GPS and Manufacturing Software

I’m currently working on an application for Windows Mobile 6.1 which will allow drivers to login to a company’s custom-tailored software package while logging the driver’s location and the time he or she was at that location. One question I was asked about this was, “Isn’t this a bit intrusive?”

I don’t believe so. What’s really the difference between this and that same driver getting a signature from someone at a given location, along with a time-stamp on a piece of paper? There’s not much difference whatsoever, except that the other individual isn’t giving away a signature that could subsequently be used in an identity theft.

Asian automaker love bells, whistles, indicator lights, and charts and graphs. But early on, they drew the line at allowing electronic signatures on electronic documents as they felt they simply weren’t good enough. A real signature, even one with a wax sealm was considerably better for them. They’ve given in to electronic signatures recently. However, a GPS tracker with a time-stamp would actually be a better concept for their personal and manufacturing cultures.

Different cultures, both manufacturing and personal, require different software needs. This is why custom-tailored software is such a much better fit for manufacturers today.

Canned Software: What’s The Reality?

Let’s say you need software to run a cash register. You look around and find that even a big-box office supply mega superstore carries the whole thing in a box; Computer tower, monitor, mouse and keyboard, the cash drawer, a barcode scanner with a stand, even one of those nifty little receipt printers. The software in the box is also in a box, and has a whole list of features on the back of said box. You, or some teenager in the neighborhood who’s at least good with video games, sets it up in the store and you’re on your way.

Then you realize everything, including the banana bread your sister made in the rented and health-inspected kitchen on the east side, has to have a barcode label. So you need another printer, and some of those stickers on letter-sized wax paper so you can print the barcode labels. Which keep coming off. Or worse, when little kids with sticky fingers picks up that banana bread with a high-pitched, “But I want some!” The accounting side of the software has a few reports for accounting, but your accountant seems to think you need others. Taking an inventory is clunky at best … what you wouldn’t give for a crew with those handheld scanners like at the big supermarket, eh? Your staff keeps changing settings to create a “best” workflow for whomever is working at the time, adding new items is more a chore than it should be, and the only one who can get the whole system to work right is your twelve-year-old daughter.

True story, except that I wasn’t “some teenager in the neighborhood who’s at least good with video games” … And now that the store is hiring non-family members as staff, they want to know how to give everyone their own login. Honestly, I think I’m going to need to wipe the hard drive and start over. But first I need to backup the database …

Custom-tailored software would have prevented all of this. Even in a retail situation, canned software has a tendency to force the owners or managers of the business to change their workflow to match the software. This may be fine for word processing and spreadsheet programs, but when you get down to business with a business, this type of thing can be frustrating at best.

Let’s say you need a scheduling system. You pull out the “business”-grade software that came pre-installed on your “business”-grade computer and have a look. Basically, you can draw lines on groups of days. You could do that with a spreadsheet and get away with it. Still, you’ve got resources, tasks, … hmm, 3D gantt charts, very cool … Oh, “resources”  are people … that’s odd …

But what happens if you change something? What hapens if things need to work through in a different sequence? Can the software work through the changes and come up with a valid solution?

A better question would be, does the software follow your business and how it works, or are you being forced into the box the software came in?

The situation will likely be the former than the latter. That’s why custom-tailored software will always work better for your business. Unless that is, you’re just writing a letter.

“My Production Scheduling is rather simple …”

Is it? Is the production scheduling you need to do rather simple? You’ve been making those awnings and those canvas boat covers for years. And the crew in the sewing room can repair those damaged rental tents in no time flat. What in the world would you need a Production Scheduling software system for?

Well frankly, you need it for a lot of reasons.

In a lot of locations a tent and awning shop is seasonal. New orders can come it at any time through the year, and if the shop has a booth at the spring home & garden show there might be dozens of new awning orders. But then there’s the seasonal awning business. Awnings are stored in the winter at your storage facility and installed in the spring. Installations could easily take a month. Repairs have to be made if anything is found to be damaged prior to installation (danged mice …) Through the summer the tent rental season is just hopping, what with graduations in May, weddings and other events in the summer, and the fall festivals. In the fall the awnings have to be collected from the homes they were installed on in the spring, inspected for damage (high winds and driving rains can be nasty), dry-cleaned, and packed for the winter storage. Winter is also the best time to get all those tents inspected for damage from usage.

In all that we didn’t even mention the boat covers …

How are you keeping track of all this now? When the Mayor’s house calls and wants their awnings installed tomorrow morning as the Governor is coming for dinner and all three installation crews are already booked, how do you rearrange the schedule to accomodate such an event without going through all kinds of discontent?

