What if your production meetings were productive?

 Daily throughout the world meetings are held quite often for the sake of meeting and nothing else. Agendas are often distributed ahead of time but few people prepare and even less participate, meaningfully during these sessions. Inevitably minutes are kept, actions are allocated but few are followed up and seldom are people held accountable.

With major changes in business especially around accountability e.g. King III, allocation of performance based indicators in all industries and departments from production to HR it is impossible for meetings to have all the required information to be meaningful and productive. A simple example would be the morning production meeting in a plant environment which covers production for the past 24 hours or week. An agenda should have been sent out before the time covering the following:-

 • Welcome

 • Outstanding issues from previous meeting

 • Production output

• Production logs

• Outstanding permits to work

 • Incidents

 • HR : attendance registers/leave/shifts etc

 • Close

Many of these would be printed in hard copy and taken into the meeting. Once circulated any changes would require a new copy and little input back from invitees can be included and re-distributed. On commencement of the meeting outstanding issues from previous meetings are discussed and steps taken usually all performed manually, production outputs are presented in a hardcopy form from whatever process control system that is available. Separate output KPI’s are then checked to see if and why there were variations and what the root cause of these was. Production logs are then examined to shed light on these variations usually from a log book with suspect hand writing and accuracy. Should there have been a negative variance and something similar had happened in the past which was resolved where would this information be? This would usually be an action for the plant manager or operator to follow up on. However if this information was online and available to the meeting a fix could immediately be implemented.

Being able to access all the different systems that support various parts of the organisation is virtually impossible and hard copies are made and distributed to all, or is it?

With modern technology, why can’t all the information from these system be readily available during the meeting?

This would ensure that all information is current and available, ensuring decisions can be taken using the correct information, as well as allocating various actions to individuals or teams with reminders being sent electronically which serves as a reminder after the meeting. The multitude of different systems e.g. permit to work, incident reporting, production etc. complicates running meetings effectively. Seldom if ever are outstanding issues prioritised and followed up. With an electronic meeting system these can be represented in the form of a dash board highlighting critical areas while none critical can be lower down the agenda. An incident raised on a particular system is often seen in isolation while the need for understanding the total process is critical for the organisation. E.g. an incident reported in the SHEQ department should have an impact on risk assessments, permits, process management etc. and this can be managed effectively using the electronic meeting system with the status of the progress shown within all these areas. 

 Much is discussed but little achieved, not because of lack of ability but due to information being resident in disparate systems and not available when required. Due to this shortfall, numerous issues cannot be resolved during the meetings and much is added onto the “to do” list or held over until the next meeting. This results in the next meeting spending time on unresolved issues from previous meetings and the cycle continues with little improvement.

In complex environments the need for an electronic meeting system cannot be underestimated in ensuring that production managers are in total control of the operations.

Delays in feedback on production and other related areas can no longer be tolerated as this affects the net worth of any organisation that is output driven and who strives for high levels of safety and staff satisfaction. Meetings need to be productive with priority issues dealt with first ensuring that the levels of production remain high and resources utilised effectively.

Another important aspect is that this concept is not limited to mining and production but can be extended to all industries who have complex environments and require meetings to manage daily operations eg. Hospitals, financial institutions, parastatals etc.

In short management are accountable and need to be effective in managing all the diverse areas of the organisation and should consider an electronic meeting system to help them meet this requirement by being productive .

Is the implementation hurdle too high to jump?

 

Many technology projects fail to succeed because companies are unable to muster the resources to execute a successful implementation. This implementation effort often creates a major hurdle in the minds of decision makers. The perception that IT projects are difficult and prone to failure is a real concern when considering whether to approve a project. Statistics from research are frequently quoted that show a dismal failure rate of IT projects. Interestingly, much of this research was done in the late 1990’s and early 2000 when complex ERP implementations dominated IT projects. An example of such research is the Standish Groups finding in 1995 that about 31% of IT projects are cancelled before they are completed, and that only 16% of IT projects are completed on time and in budget. Unfortunately this risk weighs heavily with decision makers who are asked to approve capital on new projects, and accounts for the intense scrutiny of the solutions and vendors during the product selection phase. Ultimately projects that could add value to an organisation get rejected for the wrong reasons.

Most companies approach the risk of IT project failure through formal project management during the design, build and deploy phases of an implementation. An increasing number of companies are also including formal change management into the project – after all even though the project is based on technology, people have to work with the system.

Software vendors have approached the implementation challenge by simplifying the configuration process and using a template based approach. Templates allow best practice business processes to be pre-configured by the vendor (“out of the box”), leaving a relatively small customisation effort to the project. However this approach alone can also be flawed if change management is not taken into consideration – users will still have to adapt to the system no matter how efficiently the configuration process is managed. And best practice processes may not resemble what users are used to leading to rejection of the system – so this template approach also has its risks.

Change management is one of those “soft issues” that excite industrial psychologists yet perplex engineers and technologists. The discipline is based on an understanding of human motivation and psychology. Several change management models exist, for example the McKinsey’s 7-S model, Lewins change management model and Kotters 8 step change model. Each model has slightly different emphasis but they are all based on an approach to most efficiently motivate people to make a transition to a new state.

