EVS Blog

My very good friend has a problem. The problem isn’t that he spends more than he makes; that’s merely a symptom. His problem is that he wants to own and control everyones problems. He wants to say “I provide for the poor. I help the needy. I heal the sick. People turn to me instead of the Almighty, therfore I am the Almighty God.”

Fortunately for all of us, he isn’t God. He’s a common Joe. A Joe with high aspirations and a larger than average checkbook.

Here’s the neat thing about problems; the “power of one” cannot solve problems. Problems are specifically designed to be bigger than any one person. When a person gets cancer, their family, friends, neighbors, etc. gather around to help them. The problem is too big for one person to handle and we, as compassionate human beings, know this so we gather to help the person suffering.

My friend tries to solve the worlds problem with money. What he doesn’t realize is that a problem doesn’t have a price tag, it’s not that easily beaten. If you give someone in need money, you do a good deed. When that person relies on you for money and you give it to him every time, your good deed is undone; you are now an enabler.

Why is all of this neat? Because the solution to the problem requires you (not the generic ‘you’, I mean ‘you’ the reader) to vest in the problem. You have to engage it, wrestle with it, join others to tie it up and together, destroy it. If you could throw money at a problem, maybe a few governmental regulations and the problem goes away, how would we as people reach our full potential?

Every one of us has unique gifts and passions. You are given these gifts and passions (or compassions) to help you fulfill a purpose. Some of us are compassionate for the elderly, others for the homeless, others for higher eduction. Some have a gift for generating money (like my friend), others their talent is stretching a dollar to it’s fullest extent (not like my friend). When you put people with multiple talents and passions together to solve a problem, that problem doesn’t have a chance of surviving.

If we have all of these gifts and passions among us, why are we willing to turn a blind eye to problems? Why is there still a homeless person in our community? Why is the old bridge in town about to collapse? Why is there a teen who cannot read? Is it because we are independent, self-centered Americans? Or is it that problems seem too big for us and only something big (like our government) has the ability to solve them?

A few years ago, my sisters sister-in-law found out that their son had Duchenne’s Disease; a type of Muscular Dystrophy. Without going into details, they are essentially going to watch their beautiful son slowly and painfully deteriorate until he finally can’t breathe on his own. What did they do? The mom and dad set up a foundation and have been tirelessly (and I mean outrageously tirelessly) raising awareness of the disease and doing fund raisers for research to stop the disease (see www.joainc.org). The parents took ownership of the problem and are taking ownership of the solution. The problem is larger and heavier than Mt. Everest, but the parents can only see victory.

Does it take something so unimaginably horrifying to happen to someone that close to us to engage and vest in a problem in our community?

So, to my very good friend, I say this to you (BTW, you may know him, he lives in the White House (Washington DC)). All of the problems of the country and the world do not rest on your shoulders. And the problems that are under your charge cannot be solved simply with more money or more regulation. If you give and keep giving until people rely on you, you are an enabler, not a God.

My advice to you is to back off of the controls and as a leader, encourage your people to use their talents and passions to solve problems. Expect people to rally their communities to help one another. The solution is in the individual realizing his unique calling alongside another individual realizing her unique calling, along a community of people realizing their unique calling. Where your resources are finite (like money), the resources of the masses are infinite, they just need to be stirred.

For you, my readers, the current debt ceiling debate in Washington does not need to be a life or death event; rather it is an opportunity for We the People to wake up. Whether DC is in grid lock or running at full blown in-efficiency, our problems are ours to own and ours to solve.

To depend on and stand in line for the Great Enabler is bondage, choosing to join with your fellow man and solve problems is freedom. What is your passion or compassion? In that you will find your part of the solution to any problem.

The solution to any issue will always be We the People, not they the government.

_______________

Note 1: I received a surprising number of comments on my ‘friend’ – one person asked if he was a “drunken sailor distant cousin.” Many asked why I would have such a friend. When you take of titles, the same story can look quite different, can’t it?

Note 2: The other alternative, as Krisjan suggested, the government could just set up a national methamphetamine distribution business and make piles of cash

I have a friend, he’s an amazing person. He works hard and makes a good living. He gives a huge amount of money to family, friends and charity. When I say “gives” I mean he doesn’t expect the money back, even from family members. Some say he is the most giving and generous person they have ever known.

Unfortunately, about 40% of every dollar he spends goes on his credit card and he spends about 15% of every dollar he earns on credit card interest.

Here’s the problem.

