Author: David Dehne

Made for Manufacturers

By Sarah Balogh

Made for Manufacturers

A common statement I hear from customers is that they are working with technology and software that doesn’t provide the functionality they need as manufacturers. They are told that certain enterprise software packages “can do everything” they need to plan, schedule, and run their factories. But months after implementation they feel a sense of disenchantment. Why is this?

Software Made for Manufacturing

What these customers have in common is that they bought software that can be used for manufacturing. But what they really need is manufacturing software. True software built for manufacturers provides capabilities and value unique to companies in the business of planning and producing goods to bring to market. Manufacturing software is created with the industry and business of manufacturing in mind. It is built with the intention of providing an organization the tools it needs to gain control of their production floor, deliver quality goods on time, and gain visibility into operations and the supply chain beyond the four walls of the plant.

The good news is even if you didn’t purchase manufacturing software initially, you always have the opportunity to start the journey of enabling the factory of the future, exactly from where you are today. How? By selecting manufacturing software that can integrate and play nicely with your existing systems while providing the specific manufacturing functionality you need.

Connect to Anything and Everything

Manufacturing enterprises today have one thing in common – they are all unique. They have nothing in common with other manufacturers’ architecture and solution portfolios. Each organization tends to be a mixed collection of legacy, new enterprise, and point solutions (with the ability to access data within and across these solutions just as varied for each company). Therefore, one of the elements that good manufacturing software should include is the ability to connect to and take advantage of all of this data, plus any future data sources. This makes it possible for any company, wherever they are in their continuous improvement or demand-driven journey, to start harnessing the power of their own information to drive decisions from real data.

To start driving value for your manufacturing business, I recommend using a factory visualization solution that has the ability to connect to and use this existing data for analysis, visibility and to serve as the much sought after single version of the truth. Suddenly data across the enterprise is liberated to serve your organization as usable and actionable information. When your different technologies are all connected to a visual factory system, you break down the data silos. In combining these data sources, you become empowered with information, gaining new and more comprehensive insight into your environment and business.

At this year’s IndustryWeek Manufacturing & Technology Conference, Orbital ATK shared how they connected their environment to enable the Internet of Things and how they are using visual factory technology as a communications tool and a means to respond to issues in real time. (YouTube video.)

Next time we will talk more about what a good factory visualization tool should be able to do, and why those capabilities are necessary. In the meantime, please leave a comment!

July 6, 2016
Kanban Series White Paper: Common Barriers to Moving from Push to Pull Manufacturing
This resource addresses the following challenges:
- Organizations initiate material replenishment automation programs without properly analyzing processes and priorities for internal and external stakeholders.
- Manufacturers are unsure about their current replenishment capabilities within ERP and other systems, and are unsure whether to fix, buy or build a solution to gain the capabilities they need.
- Disruptions in leadership and a change-averse environment can create barriers to improved production flow and automating processes.
- Unanswered questions regarding whether a replenishment solution can enhance flow and enable continuous improvements.
Download
March 24, 2016
Demand-Driven Technologies Evolved

By John Maher

When I first began instituting demand-driven practices in the late 90s, we were into creating pull, eliminating waste, and getting on a path of continuous improvement. Technology at the time was seen as an inhibitor rather than an enabler. Most people active in Constraints Management and Lean Manufacturing were abandoning their technology and going to purely manual solutions. I always believed that technology was important to get the most out of the system and to make it scalable, however, in the late 90s, the lack of technologies that enabled pull made manual the only logical choice.

One of the more fascinating developments in demand-driven enablement has been the shift of demand-driven manufacturing back to technology as an enabler rather than an inhibitor. There is recognition today that technology has to play a significant role in eliminating waste and synchronizing operations and extended supply chains. Along with this trend, the creation of open ERP systems that are easily integrated with service-oriented architecture allows companies to leverage the system they already have and benefit from today’s best-of-breed, demand-driven solutions through seamless, real-time integration. Finally, the web-based, SaaS revolution has made this process more cost effective, with expensive internal services now “downloaded” to the software provider, freeing up IT and manufacturing teams to focus on what matters. The digitization of demand-driven practices has, in effect, opened up companies’ ability to manage inventory and constraints more effectively; free up capacity; control operating expenses; drive flow; dampen variability; and create innovations to meet customer demand.

