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Get the Right Person for the Job

Scott Whitlock — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 19:22:28 +0000

A while back we wrote a whitepaper that talks about getting the right person for the project at hand. Today I had a conversation with a partner where we talked about how many services groups are more interested in utilization rates and bench time than they are about doing what is right for the customer. While I agree keeping people engaged and billable is important, I also believe taking care of the customer has to take priority. While the prior mindset may work for a while, in the long term, that strategy is not sustainable.

Customers are pretty smart, and when they sense they are the guinea pigs for a person learning the new software, they are only patient for a little while.

Moral is: Get the right people for the project so the customer gets value quickly. “Time to Value” is going to be one of the biggest strategic difference-makers in the coming years. And, if you have the wrong skill-set on the project, the customer is not going to get value quickly.

Is this how your IT Leader talks to you?

Scott Whitlock — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 02:01:06 +0000

My father-in-law is a golfer. He lives and breathes for his kids, grandkids and golf. He sent me this video to get me thinking about the season that is right around the corner.
As I watched this video, I could not help but envision an IT person talking to the business leader….
Watch and see if catch the parallels. Imagine a business leader asking the IT person “Why do we need to spend money on that?”

Outsourcing Manufacturing IT

Scott Whitlock — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 02:11:25 +0000

I was with a client today who happened to be in the IT organization and he said the new management is considering outsourcing IT. This is a larger regulated company, with new owners, and new management. He said they are going to have a very difficult time justifying it because they have traditionally run a very lean IT group, so financially, there was virtually no justification for outsourcing.

This got me thinking though…It is very difficult and sometimes foolish to outsource the manufacturing IT part of IT to traditional IT outsourcing companies. Let me explain.

There are many facets to “traditional” IT – from infrastructure, help desk, security, applications, communications, etc. Many of these can be outsourced successfully. However, for manufacturers, there is also the “manufacturing IT” side of IT, that demands a knowledge of the business, how to integrate with automation and equipment, and the flow of information in the production environment.

Strategically, this is dangerous to outsource because it is so tightly coupled to the business. Manufacturing IT can be a strategic weapon, and most people don’t treat it that way. They assume, naively, that IT is just IT.

What I would have done

Scott Whitlock — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 02:15:44 +0000

Last week I saw an example of what not to do when developing manufacturing systems. The manufacturer hired a programmer to “upgrade” older systems that existed in FileMaker Pro and Excel spreadsheets. A gov’met agency recommended they move from Excel to a database, so the programmer used Oracle because that is what they knew.

What I would have done:

1. Start with what the business problem is. What is the real problem and what would be the most efficient way to solve it? A database might not be the right solution. (Right Kevin?)

2. If because of #1 or because there is a regulatory requirement, a database is required, make it as simple to build and own as possible. That means starting with software that most people know or that you can get anyone to upgrade in the future.

2a – My opinion is there are way more people that know Microsoft technologies (ASP, .NET, SQL Server, etc.) than do Oracle. Also, a PHP and MySQL solution would have more worldwide resources available than an Oracle solution.

3. Get a couple opinions before you start (especially if you do not do this every day.) Ask some friends, technical advisors, etc. before you start to spend money.

Unfortunately for this manufacturer they spent about 5x more money than they should have for what they got and now they have something that no one is going to want to touch. Because they knew the developer and she was only charging them $40/hour, they thought they were getting a deal!

oh, 1a – see if there is a good Commercial-off-the-shelf solution (COTS) that works before you build it.

Another Manufacturing Software Blogger

Scott Whitlock — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 14:44:45 +0000

Last week I met Scott Sorheim over the phone through a mutual friend. He has a company called Lean Technologies, and his product is called “Thrive.”

I really appreciate guys like Scott because they have passion for manufacturing and they are willing to “hang it all out there” and work on solutions.

Scott’s Blog: http://leantech.com/blog/

Lean Technologies Website: http://www.leantech.com/

My Favorite SAP Quote

Scott Whitlock — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 21:05:57 +0000

We were doing a MES requirements and selection engagement for a large Medical Devices company that had just spent A LOT of money on SAP globally. They were determined (as they should be) to give SAP a fair shake on whether it could handle the MES requirements. So the final selection was between SAP and other best of breed MES solution providers. At the time, SAP only had one regulated customer that was using PP/PI for MES.

The customer had Account Managers that were responsible for interfacing between the business and IT. One of them had this famous quote (which is probably only funny if you have been in MES for a while):

“SAP has like 40,000 tables, surely some of them can do MES.”