The Data Heads

Last week I had a few minutes to sit down with Chris Bowman, one of our senior implementation specialists, to talk about a project that he had just completed for a foods company in upstate New York. I was really impressed with the story he told me.

If you’ve ever wondered what you can do to help your staff remember when it is time to collect data, you’ll want to keep reading.

This question about making sure that people collect data seems to be a hot topic. And it makes sense because there are two opposing forces at work. First you need data from your staff. You can’t make decisions based on data if your people don’t collect the data. But working against you (and them) is the fact that everyone is already busy. Even well-intentioned people will often only oil the squeaky wheel.

(Of course if you need data, and everyone is too busy, the best solution might be to automate the whole process. But for a variety of reasons automation may not be possible or desirable. We’re talking here about those situations.)

Chris’s solution makes sure that your data wheel squeaks. His solution is very slick and may set the new standard for how customers ensure data are collected in a timely manner.

A little background…

This customer has several checks they want to take periodically, many at different intervals. They want make that as easy as possible.  As Chris put it, “The customer is trying to make it easy to enter multiple sets of data  without having to exit this planned session and launch that planned session, or exit this planned session and launch that planned session.”

And it gets even more interesting. “They’re going to enter the same data over and over again,” Chris said. “But periodically they need to change traceability values, change products and what not, I don’t want to ask them every single time.

At the core of the solution is what Chris calls the “Control Center.” Here is a picture of it:

So what is going on here?

The most important thing is in the left hand window, the one with the green and red blocks. A red block means that a check is overdue. This window is automatically refreshed every few minutes. A green block means that check isn’t due yet. In this example, the Weight, Process and Line checks are all overdue.

Once one of the checks goes red, all the user has to do is click on the Next Action button (in the upper right corner) and select that check from a list. The Control Center launches the check, passing along all the traceability information along.

Of course one of the Next Actions the user can select is to change traceability, or to select a new product.

This customer also wanted to display live control charts for the two most important checks at the same time. They could display any GainSeeker chart or dashboard they wanted, and of course they could display any number of charts on the screen too.

What do you think? Would your organization benefit from the Control Center idea? Would you like more technical information? Use the ShareThis button below to mark this page, leave a comment, tweet me, schedule a conversation, or call 800-958-2709.

Over the last few days we’ve posted information about an upcoming User Conference on our Events page and our Press Release pages.  Because this is a joint Hertzler User Group and Minitab User Group, I wondered briefly if we should call it a MUG HUG.  Too cheesy. (Detailed information and Registration here.)

Here is some more background.

I’m really looking forward to the conference for several reasons.

First, I’m pleased that two old friends will be giving presentations. Wayne Tollefsen (Omron Automotive) and Jamie Dobravec (Grayhill Inc.) have both been customers for years, and they always have interesting, real-world perspectives. I always learn something when I talk to them. This is the first time (I think) that I’ve heard either of them give formal talks.  They’re definitely worth hearing.

Second, I’m looking forward to sharing something about the learning path that I’ve been on in the last eight or ten months on Appreciative Inquiry. Appreciative Inquiry (Ai) is an exciting organizational change model that is based on the idea that organizations move in the direction of the questions that they ask. It is rich in philosophy and research, and has a well-developed methodology for application. In addition to describing my personal journey in Ai, I’m eager to explore the possibilities of learning together about the best practices for aligning strategy, culture, and tools to achieve optimal results.

Third, we spent the last year hard at work on the GainSeeker Suite Version 8.  We released Version 8 a couple months ago, and my business partner and Hertzler’s Alpha Geek, Byron Shetler, is going to share his perspectives on the new release.  If you’ve heard Byron speak before, you know you’re in for a treat. His insights and ability to bridge technology and the way people work are unique, and for a guy who claims to be uncomfortable up in front of an audience, he is a great communicator.

Finally, I’m looking forward to learning more about what our customers want from the integration between GainSeeker and Minitab. We formed a loose alliance with Minitab over 10 years ago because we didn’t want to get into the advanced statistics side of things, and Minitab is the most important app in that arena. We see the combination of GainSeeker and Minitab as far “more than the sum of parts.” Jay Bronec, whose company, QualiFine, is hosting this users conference, has been a strong voice for that synergy. Here is how Jay describes it:

“Back in 2000 I sponsored a conference highlighting the integration of GainSeeker Real-Time SPC with Minitab.  At the time it was clear to me that integrating these two systems increased the value of both tremendously.  A decade later this innovative approach still ranks at the top of my list of best-kept secrets to thriving in manufacturing. To get full value out of Minitab, a manufacturer needs to implement a real-time data automation solution like GainSeeker. I tell my customers to think of it like this, ‘If your best talent is too busy collecting, scrubbing and creating pivot tables to extract basic reports from Minitab, there’s little to no time left for making sense of the data. You’re reacting, not leading. In the current business environment, real-time data are essential for success.’”

Putting Jay, customers of both Minitab and GainSeeker, as well as people from Minitab and Hertzler Systems in the same room on the same day is a great opportunity to learn. I can’t predict what will come out of it, but it will be good.

Those are my top reasons for attending. What about you? Are you coming? What do you hope to gain? Use the ShareThis button below to mark this page, leave a comment, tweet me, schedule a conversation, or call 800-958-2709.

Yesterday my colleague Chris called me. “I just had a really interesting call from Bob,” he said. (Bob isn’t his real name. “Bob” is a customer who doesn’t want me to divulge his or his company’s name.) Bob’s company makes  packages filled with something that you can find in most grocery stores. They make a lot of these packages.

