David Dehne, Author at Synchrono

Life Hack 101: Doing Implementation Documentation Right

The Who, When, What and Where for a Solid Project Doc Strategy

Imagine if your most important photos—your child’s first birthday party, the day you brought home your new dog, that awesome vacation in Europe—were all lost forever. Your computer fell into the bathtub or the hard drive was wiped by an electrical storm, and you didn’t back up your drive. Don’t let this happen to your project documentation. Keep it accessible and functional for the life of your project as well as secure for future use, whether it’s for new end users, future implementations, or even project auditors. Consider the following and you will be on your way to doing documentation right:

You’ll want to figure out the Four W’s- Who, When, What, Where

Who? Who needs access and what level of access do they need? Do they have authority to sign off on documents, or are they just a viewer? Someone who can edit documents and share them? Define a few user groups according to their necessary level of editing rights. Use categories such as content Viewers, Team Members (creating and posting documentation) and Administrators. Also, be sure to get all individuals setup with a secure login so that they can access the information. Line up someone to be in charge of setting up and allowing new access requests for others. Be sure to designate someone that will be in charge of overall organization and version clean-up within the space. Sometimes multiple drafts of one document can get overwhelming, so you’ll want to be sure someone is tidying up along the way so that old versions aren’t confused with the latest drafts.

What? Now we’ll really need a good project tool with all of the built-in capabilities you need to ensure security, version control and ease of use. If the client company uses a Windows-based authentication system, this will work well with a number of collaboration tools, such as Microsoft® SharePoint or JIRA Confluence. These tools also make it possible for contractors, like partner company team members, to have project-specific login credentials.

Selecting a collaboration tool within the overall corporate IT strategy also means that the platform is supported and that retention policies are already in place for later access. Commonly, these collaboration tools are accessible via a secure Cloud for safe remote access and allow you much more functionality than just an electronic “file cabinet.”

As for the “what” to store, I recommend a certain baseline to get started, then some guidelines to execute and finalize the document repository:

Blank, clean versions of all required deliverables
Meeting minutes from any meeting where decisions are made and action items assigned
Project management documentation (such as RACI, team contact list, charter, statement of work)
One final version of all required deliverables in a folder marked “Final Deliverables”
PDFs of final deliverables with written sign-offs from required approvers (each page initialed and signed on the approval page)
Archive folders of older versions of deliverables or other documents

When? When should you set up the collaboration software or a documentation repository? It’s prudent to do this as far in advance of the project as possible so that pre-project kick-off communications or documentation can be posted to have an effective Day 1. Many companies have tools that they use to ensure a current version of the very first documentation. Dangerous gaps can form that leave crucial decisions out of the paper trail.

Don’t worry; you don’t have to have the entire organizational structure of the project down before you build your platform. This is just an address for everyone to visit and build from as you go along.

Where? You’ll need a location that is accessible to both the client and the partner team. If you host on your internal network, you might get into proprietary issues for client-side devices—and your partner team might not have the access they need. Work out any remote login logistics prior to the project start date.

The Email Error

I have seen personal emails between project team members disappear or cause serious problems in a project. Your “where” must definitely not rely solely on one-to-one emails that contain any project information that’s crucial to decisions or outcomes—basically, ask your team to add all necessary communications and information to the project collaboration space. Make it all public knowledge so the private email accounts of your project won’t leave gaps in your project depository.

Having a great place—a “where” that allows you to take action based on the most recent decisions—allows you to trust that your project documents represent all of the deliverables you need to track during the project and ensure that they’re not lost at the end of the line.

One version of the truth

You can tell that the overarching rules for project documentation are visibility and veracity. You need one version of the truth, for the right people, at the very beginning of a project and beyond.

Share your insights and any tricks you might have on project documentation done right. Also, send me any implementation questions or topics you would like to see discussed in an upcoming post. More tips of the trade coming up in future blogs – stay tuned!

