These days, IT-based automation has become a staple in businesses that are looking to move forward and grow.

In one of our previous posts, we discussed how Commit100 helped Nuform Building Technologies Inc., a leader in wall forming systems, digitalize data collection for a particular production process. Our work with Nuform did not stop there – impressed with the result, Nuform decided to explore other opportunities of making IT-based improvements to business processes.

KEEPING A TIGHT SCHEDULE

The Business Need

The use of any resource in a production process must be managed. As production specialists know, that applies first and foremost to the bottleneck – the “weakest link” in a production system, which requires the longest time in operations of the supply chain.

The Nuform production process starts with extrusion of PVC panels through devices called “extrusion lines”. Each extrusion line requires significant time for power-up, shutdown, and setup operations between different types of extrusion jobs. Each extrusion job requires significant time (~24 hours) to produce and is scheduled for production up to 3 weeks or more in the future.

The old process of scheduling jobs on extrusion lines was:

• entirely manual – entered by hand in a spreadsheet;
• not easily accessible – the spreadsheet was stored in a remote file share;
• required complex knowledge of over 100 (!) different extrusion dies that are used for production to calculate production time;
• took the time of a single full time employee to enter, update and manage the schedule.

Nuform identified the following business need for improving the scheduling process:

• Automation: the new scheduling system should automate data entry as much as possible by integrating with existing databases and simplifying the entry and calculation process.
• Transparency: the system should provide cross-platform visibility of extrusion operations and schedule with minimal lag.
• Flexibility: the system should allow to easily manage situations where changes in the schedule are required to satisfy customer need.

Commit100 delivered a solution through the following steps:

1. A Commit100 IT business analyst spent time learning the current scheduling process, from A to Z, including shadow sessions with the Nuform associates who are involved in the process. This allowed to get a clear picture of what happens “in the field” – a clear understanding of the actual, existing business process.
2. Based on analysis, Commit100 defined an optimised business process and approved it with Nuform production managers.
3. The new business process was used by Commit100 to design the user interface and prepare specifications of the new application.
4. The application was developed by a software development team managed by Commit100.
5. After rigorous user acceptance testing, Commit100 integrated the scheduling application into the existing IT infrastructure and business processes at Nuform.

THE RESULT

The result was a web-based application called Extrusion Production Scheduling. The customer needed app accessibility from a wide range of platforms and locations, so a web-based solution was the clear choice. The application was deployed on a Windows server and integrated with the existing database.

User login screen for the Scheduling app:

The Scheduler Dashboard – the main interface used by the operator to monitor the current status of the schedule. Current Schedule and main menu.

The app is integrated with the Nuform ERP system. Every time a job is released for production, the scheduling operator receives an alert with buttons to quickly schedule the job or dismiss the alert.

When the operator goes to create a new job, they would see the Job Queue, which lists all jobs that have been released for production.

The app significantly simplified the data entry process and automated time and production buffer calculation, which the operator had to manually do before. The application formalised several different order types to quickly schedule orders based on priority.

The system allows to keep notes for every job:

Profile and admin consoles for application maintenance and adjusting view settings.

The web-based solution allows Nuform production staff to quickly and easily access the Scheduling system and monitor current events from any device and any location that has an internet connection.

Learn how TBM gives technology leaders and their business partners the facts they need to collaborate on business-aligned IT investment decisions.

Excerpted from Technology Business Management: The Four Value Conversations CIOs Must Have With Their Businesses, published by the Technology Business Management Council.

Technology Business Management (TBM) is a value-management framework instituted by CIOs, CTOs and other technology leaders. Founded on transparency of costs, consumption, and performance, TBM gives technology leaders and their business partners the facts they need to collaborate on business-aligned decisions. Those decisions span supply and demand to enable the financial and performance tradeoffs that are necessary to optimize run-the-business spending and accelerate business change. The framework is backed by a community of CIOs, CTOs and other business leaders on the Technology Business Management Council.

