Flexware Innovation

Greg Stevens, a 2006 Industrial Engineering Purdue graduate, is well on his way to impact the Manufacturing IT industry as Flexware Innovation’s new Manufacturing IT Consultant.

“I missed you in February of 2006. I hope I don’t miss you now,” wrote Scott Whitlock, president of Flexware Innovation, in a personal letter that Greg Stevens read daily for months before joining Flexware.

Rewind to 2005: As an undergraduate at Purdue, Stevens reached out to Whitlock in hopes of securing a position at Flexware. The timing wasn’t right, and neither was it in 2009, when Stevens chose another job over a Flexware offer.

But, as the saying goes, the third time is a charm: That letter Whitlock wrote several months earlier—which spoke of family values, people above profits, Stevens’ fit and immediate impact on Flexware’s leadership—echoed in Stevens’ mind. “I finally had to change course and chase down the opportunity,” said Stevens. Whitlock was glad to revive the offer.

In his new role, Stevens serves as an advisor to top Midwest manufacturing companies, helping them integrate all parts of their manufacturing operations. The goal? Reducing cycle times, banishing productivity black holes and uncovering new profit opportunities for Flexware’s clients. It’s all part of a custom-built strategy that’s attracted a slew of manufacturing “giants”—from pharmaceuticals to automakers to chocolatiers—to Flexware’s impressive client list.

“Greg is critical to our health, growth and longevity,” said Whitlock, citing the young professional’s blend of technical and people skills. “Having been in this business for a long time and seeing lots of people succeed and fail,” Whitlock added, “I can say Greg would’ve had a bright career whether or not he chose Flexware. But I’m certainly glad he’s on our team.”

Thankfully, it’s a much easier alternative to the “Plan B” Whitlock alluded to in that famed letter: Cloning Stevens.

>> Reach Greg at greg.stevens@flexwareinnovation.com

The newest generation of manufacturing engineers and operators have, for the most part, grown up with ubiquitous access to computers and the internet. They are more tech-savvy than the previous generation, and the applications that they use on a daily basis have trained them to just expect things to work. These applications have also trained them to consume information in a new way…think Web 2.0. As the MES space has formed over the last decade, the methods by which MES is delivered have been very fragmented.

Reasons that MES functionality wasn’t deployed in the existing HMI applications:

• MES applications were built using newer technologies, and the older HMI platforms were not capable of running them
• HMI application was deemed to be critical to the operation, which led to fear of causing downtime due to stability concerns regarding the newer, unproven MES
• There were different audiences for each system, and operators were not expected to interact directly with the MES
• Last, but not least, integration was too costly

As more and more plant floor applications are built with MES in mind from the very beginning, and as operators are expected to take a bigger role in managing the data associated with manufacturing, will the process graphic be relegated to the “troubleshoot” link for use only when things are not going as planned?

I am talking about software solutions in the manufacturing space.  This is a constant battle in our field.  There is a happy medium somewhere…larger organizations want standards so they can train people.  Smaller organizations usually build custom solutions out of VBA macros and small applications their in-house IT folks know how to write.

At the end of the day, every manufacturing software solution has to have customization in order to work the way the customer works.  The key is to build a solution that more than one person can own, maintain and improve.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, we traded “Black Friday” for “Farming Saturday”.  My son and I went up to West Lafayette to enjoy a Boilermaker men’s basketball victory and then got to do our first annual “farm day” with the Troyers.   

At Mackey arena at halftime.

I got to drive and unload into the grain wagon!  Woo-hoo!

As we were traveling through central Indiana farm land, it hit me…How much a farmstead is like current manufacturing systems!

Check out all the buildings on this property!!

Farmsteads like this are a lot like our manufacturing systems. 

• They grow to serve the purposes for the given time.
• You get a little budget/money and you build a system/building – “we needed it!”
• After decades of use, no one remembers why we built that building/system in the first place.
• There is probably some efficiency in consolidating and re-building.
• Because you have and use the buildings/systems, it is hard to make the decision to change from the status quo.

Observations:  There are very few farmsteads (or manufacturing operations) that are operating at full efficiency.  We just keep building and doing, without stopping to ask, “is this going to improve my business/farm in the long term?  All of these systems/buildings require care and feeding.  Is this the best use of our efforts around the plant or the farm?

