CIMx Blog

I almost hate to start the year off with failure, but it’s so critical that we’re going to talk about it for a few weeks.  It’s the number one thing we hear from prospects in almost all industries, from the largest manufacturers in the world to the smallest shops.

Companies regularly tell us their last software vendor didn’t deliver what was promised or even a working product at all.  The ideas of “take the money and run” or “if we didn't deliver it for you, we could build it for you” in this space, unfortunately, is not uncommon.  We know.  We’ve rescued multiple companies mid-implementation and we can all learn a lot from their lessons.

I’m going back 20 years for this one.  In 1999, sitting on the cusp of the millennium, we were all focused on the rollover of the year from the –99 to –00.  Would it cause the damage that many were predicting?  (It didn’t.)  Would planes “fall out of the sky?”  (They didn’t, but I remember distinctly that the major US airline presidents rode throughout the day and night to prove that the turn of midnight wouldn’t do anything horrible.) 

1999 was a great year for many in the tech sector.  Those who didn’t plan well, however, had a different experience.  Many of us saw the bubble coming; businesses put tons of cash into their IT budgets for 1999 to avoid any issues at the turning of the year.  This wouldn’t continue.  Tech businesses that ramped up for that volume but didn’t plan for the backside of that investment in the 2000 budget year struggled and many saw the “dot com” bust. 

Over the last year, I have established a daily morning routine that includes gratitude.  I wake early, sit at the kitchen counter with the first coffee of the day (it won’t be the last), read a short passage (I change the book each year) and then write for a few moments of gratitude. 

It can be easy to think of a few things (I choose 3 each day) that I am grateful for.  What’s more meaningful for me, and more difficult, is knowing why they are meaningful.  Being able to see the journey behind the gratitude.  What was possible because of that event?  What was I able to accomplish that I otherwise might not have been?  What was it that made my life more meaningful, joyful or full?

In the first piece on the Decision Making Model, we focused on data acquisition.  Data is critical in manufacturing.  In today’s world, things move faster and cost more money than previously.  There is no time or money to spare for mistakes, overruns, underruns or lost time in production.  Data acquisition is one of the keys to performance here.  Data is the new oil in your processes.

Now, we need to talk about information.  Once you’ve got the data you need, you’re going to be hungry for information.  What does the data mean?  What can you do with it?  How can you use it most effectively (and here, we mean both from an investment of time and money)?  Spreadsheet data is not very useful – it’s just numbers.  Data with its context provides information and useful feedback.

SAAS – Software as a Service – is now just known as “the Cloud.”  Clouds, by their very nature, are ephemeral.  They move across the sky, ever-changing.  Is the name supposed to sound magical?  It is not. Magical, that is.

The cloud is where all your information resides.  All those passwords that you save, the “remember me” buttons that you push?  Those have to be kept somewhere, right?  While part of that resides on your computer, it’s all available to anyone who has access (or can gain it).  Week after week, we hear about data breaches.  Thieves sneaking in to get your personal information.  Whether you protect it or not, the information is there.  Your information.  Once you put it “in the cloud” it is available to anyone with access to it. 

At CIMx, we are very thankful to work with so many terrific companies and customers.  We speak to manufacturers every day that are making manufacturing work in the U.S. - profitably, efficiently and with great people and resources.  

Trust.  It’s a firm belief in someone or something.  The definition even goes so far as to say it’s acceptance without evidence or investigation.  We take a lot of things on trust every day, even if you don’t realize it. 

Did you sit at a traffic light this morning on your way to work?  Did you drive on the proper side of the road, whether that’s left or right for you?  You trusted that everyone else on the road was going to follow the same rules of the road that you were and you just went with it.

I would venture to say that you could not say the same about your software vendors.  Do you trust them?

We’ve talked before about decision methodology.  In brief, the theory we follow for manufacturers is that to stay competitive, you must always make your decisions based on the information currently present.  Collecting more information could be helpful, but spend too much time here, and you have analysis paralysis. 

The basic tenet of the model is this: review the current landscape of the situation and make a decision based on prior experience and present details.  This is a delicate balance.  Rely too much on experience and you may be blind to what’s currently sitting in front of you.  Ignore the past and you may repeat something you’ve tried that doesn’t work.

Update 09/03/19: today, as we post this blog, Hurricane Dorian is sitting over the Bahamas.  Little is yet known about how much damage has been done at this time.  Our thoughts and prayers are with all those affected. 

Whether you believe in global warming or not (we do try to make these blogs historically relevant without being political statements), it’s difficult to watch or read the news without seeing stories about smaller icebergs, deforestation and shifting weather patterns.  We’re not going to talk here about what’s causing those.  We’re more concerned with the idea that things are always changing, even those things that you rely on for stability. 