Sarah takes a customer-focused and results-driven approach to project management and demand-driven manufacturing systems implementation. With hundreds of projects under her belt, Sarah is fearless when it comes to challenging the status quo and delving into the details to ensure an optimal user experience. As such, her posts reflect tips and best practice advice for managing people and processes through projects – and getting the most out of your systems.

April 14, 2015

When Manufacturing Improvements Have Too High a Price

Engineering design fiascos – spending thousands to save pennies

This is a true story. The names have been changed to protect the innocent. It’s meant to illustrate how using constraints-based thinking can uncover the hidden price of cost-cutting projects.

Several years ago, a friend of mine was working in the quality group at a large automotive company. We will call my friend Harry for the story. Harry’s position was to use statistical analysis to determine design flaws from a large data warehouse containing warranty data, recall data and state-by-state accident information collected about the products the company manufactured. This data was used to identify areas where leading indicators could prevent major recalls and point out where engineering might improve products. Although this effort was important to the organization, Harry thought that there were better ways to move the company ahead faster than looking at data from the past, which in many cases, was a byproduct of compromises in the design process.

After many years of working in the quality group, Harry decided to contact the CEO of the company. Harry felt that if they were to look at the issues and conflicts in new product development and in product design engineering, the company would be able to eliminate the design compromises, which led to the negative effects of recalls and warranty costs.

To Harry’s surprise, he received a response from corporate leadership and from an engineer named Edwin. Edwin was the Director of Engineering and Competitive Practices for the organization and was responsible for identifying methods or systems that competitors were using, and determine which should be adapted to benefit the company. Edwin wanted to know if Harry’s recommendation was possible, and arranged a meeting.

A fateful meeting

Another colleague with the company and I were lucky enough to be invited to the meeting with Edwin and Harry. The conversation started with questions and answers about the current process for new vehicle design. We were all interested in learning how new improvements to current models came about in the company.

Edwin told us that during a new design, his group had little influence on the timeline, which would be handled by some other part of the organization. So, we asked for an example of how engineers were introduced to this process. Since Harry and I are Theory of Constraints Jonahs (A Jonah is someone who uses the socratic approach to problem resolution), we wanted to understand the baseline for the process and find out what they considered to be a successful project. We also wanted to learn how they chose products and measured performance. Edwin told us that the number one measurement was cost savings on an assigned project.

We were told that the group manager’s annual goal was to reduce component costs on each vehicle, for example, by $0.04/vehicle on a vehicle platform. In one case, the engineer looked at reducing the cost of the door locking system by $0.01 to $0.02. If the car is a 4-door, they would hit their cost-savings target over the total of vehicles they made that year. These goals are typically in the $400,000 to $5,000,000 range across the entire vehicle line.

An engineer redesigned the door-locking mechanism to reduce the cost of the components in the car — and sold the group’s idea to management. After some back and forth between various levels of the organization, the project was approved, and design money and resources were budgeted.

We asked several questions to determine if this was, indeed, a cost savings. Here’s what we learned from Edwin:

Q: How many door locking mechanisms does the company currently use?

A: Seven.

Q: If there is a new design, is one taken out of service?

A: Not usually; not until it is determined to be obsolete. Warranty and Service have a large influence on the determination of obsolescence.

Q: Since this is a door-locking mechanism, will the vehicles that use this new design have to be sent through crash testing to determine if the new device meets safety standards?

A: Yes.

Q: More than just the normal yearly testing?

A: Yes, since it was a change to a safety device, extra testing will be required to ensure the design meets or exceeds standards.

Q: Do the suppliers of the mechanisms need to fill the supply chain with parts so the new design can be used in production?

A: Yes, the suppliers would have been working with the design team during the process, so they would know what the supply chain needs to be prepared for production. They are very good about keeping up with the design process.

Q: With a new design, how often is it ready on time for assembly to begin the new model year?

A: There are frequent delays for the new model year, and there will have to be some work to change over the new mechanism.