While TBM applies common business management practices to IT — ones that have defined the modern, data-driven enterprise — it also represents nothing less than a business revolution in IT. As Brian Adams, CIO of WorleyParsons put it, “TBM represents the first real change to the way IT is managed that’s occurred during my 25-year career. Everything else has been evolutionary; TBM is revolutionary.” Adam’s viewpoint and his passion for TBM, have been shaped by his somewhat unique perspective. His career actually spans roles far beyond IT, including CFO, strategy and development, marketing, product quality, and customer satisfaction.

IT is not the first domain to undergo a similar revolution. In the 1970s and the 1980s, manufacturers implemented a data-driven approach to optimize their supply chains from procurement through production. For the first time, they used technology to connect supply to demand, in turn reducing inventories, cutting production times, and improving margins. Manufacturing resource planning (MRP), as this method was known, led to new manufacturing techniques, such as just-in-time (JIT) inventories and total quality management (TQM). MRP was a game changer, and it gave birth to today’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.

Figure 1: Applying MRP and ERP, manufacturers used technology and data to manage their supply chains

More recently, marketing departments have made similar changes. Just a decade ago, they were led by brand-savvy, creative leaders who made only gut-check decisions based on a knowledge of their products, buyers, and competitors. Marketing was a battle of wits, not data. Now, many chief marketing officers (CMOs) apply data to every aspect of their discipline. Using marketing automation tools and analytics, CMOs are working hard to connect every part of the marketing supply chain from website inquiries to qualified leads to active opportunities to closed deals. Many CMOs understand the conversion rates and costs at each stage of this supply chain, which they call the revenue engine. They continuously optimize that engine using data. Marketing is today quickly becoming as much science as it is art.

Figure 2: With marketing automation and CRM, CMOs use data to manage and tune their revenue engines to improve corporate returns

It works the other way around too. By measuring conversion rates, CMOs now understand the total cost of generating a single deal, what they call their customer acquisition cost. They use these facts to create a practical plan and a defensible budget. If the business needs 20% more transactions (deals) next year, it will need to fund a sufficient number of inquiries and leads at a known (historical) cost. The CMO’s budget request is now based on a formula based on facts and figures, not educated guesses and/or long-held assumptions.

Managing the Supply and Demand of IT

Now it’s your turn. IT must use facts to answer important questions about its own supply chain: How are your resources (money, people, and time) spent to deliver towers of infrastructure and other technologies? How are those resources used to deliver projects? How are your towers cobbled together into applications and services? How are those apps and services consumed by your business partners to generate revenue and manage costs? If you can make these connections, you can make decisions that improve efficiency, grow return on capital, and add business value. Further, you can change the conversations you have with your business partners.

Figure 3: With TBM, CIOs manage the supply and demand of IT

As with the marketing supply chain, you can look at yours in reverse. You can see precisely how business demand drives the cost of your apps and services, and in turn, you can identify the consumption of infrastructure towers and resources. This is powerful information. Not only does it help you create a financial plan based on how resources are actually allocated and consumed, it connects everything your people do to business outcomes.

Early TBM Successes

It is no coincidence that the development of TBM was influenced by someone who understands firsthand the challenges of managing supply and demand. Rebecca Jacoby, SVP of Operations at Cisco, started her career in manufacturing and supply chain roles, and at one point she was responsible for the global consolidation of Cisco’s supply chain. After becoming CIO in 2006, she advocated a management approach that addressed both the supply of and the demand for IT. For Jacoby, this went beyond the supply-chain management for only IT. Instead, it would fundamentally change the conversations that she and her team were having with their business partners.

“At Cisco, we recognized that in order to drive business value and innovation, we had to become a competitive provider of IT services. This meant, among other things, that we had to change the very conversations we were having internally and with our business partners. Our conversations and our vocabulary needed to move beyond technologies, SLAs and projects, to discussions about the tradeoffs needed to balance cost, quality, and value. Only in doing so could we free up resources for business growth and strategic execution. These tradeoffs are at the core of Technology Business Management.”
— Rebecca Jacoby

Jacoby went so far as to define those value conversations by setting standards for them. They included strategy alignments, IT portfolio planning, architectural reviews, and quarterly value discussions with stakeholders. They centered on value considerations — scope, source, architecture, quality of service, time to capability, risk — all balanced by a new dimension — cost. The result allowed her to align business and IT plans more closely, shape the portfolio of applications and services to meet the business’s needs better, tweak their technology stack to increase performance (even while reducing costs), and shape demand by putting a price tag on consumption. Now, as Chief Operating Officer, Jacoby is putting these practices to work beyond IT.

