Better Resource Utilization - Using Business Applications?

In an earlier post, I had outlined an idea to improve the usability of enterprise systems by creating a unified task dashboard. By having one dashboard for all activities, which could span multiple applications, users/resources can get a holistic view.

In this post, I want to extend this idea and would like to propose to the software companies/product manager’s work on expanding the capabilities of their tasks/work flows and start looking into unified resource utilization!

The first step would be to capture business process execution with accurate tasks within workflows. The second step would be to accurately estimate the time required to perform the tasks.

If and when we can track all tasks across all applications, we should be able to generate data, reports and metrics on resource utilization and be able to estimate current and future work loads accurately and be able to assign the right resources to the right problem and thus improve effectiveness and efficiency of the organization.

"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"

Data Migration: A summary of my posts!

Over the last 3+ months, I have outlined my thoughts on data migration. In order to be successful with large scale implementations of business systems like (ERP, PLM, CRM, BPM etc.), data migration is a key element.

Data migration is often ignored and not enough attention is paid to this portion of the overall project.

The methodology I have outlined in these posts can be applied to a number of projects including data consolidation, server consolidation, migration from one application to another and the list goes on.

The key is to pay attention to the business needs and to make them successful by taking care of the technology and project management issues!

Good Luck.


1. Data Migration: Challenges & Joy!
http://improveprocess.blogspot.com/2009/07/data-migration-challenges-joy.html

2. Data Migration: Challenges & Joy!
http://improveprocess.blogspot.com/2009/07/data-migration-challenges-joy-part-2.html

3. Rules For Successful Data Migration
http://improveprocess.blogspot.com/2009/07/rules-for-successful-data-migration.html

4. Phases of Data migration
http://improveprocess.blogspot.com/2009/07/phases-of-data-migration.html

5. Phases of Data migration
http://improveprocess.blogspot.com/2009/07/phases-of-data-migration.html

6. Phases of Data migration: Analysis
http://improveprocess.blogspot.com/2009/07/phases-of-data-migration-analysis.html

7. Phases of Data migration: Design
http://improveprocess.blogspot.com/2009/07/phases-of-data-migration-design.html

8. Phases of Data migration: Test
http://improveprocess.blogspot.com/2009/08/phases-of-data-migration-test.html

9. Phases of Data migration: Validation
http://improveprocess.blogspot.com/2009/09/phases-of-data-migration-validation.html

10. Data migration: Risks
http://improveprocess.blogspot.com/2009/09/data-migration-risks.html

11. Tips for Successful Data Migration.
http://improveprocess.blogspot.com/2009/10/tips-for-successful-dat-migration.html

"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"

Intelligent part numbers! Why and Why Not, Can PLM / ERP systems help?

All companies that make and sell products have to make this decision very early on. Some companies might not have the maturity or business processes in place when this decision needs to be made. Changes to policies done at a later time could result in additional complications so most companies chose to remain on their current policy and process.

Intelligent part numbers are used to clearly identify the type of part, its commodity or sometimes even the location of use in the overall product. Typically companies develop a matrix mapping commodity to specific sequences of part numbers. For example 12-???? Could represent sheet metal, 13-??? could represent PCBs and so on.

Unintelligent part numbers on the other hand are based on ERP/PLM system’s ability to automatically generate the next higher number.

Companies that develop intelligent part numbers can clearly distinguish between top level products and lower level assemblies easily, in addition be able to develop logic to drive procurement, review and approval cycles based on part number sequences.

Developing part number sequences can be costly, they require manual setup, customization of applications (ERP, PLM etc.) and require due diligence on the part of engineers to follow a defined process. Depending upon the rules, the business groups must pay attention to number of possible parts for a given commodity (by projecting in to the future) and also plan on adding new commodities as the need arises. Typically this could require an additional head count to manage the process and tools. In my experience, a lot of engineers would rather focus on innovation and turn out their designs and go quickly from concept to prototype to production release and not be bogged down by having to pull a new number and update their documentation and slow things down.

Unintelligent part numbers provide engineers with the ability to conceptualize their design and generate new numbers easily with minimal data in the beginning and quickly release their designs and then provide additional data. Often engineers might not know what the right commodity / material needs to be when they are working on a concept. This lack of knowledge typically results in non value added work in recreating parts with the right material and commodity if they had made a mistake. Unintelligent part numbers do have a drawback which is that it doesn’t provide any information on the part type or any other data.

As ERP & PLM systems have matured, most have introduced a classification scheme / module with which parts can be classified. Typically classification systems capture information like whether the part is OEM or not, commodity, material, assembly or not, compliant or not (for RoHS, WEE, Reach etc.), Critical part or not, in addition the description can be broken down to clearly identify the parts. For e.g., socket head cap screw could be classified into a class of screws with a sub group of socket head or not and so on.

So if we can get so granular and capture all the information we need, we could use the classification system to drive activities like procurement based on commodity, ABC coding by commodity / part class and conditional workflows for ECO cycles based on part type and whether a full review is required or not. In addition, there are other uses like knowledge management and capturing the right questions when quality issues occur based on type of part/product.

New part creation could be streamlined by checking against classification schema and existing parts to see existing parts can be re-used. This re-use has a lot of benefits. I have seen/heard of benchmarks done by a number of companies where they have found that the cost of a part through its lifecycle (concept to obsolescence) is around $3000 to $5000.

Implementing a classification system is more complex than implementing intelligent part numbers. If you chose to do this mid stream, you will need to launch a data quality / clean up program to ensure data integrity and adherence to rules of classification and then launch this activity.

