ManufIT.com

My passion is to help manufacturing companies make good decisions about manufacturing systems and have those systems provide good value the the company.  I like to refer to it sometimes as “I try to keep people from doing stupid stuff.”  Well today I was too late.

I met with a smaller company today that I have been watching from afar for a while.  They have spent WAY TOO MUCH money on a simple application that they want to help them run manufacturing better.  This application has some functionality that exists in an old FileMaker Pro database application and the task was to bring forward that functionality and add to it.

The developer they hired to write the new application chose Oracle (the free express version) because that is what they knew.  Now the company is between a rock and a hard place because the developer is not done, they are way over budget, the application is not tested yet, and there is more scope they would really like to complete!!!

I was too late!  Tune in next post for what I would have done differently…

I am constantly reminded that with risky projects, new ventures, or unknown territory that it is smart to start small and build on successes - especially when there are technical challenges.

With MES projects, there are so many factors.  I walked into our conference room yesterday and saw our guys working on a quote for a customer.  The list of risks they were talking over filled on whole white board.

We keep getting taught this lesson, but we need to start small, get something working very solidly, and then move on from there.  This approach lessons the risk for our customers and our team.

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!

There is a debate brewing about wether ERP or the large automation/software vendors like Rockwell, GE Fanuc, Siemens, and Wonderware are going to “win” in the MES space.

I would be curious to hear what everyone thinks about this?

We once had a MES project with a large medical devices company.  This was a great project, that started well, and then the project sponsor went on vacation.  After a week he did not return, then two weeks, then three….

Then, not at all.

We all (Flexware and the customer) found out the way he had justified the MES project was by using some budget left over from another project.  They certainly needed the MES, and we all knew this was going to be a great solution.  These games get played with capital money sometimes, but this one got some real scrutiny when this guy left the company.  The project manager we were working for (she worked for the sponsor that left) called us and asked us to stop our work immediately.

The big meeting….

So here we are, a small company with this large project, stalled.  The Plant Manager called a meeting and asked us (now this was our problem) how we were going to justify this project.  He said “If you can’t tell me right now how much this project is going save me, we are not going to do it.”  Of course, he meant finish it.  I replied by saying “Justifying MES systems is very difficult and requires good data, great understanding of the problems and opportunities, and will take some time.  I can have the project finished in the amount of time it will take to do the justification.”

After some more flaming hoops, we got to finish the project and it all ended well.  It is a constant reminder that sometimes MES takes vision and faith.  I liken it to on-line banking.  There were probably many “old-school” banks that probably scoffed when someone said “you better get online banking up and running here or you may be out of business.”  “Where is the ROI?  Prove it to me!”, they said.  I hope they took the leap of faith and invested in these improvements, because if not, they may be watching from the sidelines.

Same goes for manufacturing and MES investments.  Sometimes it is ROI, vision, and faith combined that gets these projects done.  Sometimes it is leftover capital budget.