All of his credit cards are maxed-out and banks won’t give him another one. But since his grandmother is in a nursing home, he needs more money to help pay her bills – her retirement check isn’t quite enough to cover her expenses. And his friend is having a hard time paying for college so my friend, who just can’t say ‘no’, is helping fill the gap. Don’t get him started on the poor who don’t have enough food to eat, if he stops buying food for the local food kitchen, people will starve.

I’ve tried to reason with my friend that he can’t carry the problems of the world on his shoulders, but he won’t listen. He makes a huge salary and he has tried to get a raise. His boss said that if he produces more, he will get a raise by way of his bonus.

My friend is now at an impasse; even if he worked 24 hours a day, he still couldn’t make the kind of money that he needs, but he can’t stop helping people; they certainly wouldn’t be able to survive without him.

What should he do? And how would you reason with him?

Discrete manufacturing assembles products such as: electronics, furniture, airplanes, etc. Typically engineers develop how to best put the pieces together to make them operate correctly, to withstand weight, torque, etc. Typically a BOM tells the assemblers how to fasten, bolt, weld, or other wise attach pieces together. When a BOM specifies that a 1.25” nickel-plated screw is to be used, the assembler can feel confident overtime that the 1.25” nickel-plated screw will be of the same size, structure and alloy every time he/she uses it.

In many micro-categories of process manufacturing, raw material characteristics can vary widely. For example, anything that grows out of the ground can vary in make-up: oranges in the beginning of the season may have less sugar (brix) than at the end of the season, wheat can vary widely in it’s absorption of water.

Any ingredient that comes from an animal can vary; for instance milk purchased for the production of cheese or yogurt can vary in percentage milk fat by a huge percentage.

The problem, is that customers demand a consistent product (output). Whether you buy orange juice in January or July, you want it to taste the same. So many process manufacturers need to be able to test key characteristics of their major ingredients and adapt the production run to best meet a consistent output. Discrete ERPs try to pull this off by having multiple revisions of a BOM but never works quite right because the variations of the ingredients can vary by millions of factors (no one wants to set up a BOM for every variation). A real process manufacturing ERP software will allow you to change the batch percentage contribution based on lot attributes of ingredients and nutritional parameters of the formula.

To continue reading this series, see the next article: Process v Discrete Mfg #3: Formula vs. BOM

Recently, I did a survey of the EVS executive team on their favorite iPad applications. My first victim was Nathan, a co-founder of EVS and is the main software architect and general brainiac of the firm. Here are his choices:

Zite (www.zite.com). A customizable newspaper. While Flipboard innovated this space, Zite took it to a new level of usefulness and user experience.

MyPad. MyPad is a Facebook app for the iPad. We’ve tried most of the Facebook apps for iPad and this one stands out for it’s user experience.

Thriller. Okay, you won’t find this one on the app store as this is our internal time/billing and expense iPad application. We’ve been experimenting with how database applications should interact with the iPad as a native app. What I’ve seen from this prototype app is pretty impressive.

Fruity Ninja. What’s not to love about ninjas samurai swords? Add to it that Nate is a Fire Ninja and you have the recipe for some real action.

As a side note, if Gold Rush Alaska had an iPad app, it would be on the top of Nate’s list, regardless of content or user experience.

The difference between process manufacturing and discrete manufacturing is most easily expressed by the types of products that they make. Process manufacturers make “goop” – stuff that is usually liquid (like beverages or paint) or goopy (like dough) or is canned/bottled. Ingredients are typically blended together, processed then packaged.

Discrete, like the name implies, assembles discrete parts to make a widget; like a desk, chair or computer.

If you need a catch phrase to remember the difference, here you go: process blends goop, discrete assembles widgets. Blend and assemble are key to the differentiators. You’d think that after 15 years in the industry, my catch phrase would be a little more eloquent, but it seems to work for people.

Another way to think about the differences in products produced is that discretely manufactured products can typically be disassembled back to it’s component parts; i.e. a computer is assembled and can be disassembled back to its component parts. Process manufactured items cannot be disassembled; try to disassemble orange juice or a loaf of bread back to it’s original ingredients.

As a reference, process manufacturing companies are typically classified under SIC 20 (Food) and SIC 28 (Chemical); as a side note, pharmaceutical and life-science is located under SIC 28.

I like to think of process manufacturing as having major categories of food and chemical and under each major category we have many micro categories such as bakery, dairy products, life-science, etc. I segregate the micro-categories by major functional requirements; for example, bakeries require formulation by bakers percentage and batch sizing by dough. Dairy products need to manage milk-fat percentage and micro QC testing and life-sciences needs to manage compliance issues such as systems validation and 21 CFR Part 11.

