IT or BT? The debate is on!

We have heard of IT, MIS and IS as acronyms to define the information management wing of every company, I just came across a debate to rename this to BT (Business Technology).

This is very interesting, at the core, IT or IS or even MIS describes the function they serve well. By renaming to BT the emphasis is clearly on engaging the business and ensuring that the business can succeed and has the tools to effectively leverage technology to improve efficiency, effectiveness, productivity and bring about change! (or transformation if you prefer).

I am in favor of this rename and new acronym (though we have too many already!)

Here's a link to the posting from CIO.com, Happy Reading!

"Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here are my own only and in no way represent the views, positions or opinions - expressed or implied - of my employer (present and past) "
"Please post your comments - Swati Ranganathan"

Design for Manufacturability

According to Wikipedia, Design for manufacturability (DFM) is the general engineering art of designing products in such a way that they are easy to manufacture.

The keywords to pay attention to are “art of designing products” and “easy to manufacture”. How many times have you bought a piece of furniture or toys for your kids and been stuck in the middle of the instructions because it wasn’t intuitive or if you were questioning the use of some material. For example recently I had to assemble safety gates to prevent my toddler from going up or down the stairs and I was puzzled by the use of plastic to fasten the gates to the walls.

In my mind IKEA has mastered the art of design for manufacturability. Some of the key features of their products that I like are
(1) simple design with minimal parts
(2) common parts and materials
(3) design for ease of assembly
(4) modular design with sub-assemblies
(5) mistake proof instructions (poke yoke)
(6) tools /kits necessary are clearly identified if not provided within the package


Companies embark on this process improvement methodology to
(1) reduce costs
(2) standardize manufacturing process
(3) reduce churn in design through ECO cycles which could be expensive if done later in the product life cycle
(4) get better control over product configuration and architecture
(5) eliminate/control risks related to reliability, manufacturability, feasibility, quality and liability

Some of the other benefits include
(1) get it right the first time
(2) lower production cost
(3) higher quality
(4) quicker time to market
(5) increased potential for automation
(6) increased re-use of components and fewer parts to manage via MRP/procurement cycles
(7) fewer ECO cycles

How do we go about design for manufacturability?
(1) Get your requirements clearly defined using MRD process
(2) Start to simplify designs and embark on optimizing product configuration and architecture
(3) Develop strategy for options / replacements per customer request
(4) Minimize number of parts and re-use components whenever feasible
(5) Reduce the number of specials manufacturing instructions (tolerance, surface finishes)
(6) Use the right materials to get the job done
(7) Increase collaboration between engineering/product development teams and the manufacturing teams
(8) Review design often and use a cross functional audience to explore options to reduce costs, increase re-use, reduce development time
(9) Use lessons learned from the past on failures and shortcomings of similar designs and avoid making the same mistakes

"Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here are my own only and in no way represent the views, positions or opinions - expressed or implied - of my employer (present and past) "
"Please post your comments - Swati Ranganathan"

What is operational excellence?

As usual I will start by quoting the definition from Wikipedia, “Operational Excellence is a philosophy of leadership, teamwork and problem solving resulting in continuous improvement throughout the organization by focusing on the needs of the customer, empowering employees, and optimizing existing activities in the process.”

If you read through the definition, you can clearly identify the key tenets: leadership, continuous improvement, focus on customer, and optimizing current processes. Simply put, operational excellence is executing in an efficient and effective manner across the value chain with a focus on delivering value to customers.

The Operational Excellence program provides a framework to understand why and how performance needs to improve. The road to achieving operational excellence is by identifying value chain business processes, identifying strengths/weaknesses of them (based on key measurements and benchmarks) and redesigning these processes to align with corporate / strategic goals and ensure that organizations, resources and assets are utilized in the best possible manner.

When you pore through the reference material on operational excellence, you will see terms/phrases like “on par with industry”, “best in class”, “world class”. There are differences in all these phrases, if you choose to embark on operational excellence, focus first to meet/exceed your competition’s performance and then become the best of your peers and then become the best among organizations outside of your industry and region.

Each and every industry and organization/business unit within each company can create and run their operational excellence program. In most cases, value chain processes span across multiple organizations, so the focus should be on process execution (related to handoffs) and ensure the best use of assets and resources across the enterprise. Automation and business process re-engineering have great potential so does streamlining / integrating data and business system like ERP, CRM etc.

"Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here are my own only and in no way represent the views, positions or opinions - expressed or implied - of my employer (present and past) "
"Please post your comments - Swati Ranganathan"