What do you do when the things that you count on being constant shift?  

Weather is one of those constants in our lives.  Depending on where you live, you expect the patterns of the seasons, water and temperature, to be consistent from year to year.  Everything you buy and do depends on it.  At work and at home, you rely on the weather to be relatively even from day to day, week to week, season to season, year to year.  It would be safe to say that you probably never have created a plan for what to do when the weather shifts dramatically from its current pattern.  It’s something you count on.

What do you count on in your business?  What items are there that you assume will be the same from period to period?  Do you always assume that your sales will be stable or rise?  Do you figure

As people, we are inherently curious.  Even as we age, that yearning for something new causes us to travel, meet new people, maybe even wander a bit.  Curiosity is a part of human nature.  We all read studies (and see the evidence) of how curious children are when they are born.  We also see the results of traditional educational models in curiosity.  Driving children to conform to a single norm of sitting in straight-line desks and file in lines works for teachers in that in helps to control the chaos of the classroom, but if you were like me and many other entrepreneurs, conforming naturally bucked the curiosity you felt about issues that weren’t on the schedule for the teacher today. 

In a recent Harvard Business Review article on Why Curiosity Matters, Francesco Gina explores curiosity and its results on business specifically.  While most breakthroughs come from curiosity, she cites all the ways that business kill it in their workers.  Critical to this center of thinking is the notion that “it will increase risk and inefficiency.” 

Ms. Gina lays out the benefits of curiosity in work.  Confirmation bias is first on the list.  We’ve talked about this before.  Expecting what you’ll see and seeing it, whether it’s there or not.  This shows up in manufacturing all the time.  We hear it called “tribal knowledge.”  Many companies tell us that their workforce just “knows what to do.”   That only works if you never want to change how they do it. 

In training your workers to “just know,” you are eliminating the possibility of anything new.  My mind immediately goes back to the days of early automation.  Whether that conjures a picture of Lucy trying to wrap chocolates on an assembly line in “I Love Lucy” or assembly workers at the early days of Ford, this is not the way work is done today.  In the era of click and swipe, no one wants to do a job the same way all the time. 

Pictures solidify messages.  Science tells us that we forget most of what we read.  (This doesn’t speak well to what you might remember about this blog, so be sure to come back and read it again.)  We remember context.  That could be the place you were when something happened.  Smells.  Visual elements of the world around you.  The writing on the page. 

The last time that you went to a bookstore (you have been to one recently, yes?), do you remember picking up a book because you liked its cover?  Maybe a magazine’s front picture drew you in?  These are images that recalled something in your mind.  They caused you to have an emotion which made you lean in.  If you opened the book, do you remember liking the text, the way it looked on the page?  Or not?

These emotions related to what you see help you to remember the content as well.  Without a connection between seeing something and an emotion, chances of you remembering it shrink drastically.  Studies (and Edgar Dale’s Cone of Experience) show that 10% of people remember what they read but 90% of what they do. 

For companies still reluctant to change in the face of the next industrial revolution, there are simple strategies you can take to position your company for success.

There’s a famous quote by Albert Einstein that has particular relevance to modern manufacturing – “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

The convergence of Information Technology (IT) and Operations Technology (OT) is having a profound effect on manufacturing. The days when IT resources could get by without ever having stepped on a shop floor are gone. Operations can no longer refuse to put another “damn computer” on a work center or refuse to look at new technology.

Procedures and checks can only take your quality improvements so far.
To maximize your quality, you need to design quality feedback loops.

Manufacturing companies are continually pursuing quality improvements, and with good reason. Improved quality not only increases productivity and profit as non-conformances and scrap are reduced, ensuring the shop floor is focused on product that ships, but also aids in sales. Consumers buying a product don’t care about productivity and efficiency; they care about value and quality - manufacturing quality.

There is more to effective manufacturing analytics than reports. You need an effective and efficient process for collecting data.

Manufacturing is changing.

In the past, it was enough to write a few notes on the traveler, type them into a spreadsheet at the end of the day and print up a report. As long as work was completed and product moved, a shop floor could get by.

With the advent of new technology, smart manufacturing, and a digital foundation for production, paper-based data collection is no longer sufficient to support the shop floor.

As manufacturers struggle to reduce costs and improve production, more and more companies are turning to paperless manufacturing to improve quality.

As production grows increasingly more complex the Cost of Quality (COQ) is also increasing, with some companies reporting costs as high as 10% of revenue. The indirect and soft COQ may be even higher as you consider the non-value added time necessary to evaluate and address quality escapes.

When manufacturers consider initiatives to lower costs, quality is an emphasis. Modern MES and paperless manufacturing systems are delivering tremendous value to companies focused on improving quality.