The success rate of implementation projects can be dramatically improved by incorporating formal change management into the project scope. Kotters model for example requires a sense of urgency (for the change) as the first step. Unfortunately, in some projects, for example implementation of safety and health systems, the sense of urgency is sometimes precipitated by a serious accident. This is the sad reality of human nature, akin to fitting burglar guards after your first break-in. The remaining steps proposed by Kotter include building a team for the change, constructing the vision of the end state, communication, empowerment, creating short term goals, being persistent and finally ensuring the change is permanent and the solution is sustainable.

By fusing change and project management into the implementation project, companies reduce the risk of failure. Projects will be completed on time and budget, and more importantly the end users will be more accepting of the system and the system will be sustainable. Unfortunately this does take effort and there are no short cuts. The software vendors will make their implementations simple through templates and proven methodologies. The client company is responsible to ensure that change management is done well. Ultimately, when this approach is followed the outputs are predictable and the risks are easily managed.

In summary, when you are considering a technology based solution and feel that the hurdle of a successful implementation is too high ask for the vendors implementation methodology and experiences, ensure good project management is in place and above all don’t neglect change management because it is people at the end of the day who will make the system succeed or fail.

MES and the Cloud

Significant discontinuities occur in technology every 5 – 10 years. The development of the personal computer, client server computing and the Internet have each had a profound impact . Each development has been accompanied by significant excitement and “hype” in the industry, which can unfortunately clutters the message relating to the underlying value and as a result creates some scepticism when a new concept is mooted, and then hyped out of proportion.

Yet, when the largest technology companies in the world demonstrate a universal acceptance of a new concept then we should sit up and take notice, because this is probably beyond mere hype. And so it is with Cloud Computing.

Rather than simply jumping on the hype bandwagon, I would like to take a few moments and address a specific aspect of cloud that should concern manufacturing companies. The question is what role cloud computing will play in the evolution of manufacturing execution systems (MES). Should CIO’s in manufacturing be doing something now, to prepare for the shift that will come? What about manufacturing systems managers, process control engineers, traditional system integrators and others?

On the one side cloud computing is already practical at the business application level . For example several examples of successful and mature hosted CRM solutions have existed for several years that demonstrate the viability of consuming business critical services from the cloud. Examples of ERP systems in the cloud also exist, and the number is growing. Right now the major application vendors are not idly waiting for someone else to develop the software services market. They are all actively building cloud based application infrastructures, exploring relationships with telecommunication and other hosting providers, and promoting SAAS based software architectures that allow on-premise or hosted applications. These architectures are based on web services, a common security model and a standard for information transfer between these environments.

So lets briefly explore specific manufacturing systems: SCM (supply chain management), MES (manufacturing execution systems) and process control . Where could these fit “in the cloud”? The answer is of course that conceptually, all of these (except direct process control) can be hosted and provided by third parties though “the cloud”. The main issue with near real time process control of course relates inter-alia to the long latency of connections to hosted servers, introducing safety and other engineering considerations that make it impractical to host anywhere but on-premise. However it would be a mistake to argue that because process control does not fit into the cloud neatly, the same applies to the rest of MES. In fact, process control systems that are architected with cloud in mind will work better with cloud based MES level applications in future. And consider the example where NASA can fully control a complex orbiting space station remotely.    Complex remote process control is possible, just not economically viable perhaps.

MES include such applications such as laboratory management (LIMS), operations performance management, business process automation (such as safety incident reporting, maintenance work orders and permit to work), and others. None of these are significantly constrained by the inherent latency in cloud based connectivity. In fact, service providers that can simplify standard “commodity” business processes such as work order processing (plant maintenance), or “sample analysis and reporting” (laboratory systems); and make these applications available to customers who are happy to consume these as required through the cloud; stand to capture significant market share over the next few years.

For manufacturing companies, cloud based MES solutions allow standardisation of manufacturing sub-processes across multiple plants in many countries, a concept that will be attractive to the global giants who acquire manufacturing assets around the world and seek to leverage best practices internally within their entire organisation.

So how should manufacturing CIO’s and systems managers react? My recommendation is to do what all engineers do when confronted with a fundamental shift in technology. Get informed, quickly. Study cloud computing now because it will impact on the way you will select, deploy and integrate software applications in future. In studying the subject, get your hands dirty and experiment with the new virtualisation technologies available. Look at the underlying architectures in Microsoft’s Azure to see how windows environments will be impacted. Consider identity and security models and how these will become even more complex when critical data in future is hosted outside your firewall and direct control. Consider how Look at the service providers, are they going to be able to provide you with a reliable hosted service. Consider governance, how will you meet legislation and other requirements around your information? Look at your software vendors, which of them have a clear strategy to move selected applications into a hosted model, and how will they work with the infrastructure companies going forward.

The technology world is about to make a fundamental shift (again). Manufacturing companies will not be immune to this new wave. As the saying goes, there is no smoke without fire; there is no hype without an underlying driver – be informed and be prepared for the next generation of MES. Dare I also jump on the bandwagon and call this MES 2.0?