In one of my last conversations with Bob he told me “I’m almost embarrassed to tell you how much money GainSeeker is saving us by helping us reduce over pack (give away). The ROI on our deployment is shocking.”

We love it when we hear these stories – even if Bob won’t let me do a full-blown write up with all the gory details.

But Bob’s call to Chris raised an interesting question. Chris told me that Bob said he now believes they’ve been under-reporting the payback on his GainSeeker deployment. After six months or eight months of reducing over pack, Bob is discovering that his plant has made significant increases in yield.

He had been counting the savings realized by not giving away the product, but he wasn’t thinking about where the product he had been giving away was going.

It seems to me that the answer to this question hinges on whether the major constraint to his system is plant capacity, or demand for the product. If demand for the product is unlimited (we could sell every package we make) then any reduction in over pack goes into new packages and brand new sales. That is like picking up free money off the floor.

On the other hand, if the constraint on the system is capacity for production, then any reduction in over pack reduces the total cost of filling the package. If you have an order for 1000 packages and you can produce them in 7 hours instead of 8 hours, then you save one hour’s cost (energy, labor, etc.) and use less materials.

This reminds me of a chapter out of Goldratt’s The Goal. Do you remember when Jonah walks through the plant with the hero Alex and his team and discusses bottlenecks? They get to the heat treat area and the consensus among the team is that the parts waiting in the queue (WIP) are worth only a few thousand dollars. Jonah helps them realize that in reality those parts represent over a million dollars of revenue stuck in WIP. (p155-156)

I think Bob’s controller will have to weigh in on the final answer. What is clear to me is that Bob was delighted with GainSeeker Suite’s power to collect and analyze data so he could reduce material  costs and increase yields.

After I wrote most of this I had a chance to talk directly with Bob, and I learned a little more. He produces to order, not to stock, so improving yield does not lead directly to new sales. Improving yield means that he can produce the same output at lower costs. If the cost of over pack already includes all his overhead costs (energy, labor, materials) then I think it would be double-dipping to count increased sales. However, at some point it does seem that increased capacity would result in increased sales. He told me that last year he had the place open half the Saturdays of the year to meet demand. Now they’ve eliminated overtime and increased volume. Can he get his accounting people to recognize this? We’ll see.

What do you think? How are you tracking the ROI on your data efforts? How might GainSeeker help you? Use the ShareThis button below to mark this page, leave a comment, tweet me, schedule a conversation, or call 800-958-2709.

If you haven’t been following it, the discussion about the data shuffle has been continuing over at LInkedIn.

Laura Wright posted a comment yesterday:

Is there SOME value to the ‘data shuffle’? E.g., deep knowledge that can help the green or black belt discern nuances to their process analysis that otherwise wouldn’t be had…and so a better solution comes to light? Don’t get me wrong – I do believe data shuffle is wasteful…but some fruit can be gleaned from the exercise.

I think this is a great question, and I agree with her comment. But I also wanted to push the topic out a little further.

I was still trying to formulate a response when Terri Jostes weighed back in with a comment that said what I wanted to say far better than I could have:

I agree with Laura in that there is no substitute for an intimate knowledge of your data. Understanding where it came from, what it means and the process used to acquire the data is absolutely critical. But after that’s been figured out, a mechanism for streaming process data to managers and process improvement experts has to be put in place to free your belts from the ongoing task of “cleaning up” the data or linking files from multiple databases so it can be used.

In the interest of full disclosure I need to point out that Terri is a former user of the GainSeeker Suite. She comes to this after having lived with the data shuffle and found a different way of life. Actually some years ago I wrote up a case study about the experience of an unnamed Master Black Belt (who I just ‘outed’) at a financial services firm. Here is a link to read the case study, Building a Six Sigma Measurement System in Financial Services. At the end of the case study is a section on Lessons Learned, and the first lesson addressed this very point. Here is an excerpt:

Upstream manual data collection – According to the MBB who led the cycle-time-reduction initiative, the initial effort of capturing data manually first paid huge dividends as the deployment progressed. By engaging in manual data collection, the MBB was able to gain valuable insight into the nuances of the various operational definitions used by the process owners, and in the way the information system supported or did not support those definitions.

While an automated system has proved invaluable for collecting and analyzing massive amounts of transactional data, it is essential to develop an intimate, hands-on relationship with data in order to understand the system that produced it. This principle applies to any initiative or project that is focused on deriving long-term, leveraged benefit from an automated measurement system.

This lesson was reinforced later when the MBB implemented a similar measurement system in another part of the business. In this second application, she believed she knew enough about the system to go straight to automated data collection, but she discovered that there was no shortcut to forming a thorough understanding of the data by collecting it manually first. The second application took far longer to deploy, with many more false starts before realizing success.

Does this sound familiar to you? Use the ShareThis button below to mark this page, or leave a comment, tweet me, schedule a conversation, or call 800-958-2709.

Here is a chance to participate in Hertzler Systems’ development effort.

Sometime in the next few months we’ll be releasing Version 8 of the GainSeeker® Suite. One important capability in this new version is a brand new report writer. I saw a sneak preview of it the other day, and my jaw dropped open several times when I saw what it could do.

Sample Design Screen for GainSeeker Version 8 Report Writer

Our development team is looking for sample reports to test the new report writer with “real data”.

We invite you to submit any sample reports that you have. These might be Certificate of Analysis or other report that you use on a regular basis. You can send in your report whether you’re already a GainSeeker user or not.

Sample Report for GainSeeker Version 8 Report Writer

To submit your sample, send it electronically to [suggest at hertzler dot com], or fax it to 574-533-3885. In either case, make sure you include your contact information so we can respond to you personally.