Ever look out over a sea of the machines and equipment and confuse them with twinkling holiday lights? Suffice it to say that too many lights on does not mean Santa's coming to town. Today's world is a hyper-competitive manufacturing environment. Challenges related to maintenance,...
The next manufacturing revolution is here. An interesting Ted talk by Boston Consulting group discusses what lies ahead for manufacturing and Industry 4.0 https://www.ted.com/talks/olivier_scalabre_the_next_manufacturing_revolution_is_here A reminder on what exactly is the 4thIndustrial revolution? Well, lets start with the first three… The 1stindustrial revolution started in the 1800s with...
OEE Benchmarks What better way to start the new year than to lead off with a set of manufacturing performance benchmarks. Today's manufacturers place the highest level of importance on the quest for operational efficiencies. Many manufacturers face only capacity constraints - the more they make, the more...
Static to Real-Time KPIs Developing a strategy to migrate from static to real-time KPIs is a journey. We have developed a 5 step process to help companies with this endeavor. Identify your KPIs Take an inventory of KPIs across the business and catalog them. The suggestion is to...
Last year IBM came out with the statistic we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data daily. In the next few years this number will increase exponentially as companies continue to invest in the "Industrial Internet of Things" (IIoT). Such numbers demonstrate an incredible magnitude of information which can be...
The old business adage “you can’t manage what you don’t measure” has been echoed throughout the halls of organizations for years. Many business metrics programs use this adage as a rallying cry. Once an organization determines what to measure, the next step is how to...
Analytics and big data continue to be the rave to improve supply chain performance, though “if you don’t make proper use of data, it’s all but useless” as stated in a related May 2016 Tech.Co post. With supply chain data available from so many new...
When Bill Gates said that “content is king”, these words embraced the feeling over 20 years ago when the internet took shape. Now we can argue that “CONTEXT is king” as this 2014 WIRED article further shares. Photo sharing and messaging is all the rage...
During Stanford University’s June 2005 commencement speech, Steve Jobs shared “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.” Though Jobs went on to speak about character providing inspiration to the graduates, this quote can also relate to how we...
Several years ago a study by The Advanced Performance Institute entitled 20 Years of Measuring and Managing Business Performance revealed the fact that less than 20% of companies state everyone obtains regular insights (usually using Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs) which improve day-to-day decision making...