Still, it’s not just former CFOs and supply chain leaders who are shaping TBM. Many CIOs who have spent a majority of their careers in IT also are putting their mark on TBM. Larry Godec has spent the majority of his career working in various IT roles — much of it as the CIO of First American, a leading provider of title insurance, settlement services, and risk solutions for real estate transactions.

In 2012, with the housing market starting to recover, Godec needed to shift his IT department to respond to the demands of a growing business. Godec recalls in great detail precisely when his TBM journey began — a budget meeting with his CEO Dennis Gilmore. “Dennis said, ‘We’re going to focus on growth.’ He told me I needed to know where we should be investing in customer-facing technology, because that’s what the business will need to compete.”

However, with a majority of his budget dedicated to supporting the existing IT estate, Godec needed to figure out how to shift resources quickly without putting the business at risk. He needed to see his resources in business terms, so he could collaborate with his CEO, CFO, and his line of business leaders on where to make the changes.

In a stroke of good timing, Godec heard what he needed to hear at a presentation by Tony Scott, then the CIO of Microsoft. “I was at Microsoft for a briefing by Tony when he showed this dashboard I had never seen. For the first time, I saw someone who put IT costs, resources, and investments into terms I could easily explain — by the applications and technologies that the business was using.”

Godec now saw the way to put everything he did into business terms. Godec’s first pass at TBM helped him create a simple portfolio view of the IT-business landscape, so he could have informed discussions about which apps and services were being consumed and by whom; how much he was spending on each of his major applications; and how much he needed to spend to support each line of business.

These facts led to several revelations about their portfolio. Many of the insights helped lead to cost reduction, while others led to the opposite conclusion. For example, by seeing for the first time the percentages of total spending on their app portfolio, they could justify increased investment in customer-facing technologies.

Other insights came in rapid succession, such as identifying end-of-life applications that were still consuming infrastructure and resources. In the end, these insights added up to significant budget savings and reallocations to more valuable purposes. Godec knew there were more, so he put his team on the hunt for new discoveries. His goal? Significantly reduce annual operating costs without reducing the quality of service and support. His team of only two people, mostly in their spare time, exceeded this goal in just a few months.

This is an important lesson. TBM isn’t necessary because IT is too expensive. Instead, it’s needed because your resources are in short supply. IT budgets of course never satisfy everything your business wants; but the real problem is that skilled people are hard to find and your business competitive clock is ticking faster and faster. You can’t afford to waste people or time. IT may represent less than a tenth of your business cost structure, but it is inextricably linked to your ability to compete, serve your customers, and reduce those business costs. Your IT capital must thus be invested wisely to create the most value.

Value is what TBM — this business revolution in IT — is all about.

SOURCE

Loss of critical files, network outage, hardware failure… An IT disaster is something that you never want to happen.

However, the risks of an IT disaster can be mitigated with appropriate preparation. Since IT is woven into every business known today, the Disaster Recovery (DR) planning of any business inevitably includes an IT portion that requires particular attention.

So, what do you need to know about Disaster Recovery planning for IT?

1. The purpose of an IT DR plan help the company recover as quickly and effectively as possible from an unforeseen IT disaster or emergency. Such an emergency would interrupt information systems and business operations. The plan should ensure that:

• All employees fully understand their duties in implementing the DR plan. This means that the appropriate portions of the plan should be discussed with employees and tested.
• Proposed contingency arrangements are cost-effective. This is where planning and preparation can really save you lots of money if you encounter an IT disaster.
• Disaster recovery capabilities as applicable to key vendors and service providers. Your disaster recovery is only as good as those you rely on to provide equipment, services, etc.