Based on decades in this business, I have found that demand-driven manufacturers realize the most benefit when they keep their eyes on the prize: Each day, they stay focused on demand-driven behaviors and remain disciplined in their efforts. It can be a difficult road. But it is my hope that this conversation will validate why demand-driven matters and inspire you on your journey each day. Until next time, keep it Lean!

Additional resources on this topic:

White Paper: How Technology Will Connect Your Enterprise and Create the Demand-Driven Factory of the Future – Today

White Paper: Why Become More Demand-Driven? Responding to Customer Needs

Article: What is Demand-Driven Manufacturing?

February 3, 2016
If it’s Not Real Time Data, It’s Old Data
We have so much real-time data around us in our daily routines. A barista starts to prepare my order the moment that I purchase my daily coffee. I instantly know how close I am to the speed limit thanks to my car’s speedometer. And I see an accurate count down of the number of minutes before my computer turns off due to a drained battery. Since all of this real-time data is available in our day-to-day lives, shouldn’t we expect the same for data we use in our manufacturing organizations?

Countless times I have walked into customer sites on Day 1 and seen old data everywhere. I have seen four walls of a conference room covered with 8 ½” by 11” printed reports, most of which were multiple weeks old. Or users that explain that they perform analysis based off of desktop spreadsheet files, with manual data loads. In each of these cases, people are operating off of old data, even if it was updated just a few hours ago. If my speedometer had that same delay, I would have a lot more speeding tickets!

Old Data is Just… Old Data

Manufacturers today are asking themselves how they can do better and be better. They realize that to be competitive, they should look inside the factory first and explore their own processes to find areas for improvement. If they analyze their data to see what it shows about their operations, they tend think that any data to go off of is better than no data, right? Not always, I say.

Based on how fast your environment changes, it could be detrimental to make decisions off of old data. Since the pace of business has increased for manufacturers, thanks to both technology and complexity, so too should the pace at which data is collected and made available to make informed decisions. For example, consider everything that can happen in the span of an hour:
- Purchasing finds out that a truck shipment of raw materials will be delayed two days due to weather.
- A new customer puts in a rush online order double the size of previous months.
- Maintenance begins fixing a problem on a constraint resource that is estimated to take at least a couple of hours.
Wouldn’t your organization want to know about all of these situations as soon as it could? Certainly. Keep in mind, however, that as more and more data is available, you’ll need to discern if, when, and how you take action. That is, you’ll need to separate knowing that events occur versus reacting to them right away. Each event could immediately impact your organization’s priorities, but you also don’t want to be jumpy and let every event disrupt your overall process. The important thing is that you are aware and that you have the right information at hand to make necessary decisions.

Better yet, your systems can also be aware of this same event data and alert you only to the issues that require your intervention. Technology solutions for manufacturers should be able to take real-time data, assess it against other conditions and values, and then notify you to respond only to the events that need your attention. This is the nature of demand-driven manufacturing – since the focus is on overall production flow, you only need to address those issues that disrupt flow. The rest is probably just normal “noise” – or what becomes a normal day for a manufacturer.

Manual Reporting Makes Data Stale

So how did we get to the point where so many manufacturers are not using real-time information? Thankfully, manufacturing technology is catching up to provide all of the information and analytics that companies seek in an automated, real-time manner. Organizations have always had the desire for information and reports, but they’ve commonly only had manual methods as options. Consider the volume of reporting that a typical manufacturing company does on a recurring basis – that’s a lot of manual reporting happening based on non-real time data. Think of the time drain that both the manual data collection and report running put on a company. If it takes an analyst only two hours to run a report, that means they are already using information that’s at least two hours old.

If you run reports on yesterday’s manually collected data, then you will only have information about yesterday. Further, we will still need a clear, straightforward way to display that information to users. I know my car’s current speed based on the easy-to-read dashboard, for example. If we demand that our organizations collect real-time data – and we have a tool like a visual factory system to display this information – then we have a powerful platform from which to understand what is happening today and what to prepare for tomorrow within operations. In the next blog, we will pick up on this topic of how to use historical data in a meaningful way, but in the meantime, send me your comments and questions.
January 14, 2016
Five Key Elements that Drive Manufacturing Flow
If you follow the Demand-Driven Matters blog, you know we specialize in Demand-Driven Manufacturing and have identified the two key components of this method as synchronization and flow. At an enterprise level, synchronization is all about fully connecting your organization to aggregate and share information in real-time. Data from machines, tools, applications, enterprise systems – any data source – is synchronized to drive decision-making (In our view, this also enables the Industrial Internet of Things – IIoT.)