“I’m sorry, but I do not see how there is any cost savings in the method you described,” I said.

They answered, “Of course there is, the company saved $0.02 per vehicle!”

I explained that because the process described added a new assembly, each step represented new inventory to support the new assembly. Since the old design wasn’t discontinued, the inventory for the old design would not be removed from the system, so no savings there. If the new design is not ready for the model year changeover, the delay to production can be quite costly, the old parts would have to be used until the new parts are available, and then the old inventory would need to be removed, new inventory added and the assembly line would need training. In addition, the dealership network would have to be notified about when the old style was changed and in which vehicles. The dealership technicians would also need training on the new mechanism.

Every step costs

Every step they took added cost. Their $0.02 savings was eaten up before they began. In reviewing the entire process, we quickly realized that no one at the company had a holistic view of the process. Further, they didn’t have any comprehensive information to fully judge the impact of a change upon the system due to the silos and structure of the organization.

Edwin maintained that because they were measured for the $0.02 cost savings, they only needed to concentrate on that– they did not have any knowledge or responsibility for what the rest of the company was doing.

I simply said, “I think you are using the wrong measurements.”

On my way back from the meeting, Harry said, “What do you think is the number one warranty cost for the company?”

“I don’t know, please tell me,” I said.

“Door locking mechanisms,” he answered. “How about in the 1990s?”

“The same?” I asked.

“Yes,” he added. “In fact, the number one warranty item since the 1960s has been door locking mechanisms.”

He went on to tell me that in the late 1980s, the company did a study between its door lock mechanisms and another car manufacturer’s design. At that time, Harry’s company’s door lock had 13 parts in the design compared to 7 parts in the competitor’s lock mechanism. Fewer parts are often more cost-effective—as there is less time to assembly them, fewer parts in the supply chain, and simplicity is its own form of effectiveness.

The company they used for the study was well known for their impressive reputation for quality. Keep in mind, he said– each new engineer goes through a required training course that uses this comparative study to show the differences between Harry’s company design and the premier competitor’s design. The objective is to reduce complexity and still provide world class quality. And, these engineers need to demonstrate that they understand the study and its implications for the company before they are allowed to do any design work.

“We have been teaching this class for 15 years. Do you know how many parts our current design has?” Harry asked me.

“I would guess eight or nine?” I looked at him hopefully.

“No,” Harry sighed. “We have 12 parts in our design and the competitor’s mechanism is now using 6 parts.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, other than shake my head in dismay.

Epilogue

That was 10 years ago. Since then, there have been several senior leadership changes at the company. And even though that company, like many others, further fractured into a flatter organization, it maintains many of the traditional silos.

This company eliminated or sold many vehicle lines to preserve cash to strengthen the parent company. And, after a long and hard struggle, they are again profitable. The company is making a better quality vehicle today, but the number of recalls is still higher than the global average for the same type of organization.

Many organizations still focus on cost savings to the detriment of a holistic view of constraints. They base design and engineering decisions on what looks like it will save money rather than the costs of instituting these changes. Next time, we will talk a bit about why erroneous metrics make projects like the $0.02 -savings door lock look good. Let me know about your experiences with constraints management—or share a story like this one. I’d love to hear from you.

– Rick Denison

Rick is the “Dr. Who” of manufacturing operations and logistics. And while Rick doesn’t travel through time, he is adept at leading change – and saving time – in a diverse range of manufacturing environments through Lean manufacturing, Six Sigma, and TOC techniques. Rick’s posts address how demand-driven matters and draws from his background in process improvement, change management, project management, information systems implementation, and profitability analysis.

March 26, 2015

Three Bottlenecks the Modern Marketer Must Overcome

How a manufacturing theory helps Jeff Bezos—and you—focus on what really matters

The Week recently ran a story about Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos making all of his senior managers read, The Goal, by Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox. So why would Jeff Bezos – widely considered one of the most visionary CEOs today —want his team to buy into a business book’s philosophy that’s mostly concerned with manufacturing effectiveness?