In summary, there is no easy answer for the debate on intelligent vs. unintelligent part numbers. Classification systems provide a lot of merit which outweigh the effort required clean up existing data and setup a new system.

"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"

Unified Task Dashboard! Utopia?

In an earlier post, I had listed a number of emerging or new TLA's (three letter acronyms) in the enterprise application space like ERP, PLM, PDM, CRM, SCM, SRM, BPM etc...As the usage of these of applications and technologies mature within different organizations, users will soon have a set of task dashboards which outline the tasks they have been assigned within each of these applications and when it is due.

this begs the question, if we can integrate applications and have strategies like data integration / master data integration why cant we integrate the applications and create a unified task dashboard?

Most of the integrated software vendors could provide this capability but companies which have chosen best of breed applications will struggle with this unless they learn to federate and build services which can kick off / complete tasks and seamlessly integrate the applications and provide their users with one interface.

This could impact user adoption and greatly increase speed to proficiency of users and is rarely considered during software selection, planning and implementation!

"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 PLM?

Product lifecycle management systems (PLM) were developed to help organizations control documentation, product structure and manage engineering change order (ECO, ECN, ECR etc.).

Product data management systems (PDM) have existed for a while prior to the development of PLM systems. The key differentiator between the two being lifecycle management in addition to data management. In most organizations, the engineering change process was

(1) Manual (process) with inefficiencies in handoffs between departments,
(2) Inability or lack of capability to capture financial impact
(3) Lack of awareness of extent/impact of changes and
(4) Unable to meet cycle time expectations.

As organizations continued to mature in their business processes (New product introduction, phase gate product introduction, product portfolio management, design for excellence [DFX, DFM], Excess and Obsolete inventory management, Effectivity dates) and business system usage (ERP, MRP, CRM), a need for a more comprehensive solution became compelling.

Research into product costs over its lifecycle has indicated that a focus on getting the design right earlier in the alpha/beta stages provides the maximum benefit. In order to get the design right so early can be tricky…effective business processes with right enabling technology will be the key to success to improve time to market and reduced costs across the lifecycle.

Three different sets of companies started developing PLM software
(1) traditionally CAD centric software companies, enhanced their PDM systems with additional capabilities
(2) ERP companies enhanced their core capabilities with enhanced workflow and document management features
(3) Pure PLM software vendors, which built their engines on basic needs of their customer base with extensive integrations to CAD (upstream data) and ERP/MRP/CRM systems.

There has been some amount of consolidation and over the years, PLM as a technology has matured and has added more and more features for e.g.
(1) Supplier collaboration
(2) Design / manufacturing outsourcing
(3) MES integration
(4) Digital rights management
(5) Collaboration
(6) Project management
(7) Regulatory and Environmental compliance tracking and management (RoHS, WEE, RoHS, FDA CFR etc.)
(8) Customer needs management
(9) Data Classification and Knowledge management
(10) Configuration management

And this list goes on…

In later posts, I will get in to details around each of these enhanced capabilities and future direction of PLM to support the enterprise.

"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"

Has CAD delivered on its promise?

CAD (computer aided design) was a major boost to engineering productivity in the early 1980s. The capability of having drawings in digital forms, ability to overlay layouts to ensure form, fit and function were key enablers. As the usage of these software programs matured, the demand on additional features increased as well.

This led to the development of 3 D modeling capability; 3-D modeling was a huge step forward as it allowed for creating parts and assemblies and ability to
(1) Parametric modeling
(2) Capture design intent
(3) Associativity
(4) Finite element analysis capability
(5) Enhanced cam capability
(6) 3d rendering
(7) Interference / clearance checking

Over the last 10-15 years, the capability and maturity gaps between high-end and low-end CAD packages have reduced significantly. There has been some level of consolidation in the CAD space and software vendors have started creating more software packages to manage data (PDM, PLM) etc.

In my opinion, very few companies have mastered the art of the product data management specifically CAD data, which has resulted in lower re-use of existing components and wasted time and resources on recreating product data. Why is that?

Despite the promise of computer aided manufacturing (CAM) combined with the powers of comprehensive 3D modeling, very few companies have transitioned over to drawing less systems by utilizing CAM capabilities. Why is that?

Why is adoption of ASME 14.41 lagging? This standard supports the creation of 3D drawings with annotations and tolerance symbols. My $0.02, this could save $$$ in time and resources spent on creating product documentation via drawings.

I have long been a proponent of a single platform for product development using a single CAD tool. But this is an uphill battle in most large companies as companies go through acquisitions or relinquish control over product data management resulting in different groups using different platforms! This forms a major challenge to seamless collaboration. There have been a few promising software packages which allow for digital mockups by creating assemblies from different CAD packages. The major challenge here is that the mockups and changes done are not passed back on to the original CAD package. How can we enable cross platform collaboration?


Seamless integration with PLM/ERP
As the usage of PDM and PLM applications is increasing, there is an increased focus on the need product structure creation and maintenance. I would like to see complete integration between CAD and these applications so that editing of product structure (BoM) and attributes is seamlessly transferred in a bi-directional manner.

There has been some effort in analyzing part geometries to quickly identify if similar designs exist and promote re-use. This capability needs to be enhanced and promoted through out the user community.

In summary, we have come a long way but we can do more to improve how use the tools! We must innovate to try and identify more opportunities!

More postings on this topic to come...

"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"