EveryJoe » Manufacturing-Business-Technology

The Stars Are Aligned! The Door is Open for Nuclear Energy

Bob Turek — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 11:45:00 +0000

Not only are the stars aligned, but public opinion, politicians, and the National Association of Manufacturers are in agreement, that nuclear needs to considered again. Manufacturing Business Technology (MBT) writes that the logic is inescapable: it is a reliable source of power that will create thousands of high paying jobs. We’ve shied away from nuclear because of the poor examples of Russian plants without cooling towers. Top scientists have been befuddled by public disdain for nuclear because it IS safe.

Speak up and support nuclear energy. Make it your personal project and seek to understand how supporting it relates to the strategies of improving the economy and your personal financial future.

How do you feel about nuclear power? Is it safe? Why wouldn’t you support it?

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Post from: EveryJoe

The Stars Are Aligned! The Door is Open for Nuclear Energy

Skewed Thinking About Tech Acceptance Hurts Adoption

Bob Turek — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 13:00:00 +0000

Manufacturing Business Technology wrote about “real world” BI acceptance as not matching predictions of think tanks and vendors. My previous post challenged them to consider how market acceptance works before doing surveys and reports of “reality”, i.e., what should be analyzed is the “early adopter” acceptance because they tend to drive acceptance by others. Here is an example of some of the skewed thinking in the report:

“We regularly find that the received wisdom in this industry doesn’t match what the majority of real-world users are finding. For instance, almost all demos now focus on the web version of the product. Anyone would be forgiven for thinking that web BI usage is universal, but this simply isn’t the case – a surprisingly large proportion of people are still using client-server or stand-alone architectures.”

“Majority of real world users” is a naive measure of technology acceptance. Also, to criticize vendor demos for being ahead of the “majority” is ridiculous- how else are the “early adopters” going to learn about new technology? This reduces vendors to sales teams only- admittedly they are, but they are also knowledge brokers who have worked with many companies to implement the technology they sell. The “surprisingly large” statement also shows a naivete related to the technology acceptance process.

What do you think of the technology vendor’s role in technology acceptance? Are they knowledge brokers or simply sales teams?

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Post from: EveryJoe

Skewed Thinking About Tech Acceptance Hurts Adoption

Collaboration Update: Engineers and Production

Bob Turek — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 10:00:00 +0000

Collaboration reaps many benefits but there are still many frustrations with the process and with the technology. Manufacturing Business Technology magazine reports on a survey of just over 400 (about 1/2 design engineers and 1/2 production/project managers) about collaboration as it relates to design and manufacturing improvements.

Only 20% were “satisfied” with current collaboration efforts citing two key areas of frustration:

1. Slow responses from those to whom communications are sent.

2. Clarity of communication.

90% regularly collaborate with internal to company people with only 30% going outside to customers and suppliers on a regular basis. This surprised the reviewers but seems to make sense given intellectual property concerns. These types of realities also create caution when sending design files to production because of difficulties protecting files from changes and making sure the right version is out there.

In spite of the frustrations there is general agreement that collaboration is improving and that there are many benefits to doing it- key among them being:

1. Reduced design and manufacturing errors.

2. Increased product quality.

All of this seems to point more to the value of standardizing processes and the technology that enables them. In fact the article reveals that engineering and production/project management tend to use different systems and processes. This is an age old “siloing” issue borne out of the “need” to hoard information until it is useful to reveal it. In other words, it is NOT a technology problem, it is a people problem.

Once again, centralizing projects related to multiple departments under the guidance of a PMO-like organization could clearly benefit companies collaboration efforts. Leaving it to IT alone to sort out the mess is not a solution- a channel from projects to tactics to strategies that involves an executive level board fed by a supportive PMO can attack the two key issues of slow response and lack of clarity in communications.

How do you view collaboration? Is it more of a people problem or a technology problem? Have you solved the collaboration issue with an innovative business model? Share it!

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Post from: EveryJoe

Collaboration Update: Engineers and Production