Maybe next summer I’ll do a series on the 10,000 differences between micro-categories in process manufacturing, but for this purpose just know that micro-categories in process manufacturing have unique requirements and a true process manufacturing system needs to be able to handle most, if not all of the requirements. To miss a major requirement of an industry would preclude the ERP from realistically working in that industry.

For example, a “process manufacturing” ERP software that doesn’t handle least cost solving, it should stay away from the metal melting industry and to a lesser extent some meat manufacturing industries, likewise if the ERP software doesn’t handle laboratory calculations in their R&D module, they should stay way from any process manufacturing company that creates lots of new formulations.

To continue reading this series, see the next article: Process v Discrete Mfg #2: Variable inputs, consistent outputs.

For most of my career I’ve worked in the process manufacturing ERP software industry as a publisher, reseller and consultant. In the beginning of my career, most discrete manufacturing “experts” declared that “manufacturing is manufacturing, you put in raw materials and get out finished good – it’s all the same.”

For over a decade and a half, I’ve been educating resellers, software publishers and end-users on the difference between process and discrete manufacturing as it relates to ERP. I’ve helped multiple-hundreds of people identify the proverbial “wolf in sheep’s clothing” as discrete manufacturers try to mask their systems to look like process systems.

To date, I’ve written dozens of white papers, a bazillion Powerpoint presentations and case studies explaining the differences but there is a seemingly never-ending supply of people who need this information.

So, with the power of social media, my summer project is to provide you with 51 blog posts on this topic. When I decided to embark on this project I easily scribbled 20 characteristics that I normally use to differentiate the manufacturing types. So to make this an interesting challenge, I decided to randomly add 31 more as a requirement for the task.

I hope the next 51 blog posts are educational and enjoyable (in a nerdy way) for you.

Happy 4th of July! I hope that you enjoy your day off with your family and friends.

As a parent of young children, I try to spend a little time with my family explaining what the various holidays celebrate and what the symbols of the holiday represent. Most importantly, I try to explain what made the event so important and applicable to today that we still celebrate the event.

On the 4th of July, we celebrate our independence; our freedom from tyranny and oppression. On this day in the year 1776, we as Americans declared that our Creator (not government) has endowed us with unalienable Rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Fine, we’ve heard it a million times and over time the words have become mostly meaningless. The problem is that as the words lose meaning, the warnings and prophecy of the Founding Fathers are coming to pass.

The Founding Fathers came from a place of tyranny and oppression to freedom and liberty (thus our celebration). Are we, 235 years later, going from freedom and liberty into the bondage tyranny and oppression?

What does tyranny mean to you? Is tyranny limited to an individual (king) or is tyranny simply a select few who take away the liberties of the masses? Let’s look at a few warnings (prophecies) of some of our Founding Fathers.

“The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.” –James Madison (1)

“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” — Benjamin Franklin (2)

“When governments fear the people there is liberty. When the people fear the government there is tyranny.” (remember, the IRS is a branch of the government)– Thomas Jefferson (3)

“Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged against provisions against danger, real or pretended from abroad.” –James Madison (4)

“I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations; — James Madison (5)

A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people. — James Madison (6)

When we take significant holidays like July 4th and make them simply into a day off of work to have a barbecue and watch fireworks, we are missing the history that made us the free people we are today. Freedom like ours has never been known in the history of man. We are living in an historical anomaly; not the historical norm. Let’s not forget where we came from or we will lose it.

Happy 4th of July – for remembering how we earned our freedom and to the continued preservation of that freedom against all efforts of tyranny.

____________________
References:

(1) James Madison, Speech, House of Representatives, during the debate “On the Memorial of the Relief Committee of Baltimore, for the Relief of St. Domingo Refugees” (1794-01-10)

(2) Benjamin Franklin (on the title page of An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania – 1759)

(3) Thomas Jefferson (attributed to Jefferson, by his contemporaries)

(4) James Madison in a letter to Thomas Jefferson (1798-05-13); published in Letters and Other Writings of James Madison (1865), Vol. II, p. 141

(5) James Madison, Speech at the Virginia Convention to ratify the Federal Constitution (1788-06-06) [2]

(6) James Madison. Speech, Constitutional Convention (1787-06-29), from Max Farrand’s Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. I [1] (1911), p. 465