For almost 20 years the staff of EAC Product Development Solutions has believed there is a better way to develop products. The “traditional” processes are fundamentally broken and the symptoms of these fractures are a painful reality for many of our customers. Among others, they face missed deadlines, failed product launches, and are unable to effectively manage resources. There’s a better way.
We believe that product development is a continuous system; not a single-track process with a defined start and finish. It extends beyond the engineering department and engages everyone within a company. Because of its breadth, it needs continual support. It begins with the alignment of business objectives and initiatives. Once an entire organization understands the goals for the future they can agree upon a plan for success and focus on putting the right people, processes, and tools in place to meet their goals, drive innovation, and increase productivity.

Each part of the product development system has distinct needs. People in Management, Marketing, Engineering, Manufacturing, Procurement, and Support all have different needs and expectations throughout the product life cycle. We offer a wide variety of tools and services to meet the needs of the entire organization.

– Software tools for design, data management, and publishing
– Training and Education Services
– Implementation and Support Services
– Dynamic Publishing Support and Implementation Services
– Engineering and Design Services
– Process Consulting (Lean Product Development Services)
– Product Development System Assessments

The culture at EAC Product Development Solutions revolves around our customers and clients doing things better. We work very hard to be the best product development solutions provider in the world. We strive to do what’s right during every engagement and maintain transparency with our customers. We work diligently to find areas where our company and our clients can work smarter to become more productive and profitable. Most importantly we understand that we work with people. Human beings that need to live, laugh, and enjoy work.

Know that when someone works with EAC they’re working with the best. The best teams, with the best people, focused on the best processes and technologies. We believe there is a better way to develop products and it starts with EAC Product Development Solutions.

Today’s post is a blog entry we swiped from Bettina Giemsa and the PTC Community blog. Not only is it a great topic, she also references our good friend and customer Doug Hippe from Extreme Tool and Engineering.

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“Vacation? No, thanks. I am too busy.”

Sounds familiar?

The timing, the mood, and the purpose all align to produce one perfect moment. It’s the moment you realize that you’ve sparked a partnership that will truly last. We’re talking about a business partnership, naturally.

All joking aside, a true partnership is really a beautiful thing.  Many companies similar in nature to EAC talk about their customers as just that, customers. We believe it is much more than a buyer and seller relationship — we believe in partnerships.

Business to business service and technology providers that focus only on selling, tend to miss the mark when it comes to actually listening to their customer’s woes. The mentality of “I’ll say I’ll do this, but really I am going to do that” is dismally common regardless of the industry or service. I’ve heard horror stories from our patrons about other vendors failing to live up to their end of the bargain.

“We had been looking round and round for a good partner, it was hard because we had been beaten up pretty bad [by previous relationships with VARs].” Said Linda Cave, from Mott Corp.  By using honesty and integrity as a foundation, EAC has built a strong relationship with their organization.

EAC is different. And we have a portfolio of hundreds of patrons that prove it. Here are a select few:

“I haven’t worked with anyone else — but I don’t think I’d want to. We couldn’t ask for a better partner, honestly.”
– Ahmed Kansara, Generation Brands

“I get a statement of work — and that is it! It is not only fair, but it’s 100% accurate. It is perfect every time.”
– Linda Cave, Mott Corp.

“It is nice to have someone there for support… In all, I like how you guys do business.”
– Todd Anderson, Morgan AM&T

“There was a big investment right away on EAC’s side to listen. What sold me was that there was an appropriate amount of time spent [by EAC] up front understanding our business needs.”
– Kevin Caskey, MGK

We don’t mean to brag (ok, maybe a little bit) but why wouldn’t we want to shout this from the rooftops? In the end, it is truly your success that makes us thrive as an organization. In order to do that, we must work together as partners to achieve a common goal. It is as they say, “you complete me”.

By the time you have invested in a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) system, you are ready to overcome the inefficiencies of your current processes, and reap the benefits of improved business operations and profits.  The key to maximizing those benefits lies only partially in the program itself.  The other part rests firmly in the hands of those who will implement the new program.  Making sure your employees know how to use the system to its best advantage will put your company well on its way to achieving its goals.

Employee Training as an Investment

Change, by itself, is often frustrating. Employees using one system for years grow comfortable even with features that do not operate as intended, sometimes designing elaborate work-arounds just to get the job done. Suddenly presented with a new PLM system, these employees may dread the unknown and cling to a subpar system for its familiarity alone.  Getting employees involved with the new PLM system early in the process when bringing a new system on board is important in maximizing its efficient use in your company.

When introducing your new system, start with a reminder of what you learned from your employees about the old system: what problems they were having, where there were inefficiencies or delays, and what impact that had on their ability to get their work done.  Then invite them to see how the new system will help alleviate those issues.  Once they see how they will benefit from your new program, they will be ready for their next step: learning how to use it.

Certified Training Opportunities

Training is available for product design and management programs including Windchill, Creo, Arbortext and more. Options include public or group training events, private training sessions and remote or eLearning opportunities. Web modules offer further employee development.

Whether they breeze through free tutorials and are completely comfortable with the new program, or whether they require more hands-on training, each member of your team will need full access to instruction that will make them experts in using the new PLM program.

You should also consider having a system available for experimentation. Each employee should be able to get the feel for how Creo, other CAD platforms, Microsoft Word, and company procedures work within a system like Windchill. Finally, get feedback from your teams to understand how they feel and what additional assistance they want.  Knowing that you want to give them all the tools possible to make the new program work will remind them that they are important players in helping your company achieve its goals.

