We tend to operate our businesses like we’re playing a game of telephone…and it’s costing us all money.
You don’t have to be a genius to know that within many companies’ sales, marketing, and R&D teams serve separate functions. With different goals, targets and initiatives these teams tend to collaborate among themselves using the same system of record.

For example, within the same company, a department may rely on Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems while others may depend on Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Manufacturing Execution System data (MES), and Quality Management Systems (QMS).

Marketing, Management, Purchasing, Engineering, Technical Publications and manufacturing all need to operate off product designs and Bill of Materials (BOM), but while doing so people are likely to interrupt engineering to get information.

With this information they ask different questions, have different intentions, and speak different departmental languages.

The reality is; this inaccessible data is about the same product that happens to be housed in a system you can’t normally access.

By resorting to these misaligned processes, we end up operating on data without its entire context, therefore we lose productivity to requests for data and the switching costs of changing tasks.

Besides, these interruptions are generally counterproductive, especially when you’re working on one task and you’re interrupted regarding a completely different topic.

Without a single means to bridge these systems, your company is missing out on valuable information, time savings, and productivity.

We live in a world where siloed departmental communication doesn’t need to be the norm, after all technology is just about everywhere!

By integrating your critical data into a centralized location, your organization will increase visibility, and achieve better, more informed business decisions.

With technology that exists today, your separate departments can pull data from multiple systems into easy role-based dashboards, providing greater visibility and enhanced analysis.

The result is a rapid way for your team to get data from the vast data pool within your organization, and access it in an easy to consume space.

One of the ways we transform the way companies design, manufacture, connect, and service their products is by value stream mapping ‘Product Development Systems’ and looking for ways to ensure people have access to the information they need when they need it.

Tools like Thingworx Navigate, for companies invested in PTC’s Windchill solution, or the standard Thingworx platform and PLM Apps for those that aren’t, are helping companies pull information from different departments, systems, vendors, etc. to make sure every role has a simplified view of the information they need, when they need it, without slowing down any other departments.

We transform the way companies design, manufacture, connect to, and service their products.

To fully grasp how we assist and serve our customers, you need to understand our core organizational beliefs:

• We believe the product development process is broken.
• We believe that there is a better way to achieve business initiatives through product development processes and it all starts with learning.

This is exactly why we created the EAC Value Model. We’re a learn first organization. We focus on taking the LAMDA approach.

What is LAMDA?

The LAMDA is a basic learning cycle of lean product and process development. It literally stands for “look, ask, model, discuss, and act.” Ideologically it is a way to learn and optimize within a closed-loop learning cycle that continually looks to improve a situation by defining and improving root-cause issues.

Our LAMDA based EAC Value Model works as follows.

The first phase of the EAC Value Model: Learn

During the learn phase, our specialists take a first-hand approach with your business. This is when we learn about your business initiatives, ask open-ended questions, and gather information so we can truly understand the key drivers of your business’ success, any the root-cause of any potential areas of improvement.

Throughout this phase we take time to learn about your people, your team, your processes, your technology, and the ways of your organization.

We take an in-depth look at your business from front-office to back-office to determine the how your company can extract the most value from its interaction with EAC.

This leads us to the second phase of the EAC Value Model – The Mutually Agreed Upon Plan or M.A.P.  

The second phase of the EAC Value Model: The M.A.P.

Using the knowledge acquired from our learning exercise, our team creates a unique customized M.A.P for your organization. Your M.A.P. is a Mutually Agreed Upon Plan that incorporates a multiple step strategy, with actionable steps and business cases for your organization.

This phase provides an understanding of what needs to be accomplished in order to achieve your desired results.

Throughout this process we evaluate solutions that may address your organizational needs. Wither they may be through engineering services, educational training services, product development consultations, system implementation services, software solutions; we configure a plan to fit your specific needs.

The creation of the M.A.P. provides a clear path to value for your organization. It holds everyone accountable for the actions needed to solve business problems and tackle initiatives.

Once we have created your mutually agreed upon plan, the implementation phase begins.

The third phase of the EAC Value Model: Implementation

During the implementation phase we put the M.A.P. into action. This is where our teams move your solution from the developmental stage into production.

You could also refer to this stage as ‘deployment’, ‘go live’, ‘roll-out, or even ‘installation’.

The tasks performed during this phase might include installing or implementing CAD, Windchill, Industrial Automation, IoT or any number of other systems. Perhaps your M.A.P. incorporated training programs for your current teams or additional services for product information. No matter what your plan includes, our team works with you to provide any service, system, or additional skill necessary to achieve your desired results. 

Throughout this phase our focus remains on helping your organization become a smart, connected enterprise.

The fourth phase of the EAC Value Model: The Score Card

This is the phase that sets EAC apart. Once we have implemented your solution(s), we never lose focus on gathering feedback on how we did, how a solution is working, or whether the desired outcome or return on investment is being realized…

Remember, our overall goal is to build a long-term relationship with your organization. We feel the best way to do this is by making sure you achieve the success your company needs.

Our business is built around the way your company designs, manufactures, services and connects your products and we recognize, its’ happy customers like you who keep us in business!

With the help of our EAC Score card, we obtain your feedback on how we can continue to help your organization grow. 

Our dream for your organization is to create a smart connected enterprise where you have the ability to connect to your products, your shop floor, and know your predictive downtime before it even happens. We make it our priority to help your organization achieve more than you had had imagined. 

Here’s how connected products are changing service.