Bezos is one of the most influential marketing minds in the country. When thinking about your marketing strategy, what should you know that he knows about, The Goal?

Theory into Practice

I have been building marketing strategies for software manufacturing companies for many years. I’ve read The Goal and understand its philosophies because I have had to learn about its main topic, the Theory of Constraints (TOC), and how it can change the way manufacturers do business. If you want to know about this aspect of TOC, definitely see our resident guru, Rick Denison’s blog. However, to summarize from my perspective, TOC tells us to look at the limiting factor – or constraint – to understand a system’s output.

In Bezos’ story, writer Pascal Emmanuel Gobry says: “The reason why this is so profound is that most managers spend their time trying to improve every part of the system they oversee, often with very mixed results. But if the output of the whole process — even an improved process — is still limited by the bottleneck, then any effort spent optimizing anything else is basically wasted (and can even be counterproductive).”

If your marketing efforts feel unfocused, find your bottlenecks to get moving again in the right direction. Here are the top three bottlenecks that I have found empowering to overcome:

1) Data Mashup – That’s my term for unsynchronized, or data without any context. You can have the best automation software out there, and the biggest of big data, but if you’re unable to synchronize that data so that it is transformed into meaningful information, what’s the point? When executing on Pull-based, or modern marketing methodologies, you’ll want to identify the specific constraints of the system(s) and/or marketing programs you’re running and whether you’re able to not only measure your desired KPIs, but influence them. Often, this means integrating your marketing automation, CRM and even financial systems to paint a complete picture.

2) Taking Your Eyes off the Prize –Let’s face it—marketers are busy people. We’ve got multiple stakeholders all fighting for our attention. I have found that retaining customer focus is the hardest job of all—but remains the true “prize” in any marketer’s eyes. Find out where and why your teams are taking their eyes off customer needs and get them back on track.

3) Getting Real- At Synchrono, we are all about meeting our customers where they live. We spend a lot of time and effort out there in the production environment, constantly refining our software to make manufacturers more consistently successful. We look for their pain points to find out how we can help. In “Lean speak”, our continuous improvement efforts helps customers with their continuous improvement projects.

What are your marketing pain points and what are you doing about them? If you’ve got problems with your product, with your processes or with your people, don’t sugarcoat them or sweep them under the rug. Get real about the constraints you need to address in order to execute a marketing strategy that positively influences your desired KPIs. Is it your ability to access the right data? Your customer focus? Messaging and content that hits the mark – or something else? It takes courage to be objective and brutally honest, but if I were pressed to tell you one thing you can do to improve everything about your marketing, it would be this—be real about your issues and meet them head-on.

Promote Continuous Improvement

Our synchronized manufacturing software helps identify and manage constraints that inhibit the flow of production. At the same time, our systems provide meaningful information to guide continuous improvement efforts. The same principles hold true for effective marketing – identify issues, make informed adjustments and measure the results. And don’t settle – stay sharp and continuously refine.

Certainly, Jeff Bezos has been pretty fearless in his career. . . I think he’s right on the money about looking for bottlenecks first to gain incredible insight into our business—but more importantly—our customers’ business. Pay attention, it will point you in the right direction!

– Marketing

Big data, the Internet of Things, Industry 4.0, Factory of the Future, the Visual factory – what do you really need to pay attention to and what do these concepts mean to most manufacturers? A sceptic and trend-spotter, Pam’s posts leverage a background in technology marketing to apply these big concepts to the real world – and real work – of demand-driven manufacturers.

February 25, 2015

How TOC Can Move Your World – and World View

Archimedes once said, “Give me a lever long enough,
a fulcrum, and a place to stand, and I shall move the world.”