Synchronization is also an enabler of flow. In this post, I want to introduce a discussion around what we’ve identified as the Five Key Elements that Drive Flow in manufacturing production. They are:
1. Control the release – create “Pull” by gating the release of work into production.
2. Synchronize activities – align upstream operations to downstream needs, paying attention to convergence points and final assembly.
3. Continuous improvement – use the first two Elements as a baseline for defining areas for continuous improvement – and never get complacent.
4. Extend to the supply chain – synchronize activities beyond the factory to the extended supply chain.
5. Align metrics – 6 metric categories to monitor for driving action in Demand-Driven Manufacturing environments.
On their own, each of these Elements would likely improve production flow. Our position is that by working these Elements together, you take a demand-driven leap in overall flow improvement. An episode of the podcast, Demand-Driven Matters, explains this in greater detail – along with data points on actual improvements manufacturers have gained:

Recently, we’ve been hearing from more manufacturers who want to do more with what they have. That is, drive flow to the point that they’ve increased capacity to take on more work – or enter new markets. One client we worked with saw the Demand-Driven method – and its ability to drive flow – as a means to expand one of their business units without dramatically increasing headcount. Another client was able to use this method to free capacity to enter a new market – and doubled revenue in 2.5 years.

In upcoming posts, we’ll review each Element in greater detail – you can also learn more about them through the Demand-Driven Matters podcast. In the meantime, let us know if you’ve worked through any or all of these Elements – and what your results were.
November 5, 2015
Manufacturing + Technology = A More Unique You

Communicating your distinct value

Manufacturing and technology are merging like never before. We’ve all read about how manufacturing will transform through concepts that include Industry 4.0, the Factory of the Future, Smart Manufacturing and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) – all of which are enabled through technology. These concepts are big. They’re exciting. And they offer great opportunities for manufacturers to differentiate in the service realm.

When it comes down to it, the concepts of IIoT and the like are all about connecting your enterprise and communicating meaningful information. When machines and systems talk to each other, manufacturers are more informed and work smarter. Production flows, downtime is reduced and on-time delivery rates increase. It may also translate into the ability to greatly differentiate by offering customers more options for customization (and thereby enabling customers to differentiate). The World Economic Forum, in collaboration with Accenture, produced the Industrial Internet of Things: Unleashing the Potential of Connected Products and Services earlier this year. The report contains a lot of interesting information – along with several examples of how transformative the IIoT can be to different industries and to specific manufacturing environments. One example is how ThyssenKrupp AG, who manufactures and maintains elevators, has incorporated networked sensors for predictive maintenance. These sensors transmit data to the Cloud where analytics software looks for issues that require immediate service versus those that can wait for regularly scheduled maintenance. In doing so, the company is better able to prioritize and dispatch service personnel for elevator repair and reduce customer downtime – a service differentiator I’m sure many clients appreciate.

In marketing, we’re always looking for those points of differentiation – the capabilities that make our company and/or product unique in the competitive field. Today and in the future, manufacturers will find those points of differentiation through technology. In another example, a Synchrono customer attributed their competitive advantage to the planning, scheduling and execution system they implemented. As a result of this software technology, the client was able to greatly improve their lead times – to the extent that their competitors couldn’t even come close to achieving. (The sorry thing for me in this story is that the customer saw this as such an advantage they didn’t want me to do a case study for fear of tipping off competitors to their secret weapon.)

What distinct value will your factory of the future deliver? Real-time quality data for your customers? Same day turnaround on orders? Or maybe you’ll gain the data and capacity to innovate so that you’ll be able to offer customers the ability to differentiate through unique solutions.

In any case, I welcome the digitally connected age – and your thoughts on how manufacturers (and their marketers) will translate technology-enabled information into a distinct competitive advantage.

October 7, 2015

“test”