2. Who should write the DR plan? DR planning for IT requires preliminary study and thorough understanding of the company business model and IT infrastructure. Ideally, the IT DR planning would be done by your own IT department or an IT consultant who has done previous work for you. Having someone who is new to your environment write and test your IT DR plan may drive up your costs, or leave you with a DR plan that is disconnected from reality.

3.  What should the DR plan include?

It is easy to get carried away and write a document of such volume that will never be read by anyone (except the author). Needless to say, the size and content of DR documents for SMEs and large enterprises will differ, as the size and complexity of their IT infrastructure is also very different. Here is a brief list of the content sections that SMEs should include in their DR plan.

• A policy statement that establishes the business requirements for the IT DR plan. Typically, a business would have a statement on IT DR requirements in its policies.
• Key personnel and vendors contact information. This information will be priceless if an IT disaster is encountered.
• A clearly defined DR team that outlines responsibilities for each team member, as well as a calling tree so that each team member know who they are responsible to contact and all team members and staff are notified of the incident.
• An overview of the IT infrastructure, including a definition of the critical business process supported by IT, list of systems and their functions, network and system diagrams.
• Backup office locations.
• For each actual disaster event considered in the IT DR plan,
  • a description of the event;
  • risk-impact analysis, discussing the probability of a particular disaster event versus its potential business impact;
  • restoration requirements – this should be determined by upper-level management;
  • and restoration procedures.

It is easy to get carried away in defining and describing all possible IT disaster scenarios; this is why good communication with management is important – in order to narrow down the scope of the DR planning to key events with highest business impact or highest probability.

4. What should the IT DR plan NOT include?

The DR plan for IT should not include portions that are covered by the main business disaster recovery plan, which covers all aspects of the business (including insurance, property and personnel management, etc.), not just the IT portion.

5. What parts of the plan should be tested? It really depends on the budget you set aside for DR planning. Ideally, all parts of the plan – from complete loss of the office and emergency relocation, to virus infection, to loss of the phone system. Realistically, SMEs will not have the budget to test their entire DR plan, therefore key events must be pin-pointed and tested. For example, loss of a server, loss of critical files, loss of internet access, call tree simulation.

Useful links

IT disaster recovery (DR) plan template: A free download and guide

IBM Knowledge Center Example: Disaster recovery plan

You keep a close watch on sales, daily production numbers, and complete a profit & loss statement at the end of each month. That may be enough to satisfy the government and the stockholders, and provide enough information to keep work flowing, but the standard reports that most plastics companies rely on show only the tip of the iceberg. There is much more valuable information hidden in the process (under the surface), in measurements of production, material usage, and hours that can help you improve performance, reduce costs, and throughput from your plastics manufacturing plant. If you are only seeing the tip of the information iceberg, you may be missing a lot. Ignoring this hidden information poses a threat to the health of your business.

Overall management of production and inventory is really the sum of the management of individual resources within the business – individual machines, people, materials, and goods. And just as the chain is only as strong as its weakest link, challenged or underperforming resources can negatively affect the performance of the entire organization.

It is important, therefore, to measure and manage each resource as closely as possible in order to detect any variance from expectations and be able to take corrective action before productivity and throughput are affected. In today’s digital factory, it is easier than ever to achieve that goal. The best modern ERP/MES systems are built to continuously monitor key measures of machine rate, output, efficiency, quality (reject rates), utilization and other factors and alert operators and managers when conditions or accomplishments vary from expectations.

Arguably the most important internal measurement to watch is Machine Efficiency: tracking of cycle time – the interval between successive pieces produced – or similarly the amount produced per hour in either units or pounds. Since actual production time is a major factor in product cost, a variance from the assumed or optimum run rate can make a big difference in cost-of-goods and profit.

But running faster than “normal” may not always be good if the result is lower yield or a higher scrap rate. So tracking rejects is also very important. And reject tracking should be as real-time as possible. The sooner a quality problem is detected, the sooner corrections can be made and fewer bad parts will be made.