Learn how production professionals use Constraints Management to meet negativity head – on to manage meaningful change

Here’s the last part of our three-part series about the Theory of Constraints (TOC). In the next couple of postings I’m going to dig right in to looking at what actually happens when I’ve used TOC at client companies. But there’s more gold to be mined from this topic—and I wanted to make sure I included in this series some common “fulcrums” –or common organizational assumptions that might sound familiar to you.

I also want to clear up some of what you might think. A common notion about constraints as they are viewed as a “negative.” However, constraints are neither good nor bad; they are just part of any organization. To clarify, try and picture an organization that has no constraints. What would you expect to see from this type of organization? The organization would produce with unlimited growth. In nature and in business, there aren’t any systems that produce at unlimited capacity and exhibit unlimited growth. So if there are no systems that produce at unlimited growth, then all systems have constraints.

As people working in systems, we can either acknowledge or deny that constraints exist. Regardless of the choice, constraints will have an effect upon the organization. If we want to grow our organization, then we might as well pay attention, right?

Too Many Places at Once

In my last blog posting, (Which Systems is More Complex?) I discussed the complex view of organizations, with the belief that change is incremental. Many changes will equal organizational improvement.

For contrast, I also discussed that with TOC in that there is only one or very few true constraints within any system. Improve the constraint, and you will make a significant impact upon the system.

What if you do not have a method to find the weakest link? Random chance allows that every once in a while, one of these actions will touch an organizational constraint and generate an impressive single-event, a growth-oriented action. The opposite might also happen: The same random choice may damage a constraint and produce a single, one-time negative result. If you think about the last 20 years of organizational history, I’m sure you can find a few such cases of one or the other, but more likely the latter. These events will be on the scale of urban legends within the organization. Like New Coke in the 1980’s, a disastrous merger like Daimler/Chrysler, or spinning off acquisitions to conserve cash.

The Cost Conundrum

Traditionally, most improvements are efforts to save cost. People think that if cost is removed from the delivery of a product or a service, it will result in higher profits. The vast majority of the U.S. Economy believes this to be true, and that, in conjunction with the high affinity for innovation, creates a compelling mix. But when we compare TOC with other improvement methods, its speed and accuracy bring about significant change – faster. We find our constraints and then we can react.

The TOC View of Problems

Traditional view: “A problem is something I don’t like”, or “Something that bothers me”, or the classic “Something that keeps me up at night.”

TOC view: “A problem is a conflict that prevents a system from reaching its desired objective.” With this definition, there is a second fundamental belief in physics that “There are no conflicts in reality.” There are only invalid assumptions about the conflict.

Assume Control

TOC translates conflicts as follows: If there is a conflict, then there must be an underlying assumption about that system that created the conflict. The solution comes from identifying the assumptions about the conflict, validating the existence of the assumptions, and eliminating the negative assumption about the conflict so that a solution can be built that will allow the system to reach its desired objective.

In every organization, managers face many issues on a daily basis. Typically, most of these issues stem from a single core problem (conflict) that the organization hasn’t been able to previously identify. Many managers are aware that these conflicts exist, however, these type of conflicts are very difficult to solve as most have conflicting objectives that result in compromises.

Does this sound like you?

The existence of conflict can be validated by looking back in time for periodic shifts in organizational philosophy. As an example, if in the past, your organization was emphasizing centralized management and now it is emphasizing profit-center autonomy, then these switches indicate the existence of an unresolved core problem. Efficiency is another example of an unresolved core problem. If at the beginning of any reporting period, organizational efficiency is emphasized, and then at the end of the month, all the rules are broken (forgotten) to achieve shipments and revenue targets. This again is a sure sign of an unresolved core problem.

TOC has a number of system tools that tackle the “new normal” head on. Next time, we’ll look at these tools as they applied to an automotive manufacturer—we’ll uncover their core assumptions and watch how their teams took control with TOC.

