Why Do We Still Use Spreadsheets?

Sometimes I find some unfinished article while cleaning up – something I should obviously do more regularly! So here is one of these excerpts that I found particularly relevant as I am discussing the topic of “Manufacturing Intelligence” with a number of companies.

Manufacturing systems software vendors continuously tell us that you cannot have visibility into your operations without a software application, which I have to agree is generally true. This forces us to sift through the onslaught of offerings full of buzz words such as “metrics”, “digital dashboards”, and “business intelligence platforms”. Yet, it is remarkable that one of the most commonly used tools to capture and manage information from the shop floor is The Spreadsheet - typically Microsoft’s Excel. In some cases, even with a major ERP system investment, the Spreadsheet is still the primary source of timely data collection about the manufacturing operations. In other cases, expensive solutions are put in place to capture and collect data from automation equipment but fail to provide the information in a useable context and once again users resort to the spreadsheet.

Why is it then that manufacturing organizations resort to solutions that are based on a spreadsheet? It is typically not because of lack of understanding about information systems or the skills required to use them. It is because a spreadsheet provides the flexibility and ability to manage and present shop floor information in the most useable and advantageous manner. (By the way the common term for “manage and use” is “information consumption”.) Remember that a manufacturing manager’s main focus is productivity and quality. They use this information to obtain metrics about the value stream that they are trying to manage because they need to know how they are performing in real time. This need is similar to that of a sport’s team, where you know where you stand at every second of the game. You don’t have to wait until tomorrow morning’s newspaper to know who won the game. Running a manufacturing operation without real time metrics is like bowling without being able to see the pins. You can see some of the action, you know that something happened, but you don’t know what the result was.

Of course in recent years, manufacturers have gained some visibility with the increased application of technology, but they are still far from what is possible. I also believe that most of the vendors are clearly aware of the needs and I hope that they we will soon start to see Manufacturing Intelligence applications with the flexibility and convenience that we really need.

A Foundation For Quality (and performance...)

Next week is ISPE’s annual meeting in Texas and once again I am participating in an interesting session titled “Operational Excellence - A Foundation for Quality”. We held a similar session last year and it was a great success with more than 90 people participating. The topic that I am covering this year is about the current capabilities of automation technology andinformation systems that provide a vital ingredient in enabling operational excellence. I will be joined by speakers from Pfizer, Celgene, Amway and of course NNE Pharmaplan.

My co-presenters will share experiences about OperationalExcellence, Quality by Design (QbD), and Process Understanding. All-in-all an interesting combination of topics that may initially seem loosely related but they are in fact deeply related. They stem from the some old notion that manufacturing performance is a holistic concept. I have mentioned in a previous post that we are “re-inventing the CIM wheel” but at the same time we are also looking at it in a new perspective with much more modern and usable technologies.  I strongly believe that before we venture with new ideas we have to look and learn from the past, it is very likely that somebody has had a similar problem and may even have a solution. So CIM, PAT, QbD, DFM it really is all related, related to trying to excel at we do and work more synergistically to accomplish our manufacturing goals. 

Metrics & Performance Management - Again

Not that again! Well it still is a very interesting topic an one that I encounter every time I talk to companies in the life science industries. It seems that there is an increased understanding across all walks of life in the manufacturing organizations that one of the main advantages of system is the ability to gain a better understanding of both process and operations. I hear people asking for metrics, and in the context of gauging their performance. I spend a lot of time trying to understand this trend, and I have no conclusion yet. It may be the economic climate, maturaity of the technology, or maybe the momuntum that operational excellence intiatives have gained?

The membership of the ogranziations that I work with such as MESA and ISPE have also shown great interest in this topic and I am participating in a few events that highlight them. On October 27th we have a MESA webcast about "Harnessing the Power of Metrics" and on November 7th we are organizing a special session at the ISPE annual meeting about "Operational Excellence - A Foundation for Quality". The session will be hosted by NNE Pharmaplan and will include speakers from Amway, Celgene and Pfizer. I hope to have some great discussions, feel free to track me down if you are in attendance.

A Picture of MBO Misuse

I was reading “Organizational Sabotage - The Malpractice of Management By Objective” on the Deming Files and I am once again I am dumbfounded by how it is continuously being practiced or misused. It is a topic that I have written about before on the L2L blog and here. Although I liked the article it seemed lacking some real world examples. Needless to say I have experienced these continuously over my career and sometimes when reading these types of articles I just feel like shouting the proverbial “Hello”!

Anyways since I prefer visual interpretation I thought about trying to come up with a simple graphic to convey Deming’s and Drucker’s real message about MBO. I also thought I would add some description in the form of pairs of antonyms to emphasize the visual. Here is what I came up with:

Short-term / Long-Term

Disarrayed / Aligned 

Untidy / Tidy 

Conflicting / Collaborative

Kind of simplistic and vague – I know, yet open to interpretation? The notion is that if you set a short term goal it drives a specific behavior that is not always what you want, and probably not if it is a business strategy. Drucker wrote that “Objectives are the fundamental strategy of a business. Objectives must be derived from what our business is, what it will be, and what it should be.” Clearly he meant long-term objectives? 

I was with my kids at the beach the other way and they were learning to use a stand up paddle board. The 18 year old instructor gave them a simple tip. Always look at the horizon when paddling it helps keep your balance, look down at your feet and you will fall.