Archive for 'Manufacturing'
We are often asked to help justify Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) solutions in order to get capital approval to move forward. This is a monumental task because MES systems are very difficult to justify on hard savings.
One of the reasons MES solutions are hard to justify is they help you with many “soft” improvements. Deming said “You cannot improve what you cannot see.” MES solutions help you see what you need to improve, and help you systematize your improvements. What is that worth?
Here are some practical items you can focus on for your justification:
1. What manual data collection can be eliminated? What does that cost in real labor? Not only in the people collecting the data, but those the scrub it, chart it, report it, and debate its accuracy. (Reduces Cost)
2. What “oops” problems could be eliminated with more synergy in the manufacturing process? Wrong labels on parts or containers, shipping product that had questionable parts/processes, quality spills, adding value to known bad product? (Reduces Cost)
3. Could you increase velocity or agility if you could manage complexity and proliferation of your products? Would you still have to hire extra expediters? Would you have to build the new line? Would you be able to take on more work? (Increases Revenue)
4. Could you provide better visibility into your operations for your customers? What would better customer service do for your relationship with your existing customers? Would they give you more work? (Increases Revenue)
5. Have you had a quality spill you can quantify? What did it cost? What if you could eliminate or reduce the cost of the next one? (Reduces Cost)
As I write this, I think this post could be turned into a multi-part series… Feel free to contact me if you need more ideas for justification.
In an article by Bianca Scholten written for Automation World, a couple of questions were raised:
- Who should champion a Manufacturing Execution System (MES) solution?
- Who should support an Manufacturing Execution System (MES) solution?
In this article, Bianca sites engineering and IT as the two functions within a manufacturing environment that could potentially support an MES solution. I would also add operations and quality has two functions that need to be involved in MES solutions. The customers of MES solutions are most likely to be operations and quality. The providers of MES solutions are most likely to be engineering and IT.
In nearly 12 years of providing MES solutions, we have found that the most successful projects are when there is a great cross functional team that works together to define and provide the solution. Most of our projects have been owned by the IT organization within the factory. This works best when an IT organization is a “manufacturing IT” organization not an “administrative IT” organization.
Standards, best practices, and knowledge sharing, are all ways to help disciplines work together. But at the end of the day, the best solutions are going to come out of teams that work together to define the problem, implement a maintainable solution, and drive business results with that solution. This is way easier said than done. Maybe the source of another post 
.
As I was reading and catching up tonight, I just could not help but see the stark contrast in stories between Walgreens and General Motors.
Walgreens – Employees at This Walgreens Distribution Center Are More Able Than Disabled
http://www.evolvingexcellence.com/blog/2008/02/need-some-eager.html
General Motors – GM offers buyouts to 74,000
I know GM must do something to stop bleeding money, but it never fails that those companies that take care of their employees are healthier companies.
I have sold and worked with sales people that sell manufacturing solutions for my whole career. Here are some thoughts on what it takes to be successful – and – what I think works best with the customer:
1. Listen – find out what the customer is trying to do. Often sales people talk WAY TO TECHNICALLY, WAY TO EARLY in the process.
2. Talk with their terms – use their terms for everything. Customers don’t care that you call it a Production Order – if they call it a Work Order, you should call it a work order.
3. Demonstrate with their data – a standard demo does not work with these complex solutions. Take your customer’s data, terms, routes, parts, etc. and configure your software to demonstrate their processes.
Of course, there are many other selling tips and tricks, but these are some of the basics. Good luck selling.
We have a term for people that try to do something they are not quite equipped to do – “Technically Dangerous” or TDs for short. As in “they are a little technically dangerous” or “they are TD.” We often run into these interesting types who are trying to write software, program automation, or otherwise “tinker” with manufacturing systems because, well they can….tinker that is.
So why are there Technically Dangerous people out there putting solutions in place to run our factories? You want some examples? I though I would describe these solutions with how they were presented to me. This is what I hear:
“Don’t minimize that, it will crash, and we will have to restart it.”
“Once a day we have to get everyone out of the system and rebuild the database”
“We have to reboot our MES system twice a week for preventative maintenance, otherwise the memory leaks will crash the system”
“We want to push compressed data from our data historian out to an Oracle database [uncompressed] so our IT guys can get it.”
My passion is to help the “technically dangerous” people of the world do a better job, as well as protect manufacturers from making mistakes that cost a lot of time and money.
I gave myself the title on the ManufIT blog of Chief Translator of Opportunities. I really hope I can be a benefit to manufacturing leaders that want to really use IT solutions to better their operations and quality.
The next time you suspect that you are inheriting or witnessing the installation of a solution that could be labeled as “technically dangerous” drop me a line and let me review it with you. It would be my pleasure. Contact me here.
I saw this video back when you had to email it around. Thanks to the wonderful world of search with YouTube, I found it again. Enjoy!
Oracle has announced a partnership with Kepware to build OPC connectivity into their ERP solution. This will be interesting.
As MES professionals, we are always debating “who will win?” Is it the ERP companies, or the automation companies that will win the battle for the MES space? This seems to be a play for Oracle that tells the world, “we are coming down into automation to get the data we want.”
I will be curious what type of data repository, or manufacturing execution system database schema Oracle has, or will, put together to house this information. How will it be reported? How will it be presented? How will this data drive business logic?
I do like the acknowledgement from Oracle that there is valuable data in shop floor systems that needs to be integrated into ERP. Perhaps one they get into some projects, they will see just how fun shop floor integration projects are!
As a side note, Kepware is an awesome company, and they have the best OPC Servers in the market. (IMHO)
Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) as defined in wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_planning_and_scheduling
Last night at dinner, the topic of unions came up. We discussed how unions were required at the time they were created to achieve fairness and safety for those working in manufacturing. However, today, fairness in wages, hours, and training are still issues, it seems the modern union exists for other reasons. We were not really sure about those reasons, but acknowledged that everyone has to change in order the stay relevant and compete.
Our conversation also reminded me of the 2007 MESA Keynote Speaker – Peter Fingar. Peter reminded us that there are 3 billion new capitalists in the world and if we did not do something everyday to improve, we would quickly be rendered obsolete.
I grew up in Connersville, Indiana, where there was once a $1B Visteon plant. This plant just closed its doors because the union and management did not work to make it one of the best plants in the Visteon fleet. If the plant had been one of the best in the fleet, chances are, it would still be making automotive parts today…
Conclusion – whether we are in automotive manufacturing, healthcare, education, or farming, we all have to work to improve everyday. If we don’t we might just end up being “mothballed” like the Visteon plant in Connersville.
Today, there are typically 3 flavors of MES systems out there in the world.
- Manual – the manufacturer uses paper to plan, manage, and monitor their manufacturing operations.
- Custom – the manufacturer has developed many custom solutions in Excel, Visual Basic, Access, Web Reports, legacy systems, etc.
- Commercial Product – the manufacturer has leveraged a Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) product to run their manufacturing operations.
The last flavor, where MES is installed much like ERP in a “big bang” project approach, is slowly going away. I believe there is a new way of being successful with MES projects:
- Start with a Pilot – define a target business problem with defined ROI or benefits, and start there.
- Work with Users – Users have great ideas. If they are included in the project, they will be more likely to make the project succeed.
- Celebrate Wins – when the MES solution helps you do something better, celebrate that so you can start building momentum.
We have seen so many projects fail because the scope of the project was just too large for the first phase. Business value was never created, momentum was never built, and the “Big Bang” approach failed.
