burton and Tadcaster in the UK. At one of the events at the Burton Brewery, the company provided conference facilities for the Heinz Europe Continuous Improvement (CI) team. In total, nearly 30 of the Heinz Europe CI Managers held a two-day workshop to discuss and review the current status of the HGPS implementation in Europe. On the afternoon of the second day the senior leadership team of Molson Coors (UK) joined the group to participate in a joint session to share TRACC implementation experiences. The session included a site tour to view TRACC in action and to talk to the site team leaders and team members who shared their own experience of their world class journey with the visitors.

Later in the year, Molson Coors' Tadcaster site hosted a half-day 'roundtable' event. TRACC clients participating were Kellogg's, DuPont, Heinz and Beam International. The session kicked off with the site leadership team presenting their world class journey. This was followed by a site tour which concluded with a working lunch session. At this session, all attendees shared one activity which they had taken away from Tadcaster which they believed would help their own journey. In return each visitor then gave one implementation action from their own experience which they believed would help Tadcaster.

At both events CCI also had the opportunity to participate, with Robert Kent supporting the Burton event, and Kevin Whelan and Bob Pursley supporting the Tadcaster session. At the conclusion of both events, Molson Coors generously presented their visitors with gift packs of a range of company products. Free beer from a brewery is always a good way to end a great visit!

Collaboration for product creation
We collaborate with our clients on every TRACC version upgrade. Various clients, such as DuPont, SABMiller, Fonterra, Kellogg's and Heinz,have contributed to making TRACC what it is today. Who better to advise on upgrades than the users themselves – the very people for whom the product has been built?

Large scale client collaboration
TRACC Alliance is another example of the collective success enjoyed by all who choose to collaborate. Incidentally, the word 'alliance' is a synonym for collaboration. Based on the success of the first ever TRACC Alliance hosted alongside our TRACC Global Conference in Houston in 2010, Alliances were also hosted alongside the TRACC Conferences in South Africa and Chicago in 2011. TRACC Conferences and Alliances are intentionally hosted in a different global region each year, ensuring delegates from all over the world can come together not only to learn about developments and trends in integrative improvement, but also to learn region-specific trends, challenges and successes in that region. "The main goal of the TRACC Alliance is to create implementation mastery. We strive to achieve this by facilitating knowledge-sharing between TRACC facilitators from various clients," says Keri Lancellas, manager of the TRACC Centre of Excellence. TRACC facilitators, Master Facilitators and best practice leaders are invited to the Alliance which has a 50/50 presentation and discussion-collaboration format.

Collaboration through social media
TRACC's What Does Good Look Like? (WGLL) online community of best practice uses social media technologies to encourage dialogue and sharing between clients, TRACC Product Development and TRACC users the world over. The visual studio sees users uploading examples of best practice in their operations, and sharing tips and tools used on their improvement journey. Additionally, the discussion forum sees users sharing ideas and asking questions. This forum was developed to provide improvement practitioners and interested parties with a platform on which to engage with like-minded individuals on industry-related issues.

TRACC itself has always been collaborative, especially since the introduction of the digiTRACC interface, which encourages sharing across multiple sites so that learning about one another's implementations is organic, not linear.

With various collaboration platforms, such as WGLL and the TRACC Alliance, we would like to encourage you to take your collaboration efforts to the next level by tapping into a wealth of knowledge that each unique TRACC client has to offer... let us share in our journey to becoming world class.

Collaborate with us...
• To join the WGLL Community of Best Practice, click here
• To download presentations from the recent TRACC Alliance, click here
• Connect with us on Facebook
• Follow us on Twitter: @etracc
• Click here to visit the Integrative Improvement Blog