I mentioned in yesterday’s post announcing the release of GainSeeker Suite Version 8 that I have been working on a case study about the new report writer.

You can read the case study and download a PDF version to share with others.

A little bit of the back story:

This project came about during a training class we held for Valeo (the subject of the case study) early in the new year. During the class, Stacey (who is quoted extensively in the case study) made the comment “You’ll never find a kid who wants to grow up to be a data jockey.”  What a great comment.

Mel (the guy from our staff doing the training) was intrigued and scratched away at it. What did he mean by data jockey? Why had he become a data jockey? Who cared about the results of his data jockey work? What difference would it make if we could eliminate the data jockey work? What would it take to eliminate the work?

At the time, Version 8 hadn’t been released, and Mel had had only minimal exposure to the power of the new Dynamic Reports module. He came back and started asking his colleagues “So this is what they really want. Could Dynamic Reports handle it?” Dale, one of our senior developers whom I sometimes call Obi-Wan Kenobi, put together a prototype and we were off to the races.

In manufacturing circles it not at all uncommon to talk about “The hidden factory.” The hidden factory is rework. Another case study about our customer Titleist includes this analogy from the rubber and plastics industry:

Another benefit of reduced scrap is that equipment is freed to do productive work. A shop with a 5 percent scrap rate and 20 molding machines has one machine dedicated to making scrap. Using real-time production data to eliminate scrap is the equivalent of buying a new machine.

Working as a Data Jockey is a hidden factory in our offices. Like a machine producing scrap, it is not value added. Eliminating the data shuffle – freeing the data jockey – pays huge benefits to your organization. The case study outlines some of them.

What about you? What is your experience as a Data Jockey? What have you done to eliminate this hidden factory in your office? Use the ShareThis button below to mark this page, leave a comment, tweet me, schedule a conversation, or call 800-958-2709.