People often ask me why the wheat is in Flexware’s logo…

So, here is a bit of history about the company.  We started the company in 1996 as “Flexware Integration” and our first tagline was Industrial Software Engineers.  In 2002, we transformed to Flexware Innovation, adding continuous improvement (lean and six-sigma) consulting to our services offerings.  It was then that we added the wheat to our logo as we thought it represented our midwest work-ethic and values better than the “spinning X” we had in our logo at the beginning.  Plus, our tagline when we changed the name and logo was Cultivating Manufacturing Success.  Check out the original logo.

For some real fun, old Flexware websites can be found at the WAYBACK Machine.

-scott

Last week we went and visited a very nice pet food facility (well, as nice as pet food facilities can get).  Great people, great attitudes, good automation, well run, etc.

We wanted to get a grasp of what all they had in terms of systems, both hardware and software.  At Flexware, we have always drawn what I call the “Plant Nervous System” drawing because it helps everyone visualize the systems relative to the functional footprint of the factory.

It starts with the standard “4-level” Purdue reference model that looks something like this:

We use Microsoft Visio to do our Plant Nervous Systems drawings and include things like:

• All PCs, Servers, Thin Clients, Printers, Scanners, etc. that people interact with.

Some clients actually want routers and switches too, but that is up to you.  If you send me an email, I will send you an example plant nervous system drawing in Microsoft Visio format.   mailto:scott@manufit.com

My passion is to help manufacturing companies make good decisions about manufacturing systems and have those systems provide good value the the company.  I like to refer to it sometimes as “I try to keep people from doing stupid stuff.”  Well today I was too late.

I met with a smaller company today that I have been watching from afar for a while.  They have spent WAY TOO MUCH money on a simple application that they want to help them run manufacturing better.  This application has some functionality that exists in an old FileMaker Pro database application and the task was to bring forward that functionality and add to it.

The developer they hired to write the new application chose Oracle (the free express version) because that is what they knew.  Now the company is between a rock and a hard place because the developer is not done, they are way over budget, the application is not tested yet, and there is more scope they would really like to complete!!!

I was too late!  Tune in next post for what I would have done differently…

It was announced this week…

http://www.mbtmag.com/article/CA6570888.html?nid=3436&rid=1258896918

SAP to buy Visiprise.  Those of us in the business knew it was coming at some point, and it happened.  What will be really interesting is to see what this does to the relationships SAP has with other key players in the industry like Camstar, Apriso, Wonderware, Rockwell, etc.  All of these companies have some type of technical or strategic relationship with SAP so they can all say they can “connect to SAP with their MES solutions.”

So now what?  It was hard to argue with a customer that says something like “I spent $XXM on SAP to run my business and if I can leverage that investment to help me run my operations better, that is what I am going to do.”  In the mid to long term, it is going to be very hard to convince a company to use a different MES solution other than Visiprise if they are an SAP user.

I have often wondered who is going to “win” in the MES space – ERP or the Automation vendors.  This move would appear to be a swing in the direction of ERP winning the battle for MES.  I have been silent on posts for a while, but this will provide some good thoughts in the upcoming weeks.

I am constantly reminded that with risky projects, new ventures, or unknown territory that it is smart to start small and build on successes – especially when there are technical challenges.

With MES projects, there are so many factors.  I walked into our conference room yesterday and saw our guys working on a quote for a customer.  The list of risks they were talking over filled on whole white board.

We keep getting taught this lesson, but we need to start small, get something working very solidly, and then move on from there.  This approach lessons the risk for our customers and our team.

There is no substitute for good requirements, good specifications, and a good selection process in any IT project. Especially those projects that are complex and touch so many people and disciplines, like MES projects.

I often liken MES projects to building a house. It isn’t enough to go to a custom builder and give them requirements like this:

• 5 bedrooms
• 4 full baths
• 3 car garage
• 5,500 square feet
• Oh, and we want this to be our dream home.

NO, NO, NO! We all know that a builder would laugh you out of his office and say, “Come back with some architectural blueprints, some specifications, and a budget.” Even if the builder was a Design Build firm, you would expect the clock to start then, and to pay for the design of your new home!

However, so many times I see companies trying to do the same thing with MES projects. Requirements go something like this:

• OEE
• Tracking and Genealogy
• Reporting (including drill-down and ad-hoc reports)
• Schedule dispatch
• Label printing
• NO, NO, NO! There is no way the customer is going to get what they want. There is no way they are going to get an apples-to-apples comparison from different vendors.

In coming posts, I will explore how manufacturing companies can do a better job of laying out requirements. Who knows, maybe we will even post some templates!