Have you ever thought how important is speed of the process? Thinking about a potential implications of change process speed-up, I got to the conclusion that this can be a very good idea. I will try to explain why. Think about typical change you are making in the product you currently designing and/manufacturing. I’ll try to simulate questions you need to ask yourself and your colleagues to brainstorm and discover to unlock potential of process speed-up.
1. How fast/slow is “the typical change process” in your organization?–> About 20 days
2. How many hours you need to really proceed with this change? –> Abut 4-5 hours
3. How fast process should be in your view? –> 2-3 days
4. What your organization is doing during 18 day left? –> Queue….
This is sounds like obvious, right? However, let’s continue with additional questions that will help you understand what happens in your organization during 18 queuing days.
1. Your suppliers are doing work that probably needs to be returned, reworked or scrapped
2. Your manufacturing facility is making product that needs to be reworked or scrapped
3. Your assembly and test facility is doing unnecessarily tests
4. Your production line down or potentially down for extra 18 days
5. Your organization is shipping product that potentially needs to be fixed or factory returned
6. Your customer is probably waiting extra 18 days.
Now try to calculate worth of all this topic I just mentioned for your organization. I’m sure you got a very good number to justify your tomorrow’s thinking about why your PLM system is still not managing the overall change process in you organization.
So, what is the conclusion? You need to speed up processes. Period.This is the main role of PLM system that connects organizational dots and makes life blood of your organization to move faster. I’d be very interested to hear about your (or your customer’s) experience.
Best, Oleg