Even though raw material cost is typically a relatively small component of cost-of-goods, availability is critical – running out of material before the required quantity is produced can be disastrous. Acquisition and maintenance of raw material are tied to forecast or backlog, and usage rate. If the usage rate is incorrect, there is risk of material shortage. In addition, an inaccurate usage assumption in the recipe or bill-of-material can lead to incorrect pricing and misleading margin assumptions.

Monitoring actual material usage validates bill-of-material assumptions and provides insight into actual usage including start-up losses and “normal” scrap – all information that can be used to refine costing and material management. Monitoring of usage in real-time may also provide early warning of process problems that can lead to rejects or operational problems.

It may sound complicated to continually watch multiple factors at multiple resources, but in fact, continuous measurement and reporting are much simpler it sounds. Technology gathers the detailed information and does the initial assessment by matching actual measurements against expectations and past experience. Only deviations or unexpected results are immediately communicated to responsible individuals for follow-up or further investigation. Accumulated information is always available, of course, for study and performance improvement efforts. Contrast that with the need to respond to a quality problem, production delay or cost overrun after the fact – without any hint as to the source and location of the problem.

The Titanic had its unfortunate encounter with the hidden underside of the iceberg at a time when radar, sonar and modern navigation and communications did not yet exist. A sinking caused by an iceberg encounter is unimaginable today simply due to the technology available and in use in all ocean-going vessels. Plastics manufacturers have access to the equivalent of sonar and radar for monitoring activities and resources in the plant that can reveal the existence and even the emerging possibility of hidden perils like an unexpected variance in run rate, change in scrap or yield, or unusual material usage. Smart management will use these signals to proactively fine tune performance to reduce scrap, lower costs, improve on-time completion, and preserve margin.

Source: Cyframe.com

Our comment:

Commit100 has extensive expertise in developing software to collect information on physical quantities and monitor production in plastics manufacturing. Read our article about the custom software development we did for our customer in the plastics industry. Click to read.

In the previous blog post, we discussed the value of IT business analysis, as well as one of  the examples of work done by Commit100 for its clients. In this post, we will discuss another such example in detail.

helping our customer KEEP TRACK OF PRODUCTION, REAL TIME

Nuform Building Technologies Inc. is a leading company in developing and producing wall forming systems, extruded from PVC. As is any manufacturing process, there is a certain scrap percentage in production, which shows the head of manufacturing the overall process efficiency.

When Commit100 came into the picture, the existing process to collect scrap rate data was entirely manual: employees would pencil down production data, manually calculate the scrap rate, and – once again, by hand – enter the data into a spreadsheet viewed by head of production. Moreover, data entry was happening with a 2-week delay, that is, information was reaching the production manager much later than it would be useful.

Commit100 identified this area for improvement, and delivered a solution through the following steps:

1. A Commit100 IT business analyst spent time learning the current production tracking process, from A to Z, including shadow sessions with the Nuform associates that were doing extrusion data collection. This allowed to get a clear picture of what happens “in the field”, i.e. a clear understanding of the actual existing business process.
2. Commit100 created the specifications, including process definition, suggested process improvements, and demo-screens of the new EPT app, and approved them with Nuform Inc.
3. The software was developed by a software development team managed by Commit100.
4. A Commit100 implemented the app, and a Commit100 associate performed and coordinated extensive user acceptance testing to make sure the software works as expected, according to specifications.

THE RESULT

The result was a browser-based application called Extrusion Production Tracking (EPT). The Business Analysis process allowed to conclude that the app need be accessible from a wide range of platforms, from the Android tablet used by production staff to enter data, to personal computers used by production staff to monitor the scrap rates. The application was placed on the Nuform Intranet, an online internal website platform used by Nuform (also developed by Commit100).

User login screen for the Nuform Intranet:

The Nuform Intranet has several applications, one of which is the EPT:

The main menu in EPT shows the data entries for all operating extrusion lines for all dates, including a search function that allows to find a certain entry.

The EPT allows Nuform employees enter data using a Wifi-connected Android Tablet. Data is fed directly into an existing Nuform MS SQL database (the application was designed to integrate with this database, removing the need to create and maintain another database).  