– Rick Denison

Rick is the “Dr. Who” of manufacturing operations and logistics. And while Rick doesn’t travel through time, he is adept at leading change – and saving time – in a diverse range of manufacturing environments through Lean manufacturing, Six Sigma, and TOC techniques. Rick’s posts address how demand-driven matters and draws from his background in process improvement, change management, project management, information systems implementation, and profitability analysis.

February 10, 2015

Top 3 Communications Best Practices for Software Implementations

In a recent business article out of the UK, the author cites trends such as collaboration and connectivity as hallmarks of the “factory of the future.” I would take that one step further, and add “communication” to that list—especially during implementation.

Smart implementation leaders make sure they are listening to the insights of everyone who will be impacted by their new systems and following solid communication practices throughout the life of the project—and beyond. Here’s what you need to know about the three biggest opportunities great communication practices deliver to your project.

#1 Always be Buying (In)

A continuous goal of all communications is gaining buy-in from all project team members and stakeholders. I make it a personal goal to have all attendees, no matter what their role, walk away from meetings –or after reading emails –more in-tune with the overall project objective. Often we create increased sharing and discussion opportunities, so that communications can continue to be a two-way street.

There is a moment during every implementation where l watch the lines of communication open. I can see a new determination among everyone involved to follow through on our goals. Our communication practices had delivered that elusive element—buy-in—and as a result, each person becomes a project champion. Implementations like these sometimes herald the beginning of a culture change that helps the enterprise continuously improve by listening to and learning from each other.

#2 Living Documents Spur the Crucial Conversations

Setting up a communications plan and documenting results from the communications plan activities can help you ensure that you are in lockstep regarding action items, decisions, and project strategy. Documentation begins with a project repository – an accessible space where content and multiple versions of documents can be viewed, edited, and shared. In my last blog, we discussed how a good, solid RACI can help with workflow and accountability during the project. The RACI can stand as some of your first meeting notes and as a core project document to establish both project activities and communication expectations. A project repository “lives” in tools like SharePoint, Atlassian Confluence, or in other similar platforms.

Security and Sign Off

Documentation access and security should be a primary focus before and during a project. I recommend enacting specific security clearance for known project team members before the project begins to save time. You can always continue to manage access and permissions throughout the project lifecycle as both the team size and number of files may grow. The goal is to make sure your documentation is protected throughout the project, while having a transition plan for making the information viewable by a broader audience after deployment. The repository should be kept somewhere so that even many years after the project ends, the space is still accessible. You don’t want to rely on critical project information residing on an individual’s work station (what if it crashes!?!) so select a place that has staying power within the organization. It could be the only way you can conduct a corporate project audit, find original training materials or design documentation.

Push or Pull?

With all of the project content created, it’s important to decipher what makes good “push” versus “pull” information. Many project repository items will be best with a “pull” method, where users know where and how to go pull the information as needed. In other cases, such as project status updates, you will want to enact a “push” system where you distribute information to people so that it’s in front of them. The more you can schedule this regularly, the better. Often, this information supplies management with what they need to know for broader project statuses, such as reporting beyond their specific business or IT division. Information is pushed to them ready-to-use – don’t rely on people clicking links to be able to see and absorb it. You want it front and center!

#3 Understand (and explain) that Communication Delivers a Measureable ROI

People sometimes think that good communications is a “nice to have” add-on rather than a crucial element of the project plan. The folks at the Project Management Institute (PMI) are the masters at communicating well and at compiling solid research to show the ROI of your communications project. Most of their content is out there on the Internet free for the taking. Like this white paper, which has quotes like the one below:

“Among those organizations considered highly effective communicators, 80 percent of projects meet original goals, versus only 52 percent at their minimally effective counterparts, according to PMI’s Pulse of the Profession™ In-Depth Report: The Essential Role of Communications. Highly effective communicators are also more likely to deliver projects on time (71 percent versus 37 percent) and within budget (76 percent versus 48 percent).”

Those are some pretty solid numbers for building your communications business case, aren’t they?

