ManufIT.com

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!

Since creating a blog, and managing our primary website, I am learning more than I want to know about webmaster stuff.

I love Microsoft, we are a Gold certified partner!  However, today I ran into a problem where you cannot FTP files to your webserver if you are using FrontPage extensions.  So, we have been using FrontPage for a long time as our primary web development tool, and now we find ourselves corrupting files by using FTP to transfer files back and forth.

Since the rest of the world uses other web development technologies, the primary way to send these files to your server is FTP.  Now that I am using Elance to help me on my websites, I need to be able to use FTP!

I guess I am going to have to move away from FrontPage (well now it is Expression Web).

Ahhh, the learning stages again….

At least once a month I have a customer say something like “That is like paying you to do a quote.” Or, “I am not going to pay you to do a quote.” 

MES solutions are among the toughest Manufacturing IT projects out there.  They touch IT, Operations, Automation and Engineering, Quality, ERP, and most of all PEOPLE!  So, approaching a MES project without a plan, some specifications, a few requirements, or at least something written down, is sure disaster.

Here is my house analogy:

You want a new custom home, or at least you think you are ready to embark on the journey.  You are not sure what it is going to cost, but you think you know what you want.  You show up to talk with the builder with no prints, no specs, knowing nothing about the types of cabinets, fixtures, carpet, or appliances that you want, and you want the builder to tell you how much it is going to cost.  You sit down with the builder and start saying things like “we want 3 bedrooms and 3 full-bathrooms.”  Image the builder’s position….do you want granite counters?  Walk-in showers?  Closets the size of small bedrooms?  How is he supposed to help you if you have not defined your requirements?

In the house analogy, this is where the designer and/or architect come into play.  You could also use a builder that does “Design-Build.”  In either case, you typically define what it is you want so that you can get what you want from the final result.  Also, this allows you to go get “apples-to-apples” quotes from multiple builders.

As for MES, most manufacturers don’t know where to start in defining their MES requirements.  And, many vendors are eager to get started on something, so they will start building something for the manufacturer without designing the entire solution.  In our house analogy, this is what I call the Tree House analogy.  If you don’t plan it out up front, your house will start looking like a tree house all thrown together.

Final Suggestions:

• Define your MES Requirements up front - if you don’t know how to do this, call me.
• With your definition in hand, seek input from a few builders.
• Start Small, but with a final design in mind.

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.

Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) as defined in wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_planning_and_scheduling