If you just happened to have a Production Scheduling system with a bit of artificial intelligence to handle such matters, it would make life so much easier.

It’s a matter of perspective. You may not believe you need Production Scheduling software. But you very well might.

Think about it.

Production Scheduling Software: Not Just for Automated Manufacturing

For a year or so, from 2000 to 2001, I worked in a facility having hundreds of workers and almost zero automated processes in manufacturing. Faraday was a company that turned 125 that year, manufacturing synchronized clocks, modular and customized fire alarm control panels, and horns and strobes for those fire alarm systems. The majority of the manufacturing, sheet metal forming, welding and painting, horn and strobe assembly and testing, control panel circuit board assembly, and the final assembly of the control panels, these were all done by hand. The only real automated processes were some of the parts inserted on the circuit boards, and the wave soldering of the finished boards.

Each area had its own scheduler, its own schedule nearby showing workers and supervisors what was needed and when. We tried developing an automated scheduling system while I was there but it wouldn’t have helped by that point. Faraday was absorbed into Cerberus Pyrotronics the following year.

Part of the problem was an overall resistance to change. Some of the people in the facility had been there for decades. Some of the products, particularly the clocks and the older modular fire alarm control panels, had also been around for decades. Those of us working in R&D were working on smaller panels having embedded processors (8051-based, for those readers interested). We were making these panels as flexible as we could through a front panel programmability feature, and had started working on networking the panels for larger installations. But these weren’t seen by some as as solid products as the old standby.

The same went for the scheduling of the manufacturing. It was all done by hand on paper, with instructions being distributed as to what needed to be built and when it needed to be shipped.

Could Faraday have benefited from automated production scheduling software? Those of us who were in R&D thought so. The manufacturing operation was clunky at best, with the most modern piece of equipment being a new high-end wave soldering machine, about 15 feet long, with all kinds of features and abilities. Everything else was rather ancient, including the parts-insertion units for circuit board assembly.

Since replacing all that equipment with automated manufacturing was prohibitively expensive, Production Scheduling software to schedule the workers and their processes would have certainly brought a better efficiency to the facility overall. This would have certainly been helpful in regards to priority projects, and R&D projects needing one-time assembly of multiple panels for testing.

Yeah, that was an interesting job. I sure don’t miss all the bells, whistles and flashing lights though.

‘Roll Your Own’ Software; Worth It?

At some point in almost every discussion about purchasing software for a business, someone will think or even say, “Why not just make our own? I mean, we have all these IT people … it should be easy for one of them. Won’t take any time at all and it’ll save us money.”

Yes, it will take time, and it’s doubtful you’ll save any money whatsoever.

Software development takes time. Someone somewhere has sat down and figured out every piece of software you’ve ever used and they’ve done it from scratch. From solitaire games, to presentation software, to the software on the cash register at the grocery store, these applications have gone through multiple permutations over the years to get to how they operate today. Someone had to work through all the initial mechanics of what the software should do, came up with all the features, created the relational database, made it all work, debugged it, beta tested it, reworked it to get rid of the bugs …

This all takes time. A lot of time. A lot of hard work and patience.

And how much do you pay those IT folks? $15 an hour? Maybe $20 an hour? If they spend a total of six months working on this software just to get it running, how much does that work out to be?

Unless you plan to sell the finished software when you’re done developing it, there’s really no point in reinventing the wheel. There are developers out there, freelance and those in software companies, who do this every day for a living. The software you’re looking at developing has likely already been developed multiple times by multiple companies who have a history with that software and can do it quite well. Do you really think anything developed in-house will be able to stand up in comparison.

Probably not.

Software that’s custom-tailored, developed from a framework with customizable modules, by those who know what they’re doing … that’s the real deal. You’ll get a quicker turnaround, you’ll get exactly what you want, and it will look and act like the professional software you’d planned for in the first place.

Isn’t that what you really want anyway?

A Spreadsheet Is Not A Database

There are some serious misconceptions about how to best use certain types of software. It’s rather common now to see CEOs, financial wizards and others use presentation software as simply a place for their notes. Too often, what’s on the screen could have been given to the audience members to read instead of the presentation software being used as it was intended; To visually augment what is being said. All those bullet points on all those screens … it’s just not right.

Likewise, many office workers and managers look at a spreadsheet program as a database instead of the accounting tool it was meant as. The first spreadsheet program was called VisiCalc and, as it’s name implies, its intent was for calculating visually. It was never intended to simply hold data. However, that’s what many people use it for. They then wonder later why they can’t get it to do what’s necessary once growth occurs and other features are needed.

