Robert Malone's column in the latest issue of Managing Automation (full article here) discusses how our sense of urgency about our particular tasks can cancel out the big picture view.
In these days of needing distinctiveness to differentiate products, loosing a big picture view can prove tragic. Malone's analogy is to telescopes and microscopes. We don't need the most powerful tools because they focus only on the small details. What we need is tools with good resolving power. Tools that let us see the big picture, but also can show detail.
Malone relates this to our use of technology and concludes:
"We might ask, What would be the equivalent of resolving power in our ability to see manufacturing more clearly? Surely, it's the quality of software combined with the skills of people and their ability to share information that's properly tied to the solution. In a word, a move to quality. "
At my company, Factory Insite, we have been attempting to provide this for nearly 30 years by our combination approach we call tailored solutions.