How Training Your Employees Helps Your Business

Investing in your employees and their training is time well invested. Employees who are happy in their positions and feel appreciated are likely to stay at your company and take it to a higher level of productivity.  Employees frustrated by not understanding a new system, on the other hand, may look for greener pastures.  Implemented correctly, a new system can enhance not only work efficiency but employee satisfaction as well.

The highest quality, most advanced PLM products on the market are only as good as the employees that use them. Remember to invest in your employees as much as you invest in your technologies.  And when you feel thankful for that new program and the efficiencies it has brought, this time of year is a great time to show thanks to your team for ensuring your business success.

There are a lot of articles out there on what it means to be a team player. They could be from motivational speakers, to well-educated authors, to successful business people. Today, I would like to look to one of my best sources for learning life lessons: my kids, specifically my youngest son in this case.

At the time my son was 8, almost 9. We were having him try various youth sports. One of which was youth football. The age group of his team was 9 and 10 year olds. He was not the smallest kid on the team, but he was one of the youngest and his size reflected that.

It was not long into the session when the coach realized they needed a better center. The current one was having trouble getting the ball into the quarterback’s hands without dropping the ball. The next few practices the coach had various kids try the position. Sure enough, my son, one of the smallest on the team, was good at it.  So, they started playing him as center.

One day (not long after my son started to play this position) he came to me and said that playing this position was hard. He knew it was an important position, and even at his age he felt the pressure. He knew his teammates were counting on him to play his position well…without dropping the ball. He was doing something “outside of his comfort zone”. I told him to just do his best. As long as he knew he had tried his best, no matter what the outcome, he did not have to feel bad. He could hold his head up and be proud of his effort. Slightly to my surprise, that’s exactly what he did. He consistently got the ball in the quarterback’s hands, and still got right up to block the defensive player across the line from them. He even managed the huddle. It was easy to see he was trying his best every time he was on the field. It was not long into the season before he was made captain of his team.

Thinking back on it one day, it occurred to me that this was a very good example of what it means to be a team player. When you’re part of a team, you have to be responsible for your position. You have to play your position to the best of your ability or your entire team suffers. You have to be willing to go outside your comfort zone. If your team has enough players doing this same thing, your team will win. This can easily be related to your role at any company: you are part of a team and your team needs everyone to perform their position to the best of their ability to be able to be successful. Sometimes that means working outside of your comfort zone.

Another part of being on a team is being able to rely on your teammates for help. As I said, my son was one of the youngest on the team, and so one of the smallest. There were times when across the line from him was a kid much bigger than him. Much our dismay, my son still took his role seriously and did his best to block these big kids. But, at times it was just too much for him. The coach would quickly see this, and started having one of the other linemen start to double team my son’s opponent. This worked very well. Not only did it help my son, but the entire team.

This too can be related back to being part of a company today. If you are in a situation that is more than just outside your comfort zone, but outside you experience or ability level, you should ask for help. It is more important to keep a customer happy, or not lose a sale, or not miss a deadline, than it is for you to worry about asking for help. Your ability to ask for help, and having coworkers willing to help others, are a key factor to any successful company.

My son’s team had a winning season that year. Not just because of my son, but because he was not the only one on the team that played his position to the best of his ability. As well has having many kids that were also willing to help other teammates when needed. And…yes…this is a true story.

Sometime the best lessons in life don’t come from those motivational speakers or highly educated authors. Sometimes you just need to look to children to see how we should live our professional and personal lives.

The evolution of management was kicked off during the industrial revolution with the introduction of Taylorism. Frederick Winslow Taylor was responsible for designing the production lines for Henry Ford, and for establishing a management approach for physical labor. His approach focused on time and motion studies to improve manufacturing efficiency. His management approach broke the work down into constituent parts.

1. Responsibility: Deciding what work to do is the role of Management.
2. Knowledge: Deciding how to do the work is the role of an Expert.
3. Action: The person doing the actual work.

This top down, command-and-control structure is the foundation of how we (western organizations) still manage today, a whopping 130 years later.

In WWII, when all of the able bodied men went to war, everyone else entered the manufacturing workforce which sparked a change in the evolution of management. The Army was concerned that these inexperienced manufacturers would not be able to adequately support the resupply of soldiers. Thus, a new idea was introduced to manufacturing: Training Within Industry (TWI).

In TWI, knowledge leaders or experts would train a set of trainers and they would in turn train the workforce. The army collaborated with manufacturers to ensure that new workers operated with optimal productivity. One aspect of this new approach was that if a worker had a better idea of how to do something, management listened. It was the first time that the people actually doing the work were able to provide feedback on the process.

When the soldiers returned from the war, management reverted back to the way it operated before the war, i.e., pure Taylorism. Western business management, including product development has largely advance along this historical path using Taylorism as the basis for management.

Meanwhile, General MacArthur brought TWI and its management concepts adopted during WWII to post-war Japan. At the same time, Deming was working for the army in Japan and taught practices developed at Bell Labs to the Japanese.  Among the practices was PDCA, since dubbed the Deming Cycle. PDCA – Plan, Do, Check, Act – is the primary differentiator between our Taylorism based management approach and the Japanese management approach.

With Taylorism, there is no place for feedback as the people actually doing the work are not in a position to tell the expert what to change. It is the responsibility of the expert to discover the single best way of doing something. In contrast, it is the people who do the work that are the experts in the Japanese approach to product development.