A database can not only store data in table structures, those structures can also be made “relational”. An table containing orders might only contain the order number and the date it was initiated. Another table might provide customer names and addresses, simply because each customer might have multiple orders. Another table might then contain order details, or lists of the items within the orders listed in the Orders table. And finally, a view might tie all these together so each individual order can be viewed as a single record.

A spreadsheet can’t do that, because a spreadsheet isn’t a database.

As in carpentry or auto work, computers are also best operated by using the right tool for the job. Maybe it’s time to step away from the spreadsheet.

Custom Terminology in Manufacturing Software

“We need to change everywhere it says ‘Product’ to ‘Asset’.”

“They want to see the word ‘Scrap’ instead of ‘Waste’.”

“Under Locations … let’s see … they store assets in vans and warehouses, but since the warehouses have shelves and bins and the vans don’t, and the vans aren’t physically attached to a given warehouse, the warehouses and vans have to be set up differently …”

These are real conversations which happened in the past week or so while developing custom-tailored manufacturing software for certain clients. That’s how detailed things can get. Virtually everything is flexible, anything can be changed, and if your Product is an Asset, so be it.

It’s a given that any company, particularly those with a long history, have developed their own internal culture. With that culture, an overall terminology has also developed within the overall workflows of the company. If canned software is then introduced as a management or reporting tool within that culture, how effective can that software possibly be if the software causes terminology, and ultimately cultural, changes?

Custom-tailored software is by far more appropriate as the software is built to fit within the already-existing culture and its built-in terminology. And certainly, workers and managers are going to be more willing to use software which doesn’t force them to make changes to their workflows in any way.

Besides, ‘Scrap’ sounds much better than ‘Waste’ anyway.

Custom-Tailored Scheduling Software

When moving from sticky notes on a hunk of painted plywood to automated scheduling software it’s easy to get caught up in all the possible features of a canned, out-of-the-box, off-the shelf package that seems to do everything you need and then some. It appears to have everything you need, it definitely appears to have everything your manager wants it to have, and there are a ton of things in there you might be able to take advantage of in the near or distant future.

Not so fast …

Think about that for a moment. Why are you considering paying for features you might use in the future? What if you don’t use them? A better question should be, what about when you don’t use those features at all?

Take a good look at the office software you have; The word processor, the spreadsheet generator, the presentation package your boss uses for every meeting and puts pretty picture in with his notes. Have you ever even looked at that database thingy that came with it? What about the templates and macros in the stuff you do use? Do you even spellcheck??

Now take another look at that canned, out-of-the-box, off-the shelf scheduling package that seems to do everything you need and then some. How much of it is going to end up a complete and total waste of hard drive space?

Custom-tailored scheduling software, built specifically for your company’s needs and culture, is much easier to use than a canned system simply because it’s built the way you and your company needs it to be built.

I once knew a blind couple who designed their own house. The architect set them in front of a pegboard with some pieces of wood dowel. Each gap between holes in the pegboard was meant as a single foot of distance. The couple layed out the pegs to create their floorplan, which the architect glued together for them. He then developed the blueprints from the pegboard, which the blind couple continued to study with their fingerprints. When the couple walked into their new house for the first time, they knew exactly where everything was.

That’s what custom-tailored scheduling software can do for you.

Module-Based Thin Client ERP Software

We’ve already talked about thin-client software and how it can be utilized anywhere within a facility on any computer with an internet browser installed. When developing software for this purpose the need for a module-based system becomes apparent when the actual requirements are discussed. This is due to the need for some functionality at first with the ability to add other functionality later.

Let’s say a facility is looking for a Scheduling system. With a thick-client software system built from the ground up, development of the software could easily take a year or more. The database has to be designed, relationships between tables and views need to be anticipated, and then the development of the scheduling portion itself can be begun. Once this is put into place, debugging needs to occur at a beta level. Test runs are executed and any issues fixed. Only after a lot of debugging has been accomplished can the software actually be installed and used, some months or even years down the road.

At that point, if more functionality is needed the entire process starts all over again. And then there are updates to the operating system, security patches, and constant updates to the software itself.

A module-based framework is much simpler from a development aspect. The framework and its modules are already proven and in some cases might be appropriate on their own for a given situation. Customization of the modules for a given situation, which is quite often more appropriate, can take a matter of weeks to accomplish. And any additional functionality can be added through the addition and customization of another module or two later on down the road.

Companies such as Tuppas Software specialize in these types of custom-tailored module-based software systems. This is the kind of company to seek out for manufacturing software solutions.