Definitely let me know what you think about my top three—and if you have anything to add to help our readers make sure communication remains a crucial element in their project implementations. Until next time, then, keep communicating!

-Sarah Huhner

Sarah takes a customer-focused and results-driven approach to project management and demand-driven manufacturing systems implementation. With hundreds of projects under her belt, Sarah is fearless when it comes to challenging the status quo and delving into the details to ensure an optimal user experience. As such, her posts reflect tips and best practice advice for managing people and processes through projects – and getting the most out of your systems.

January 27, 2015

Using Big Data to Tell Your Story

Three ways narrative can connect the dots between big data and your brand

In a recent Forbes article, the writer describes Big Data as “a collection of data from traditional and digital sources inside and outside your company that represents a source for ongoing discovery and analysis.” I love this definition because it describes a process of discovery that—once linked with your brand message – allows you to uncover additional opportunities to tell compelling stories in the markets you serve.

I work in the manufacturing space, where our systems manage large amounts of real-time data aggregated from enterprise systems and machines in a client’s plant(s)—and all the way out to suppliers and customers. Manufacturers who harness this data gain insight to improve production flow; focus continuous improvement (CI) initiatives; and drive customer satisfaction via on-time delivery, innovation and increased capacity. This insight – and resulting capabilities – helps them transform into a more flexible, reactive and empowered business partner, creating a powerful story to tell in the marketplace. Sharing your most impactful big data stories will strengthen competitive advantage, profitability and your brand value.

Here are what I believe to be the three most compelling storylines for our manufacturing audience in what I call, “The Big Data Narrative”:

1. Pain Points

As marketers know well, features and benefits must solve specific customer problems. Spend some time brainstorming with your front-line people about the “pain” your customers are in and come up with an engaging narrative to show how your products can provide actionable information to solve these problems. Take care to create a distinction between a pile of data and actionable information that elicits “discovery” or insight into innovation. For example, our client was able to access actionable information to manage their inventory and WIP in a visible way and experience a 50% reduction in operating expenses. This customer’s pain point was ineffective inventory management, but they also had spotty supplier relationships. We helped them use and interpret their new system-generated data to create new synergies with their suppliers—a story worth the telling.

2. Related, Real-life Narratives

After you identify the pain, look at your past and current customers to give your big data solutions weight and depth. You’ll need case studies and testimonials like the one I used above. We often use case studies from our clients to paint a picture of value, particularly from those who use our InSync Services after implementation to jump start continuous improvement actions based on their new system-generated knowledge. We tell our products’ stories by telling these client stories—how they improved flow and continued to build value through their Big-Data-driven CI process. I love sharing the real-life ways that show how manufacturers use us to turn their big data into actionable information – and then into transformational improvements.

We also use stories to differentiate ourselves in the marketplace we serve. Because we have a unique position as a provider incorporating demand-driven manufacturing processes into our systems, we use stories from current clients to validate our value proposition to prospective clients. In turn, these customers use our stories to sell the solution internally to gain adoption.

3. Table the Tables?

Mark Schaefer’s excellent blog post cautions against using too many pies, charts and graphs to tell the story—but let’s face it—70% of us are visual learners and supply-chain managers tend to want these graphics. They’re used to a dashboard approach and it would be a mistake not to give them one. In fact, the factory of the future is a visual environment, where status is easily viewed and actionable information is within reach, accessible to everyone. But don’t lose the people in the process of telling your story. Paint a “people picture” – use the shop foreman’s real first name – and don’t be afraid to use emotion as you translate Big Data into the big stories that create big results for your customers. As Schaefer puts it:

“If we distill the complex and nuanced world into only averages and pie charts, we could be missing the important opportunities presented by context. What’s the story behind the data? What’s there that we didn’t expect to be there? What are the implications of a trend and why is it happening?”

Ask these questions of your Big Data and you can show your audience the exponential value they will experience once they get a handle on their own story.

Let me know your Big Data stories. And thanks for reading mine!