2 posts tagged “continuous improvement”

Sometimes I sit here in front of the computer gathering my thoughts for another blog and I wonder if anyone is really interested. Well, clearly they are, as a few people have noticed I’ve not posted for a while and dropped me a line to see if I’m alright and when I’m due to post again. Well folks, thanks for your concern and more importantly for your interest.

The reason for the gap in blogs is that we were preparing and then exhibiting at the PPMA show at the NEC in Birmingham. You may recall that we have been appointed as a Partner to Shoplogix – and we were taking the show at the NEC as an opportunity to launch the product properly here in the UK.

As a business we have deep experience in delivering ERP – particularly Infor ERP LN / Baan and Microsoft Dynamics AX / Axapta but we took the Shoplogix product line on as it is absolutely suited to our target market of manufacturing companies.

If you take a look at our Shoplogix webpage you’ll see all about the product there. In short, if you haven’t read any of my previous blogs (and it still surprises me when you do) , (by the way, say hello) Plantnode by Shoplogix is a device that collects data on the status of your production machinery and allows your operators to collect data in real-time so you can improve efficiency.

Anyway we were at the NEC with my now famous Rolling Ball Sculpture which is what I use to simulate a machine (see the Video on Youtube!) and we had a great deal of interest.

I’ve been around ERP and senior IT management for a long time and I know how difficult it is to put a business case together for a serious investment in either large infrastructure projects or complex business systems. What is refreshing about the Shoplogix Plantnode product is that I can draw up a business case in a matter of minutes – it can deliver real improvement in performance and it’s easily quantifiable and I can demonstrate a rapid return on investment (ROI) within minutes.

Having spent years either justifying ERP or auditing other people’s business cases it’s a refreshing change when the document can be so concise. No calculating transaction value or cost to raise a purchase order required.... (though, I do enjoy the intellectual thrust of that).

On a couple of occasions last week I was also able to change some businesses view with a couple of focussed questions – which in the world of ERP I don’t think would simply be possible.

One person suggested that the Shoplogix product was perhaps too expensive for them. Not knowing the price this was quite an assumption – and he was certainly pleasantly surprised when told. The question I asked was ‘Why are you at the show?’ and the answer was (and a likely and probable answer given that is was a packaging and processing machinery show) that they were looking to buy another production line. I asked if they were happy with the efficiency of their current lines – and they said they couldn’t be sure because they didn’t know how efficient, or not, they were now. I have persuaded them to delay a significant investment into a new line until they have established this with a relatively low investment into a Shoplogix Plantnode unit. Likewise a company that was considering moving to two shifts is deploying Plantnode to see if they really need to do this. We reckon that we can improve their OEE from the region of 60% to, a still not World class, 75% which will allow them to delay a second shift by somewhere around 12 months.  A considerable saving and return on their investment.

 If only ERP were so easy to justify!

I wrote in a previous blog that we have become a partner to Shoplogix to implement their product Plantnode. The best way to describe it is as a ‘device’ that captures machine performance data and presents it in via the web through an outstanding user interface.

As a business we very much like to row our own boat and only enter into channel partnerships it we believe we can do them justice – we don’t collect logos as trophies to put on our website. It’s testament therefore to the quality and usefulness of the Plantnode product that we are fully committed to promoting it.

All manufacturing companies right now are looking to improve their performance and Plantnode reveals ‘machine truth’ by attaching sensors to the machine and collecting data automatically. If you are involved, or have ever been involved, in data collection that is manual for operational improvement activities then you will know that the greatest barrier to improvement is the veracity of the data. With manual data collection the machine operators are often relying on memory to record the job data such as set-up time and run time. They almost certainly record the ‘big stops’ that prevents the machine running but not the ‘little stops’ – and this is an area that can be attacked to improve OEE. Automated data collection overcomes this by recording when the machine is running or not and allowing the operator, through a simple barcode scan, to record the reason for the downtime. With Plantnode alerts can be sent via email or SMS so if a particular event requires an engineer the scan will prompt a rapid response.

Having been an IT Director for a major packaging company the stand out thing about Plantnode that I really appreciate is the ease of implantation for the IT department. I well recall the multitude of demands coming from the business regarding ‘systems’ required that were often ill thought out or simply resource hungry. I was often in the position whereby I was defending the fact that we didn’t have the people available to give support to ‘business initiatives’ whilst also coming under attack for not cutting my costs. If ever there was a rock and a hard place this is it. Anyway, a Plantnode implementation for the IT department consists of providing an Ethernet connection (so it’s on your network and the interface can be presented through a web browser) and a VPN connection (to allow remote support). This is as light as it gets and you, as an IT ‘bod’, get the credit for helping the business!

I have the pleasure of demonstrating Plantnode to prospective users and when I was contemplating how best to do this in the early days I thought it would be good to give a ‘live’ demonstration on a real piece of ‘machinery’. I spent some time thinking about the best way to do this and eventually came up with the idea of a marble run. This works a treat in that I take a small marble run into the demonstration, connect it to Plantnode, and then start and stop the machine, record the downtime reasons and show in real-time the benefit of automated data collection. Mind you, it took a few days before I alighted on the idea of a marble run. There were a couple of false starts – a handheld fan for instance (too boring) a Lego Mindstorm machine (too noisy). Looking for inspiration I typed ‘adult’ and ‘toys’ into my favourite search engine and was about to press enter when my subconscious interrupted and saved me from huge embarrassment by suggesting the marble run.

At the end of September we are going to be demonstrating Plantnode at the PPMA show at the NEC in the UK. I’ve gone one further than my marble run and commissioned a work of art – it’s a rolling ball sculpture that will, I think, show off Plantnode at its best whilst also being a great deal of fun. There is a video of the rolling ball sculpture on Youtube – take a look.

If you are coming to the NEC in Birmingham for the show then come and see it live – and introduce yourself – I’d be delighted to meet you.