The “Last” button links the current record to the previous one, allowing to calculate the amount of production that took place in between the previous and current entry. The “Now” button is a quick way for employees to enter the current time (the current time is pulled automatically from the server and populated in the field). Other fields are filled as needed, with error trapping to ensure that data is not misentered or entered incompletely. Commit100 also introduced an automatic production calculator, which removed the need to calculate the actual production volume by hand.

The interface used to enter data:

A list of production records for a particular extrusion line, with buttons to delete or edit records.

Nuform Inc. was pleased with the application, as the data is immediately available and accessible for the production manager after it is collected. That is, production feedback occurs much faster, so proper adjustments can be made operatively, if needed, and the business can run smoother and more efficiently.

How valuable are your business processes? They ARE your business.

According to Appian.com, a business process is a collection of linked tasks which find their end in the delivery of a service or product to a client. Generally, business processes are grouped into three categories:

• Management processes;
• Operational processes;
• Supporting processes.

Operational processes are what constitute the key value chain – they are at the heart of what makes your business different (or similar) from any other. For example, in manufacturing, the operational processes are those directly linked to making the product (sourcing raw materials, production, finishing, packaging, shipping, etc.). Supporting processes include finance/accounting and, of course, IT.

The natural human tendency is to minimize waste and optimize. However, left unto itself, the process of finding areas for improvement takes significant time, especially within an organization with processes that may span several months. This is where Business Analysis comes in. Wikipedia.org describes business analysis as

“a research discipline of identifying business needs and determining solutions to business problems. Solutions often include a software-systems development component, but may also consist of process improvement, organizational change or strategic planning and policy development.”

That is, business analysis develops and optimizes solutions to address business needs.

Any process is based on the flow of information, and a business is no exception. The main role of IT systems is to streamline, organize, and speed up information flows in business. IT Business Analysis focuses specifically on developing IT solutions to business needs and improving existing business processes. IT solutions can be as simple as the implementation of an instant messaging tool to speed up communication, or as complex as an information system that holds all business information and facilitates the entire workflow from lead to final sale to customer follow-up. A particular example of the effectiveness of IT Business Analysis is the Barcode Scanning System Commit100 developed and implemented for Nuform Building Technologies Inc., which allowed for fast entry and accurate accounting of raw materials and stock. This system decreased the time needed for a full Inventory count by 4-5 times. Commit100 also develops and supports custom in-house information systems.

IT Business Analysis can work with all types of business processes. If focused on operational processes, i.e. those that form the key value chain, it can unlock the hidden potential of your business.

Management often frowns upon investing into IT systems, and this is often a legitimate concern – IT systems should only be based on adequate business analysis, showing what specific improvements to business processes will happen as a result of implementing the IT solution. Depending on the business, the adequate IT solution may be off-the-shelf or fully custom, which is what we will discuss in future blog posts.

Most significantly large enterprises have a Windows Active Directory (AD) domain that requires management. There are many tools to manage AD, and most IT System Administrators use the “Active Directory Users and Comupters” Windows interface. Little to they know there is a much more intuitive, user friendly, and efficient tool to manage an AD domain, perform and automate AD-related tasks.

This tool is the ManageEngine ADManagerPlus.

The ADManager is a browser-based application that allows to simplify and streamline the following tasks:

• Create User Account for Multiple Users
• Modify Attributes for Multiple Users
• Reset passwords for multiple user accounts
• Change the user display name
• Create Exchange Mailbox and apply Exchange Policies
• Create Office 365 and Google Apps accounts
• Enable/disable/delete Inactive accounts in AD
• Move users between OU’s
• Automated Bulk User Management
• Mobile-based Active Directory User Management

This tool is also invaluable when performing an AD audit, as it allows to quickly and easily extract data about the current active directory setup. Commit100 used this tool in one of the most recent AD audits that we performed.

Some ADManager screenshots.

Commit100 highly recommends ADManager!

Images sourced from https://www.manageengine.com/products/ad-manager/active_directory_bulk_user_management.html