Connected products optimize business processes

Lets face it, business is all about efficiency – taking costs and time out of products and processes. This is exactly how connected products optimize business processes.

Connected products provide organizations with access to real-time data that is combined with existing system information to increase efficiency.

For example, you could provide data about your products condition in the field. By doing so, your technicians can be better prepared to troubleshoot. This can reduce the number of onsite visits because technicians have the right instructions or tools required to quickly repair an asset.

Implementing a connected product strategy can improve your first-time fix rate, decrease truck rolls and service calls, and increase the efficiency of your delivery model.

Connected products improve customer experience 

Connected products also positively impact customer experience.

Customers recognize more service value when issues are resolved in one call or service visit. Connected products arm your service team with the information necessary to quickly and effectively address service requests and increase customer satisfaction.

Customer satisfaction correlates to service renewals.

Connected products differentiate offerings

With the use of a connected product platform, your organization will be able to increase the pace of product and service innovation, proactively diagnose and service your products all while increasing the speed of your service delivery.

For instance, if your hardware was a commodity or under heavy competitive pressure, improving the software, applications, and service that came along with your products could help differentiate your offering and help you outpace the competition.

Connected products drive new revenue streams

Connected products help drive new revenue streams by unlocking new business models, reducing customer downtime, meeting SLA’s, and by providing offerings such as “product as a service”. Would your company rather wait for occasional service revenue to come in, or would you rather intelligently monitor, maintain, and update your products for a consistent recurring fee?

Information will fuel the future of products and services. Data can be used to improve, differentiate, and optimize your business. The impact the Internet of Things has had on service delivery and customer experience is staggering. Delivering connected products is the first step to realizing the benefits of a connected product service strategy. We’d like to help you realize your strategy, implement industry-leading solutions, and support your implementation and deployment. Let’s connect.

Part II – (You can read part 1 here) Evolving your BoM strategy, tools, and abilities. “EBoM vs. MBoM” transforms into “EBoM integrates with MBoM.” This integration includes associativity to one another, time saving tools, elimination of error prone manual steps & more.
Imagine eliminating the common disjointed processes, additional time, and error prone manual steps involved in the creation of downstream BoMs from Engineering into Manufacturing, Production and Service management.

Concepts & examples such as Manufacturing Bill of Materials (MBoM) are shown below, all under one system, integrated & associated, and created with a single click. Then they’re easily edited to meet downstream BoM needs.

BoM creation can be streamlined & improved by associatively creating downstream BoMs (S or M or other) and eventually, connecting them to your ERP system. For now, we’ll focus on the first step of this business transformation concept; the creation of the second, or downstream M or SBoM, starting with a simple EBoM example, created in minutes, and easily viewed & tracked.

Who should be involved in this topic at your company? Ideally, your Configuration Manager role should be leading or heavily involved in this process.

The starting point & tool is PTCs Windchill and your willingness to change & improve.

Once your CAD data is ready to check into Windchill, there is an option (check box) to auto-associate the EBoM to a downstream BoM such as an MBoM. It is a 1:1 relationship for starters. Options can branch out from here into many CM (Configuration Management) directions. Such as multi-level BoM management, uses, visualization and more.

Once created, you can manipulate & edit the default 1:1 downstream BoM to your needs; adding bulk items, manufacturing specific sub assemblies, (build throughs) even new service end items. You can also flatten out an EBoM to meet assembly or production needs. BoM items such as adhesive, lubricant, paint or coatings, packaging items, all things that typically are not on an EBoM, can and do belong on the M or SBoM.

If this fits your company’s needs? consider using Windchill’s auto-associate feature.

This article covers a couple examples. If this is not deep enough…here are even more tools to consider. Topics such as creating associated manufacturing instructions, work instructions, work plans and more. Change Management is shown as reference only, it is an optional element of Windchill for another blog.

There are many options to this topic, these are common examples that fit a lot of needs and is considered a starting point.

1^stexample shows all BoM & change components all connected in one system vs. manually done in silo fashion, which is industry’s most common method today. These examples are shown in PTCs Windchill reference viewer tool, which ties all related objects into view for easy visibility with just a few clicks.

1. 1. EBoM structure (highlighted in green) 
2. 2. Change requests, notices and tasks (highlighted in red) 
3. 3. MBoM structure (highlighted in blue) with their own, or connected Change Management Requests, Notices & Tasks

2^ndexample shows an EBoM, SBoM (Service Kit in this example), with a saleable end item service kit, as well as components for service or manufacturing BoMs. It also shows Changes, these can also be created, edited, routed, approved or rejected, and even include the SBoM if need be. 

Please connect with EAC to learn more, to discover your company’s transformation opportunities with an assessment, maybe see a demo, or attend a webinar. The goal is to help your company transform how you design, manufacture, connect to and service your products.

The EAC Product Development Operating System is a framework that is based on three attributes of the product development system: that it is a competitive system; that its operation requires team-based participation from a broad range of contributors across the organization; and that it changes, evolves or decays, over time.

Many product developers have limited direct contact with their customers or their marketplace and lose sight of the competitive nature of their work.  The rows of the PDOS matrix represent the three elements of a competitive system in the context of Product Development.  Companies that look to capture the benefit of a competitive advantage from their product development competency cannot do so, without also addressing the needs and requirements of competitive systems.

The concept of teamwork in Product Development is well recognized and valued as a key to effective and efficient operation.  Many will immediately think of the cross functional team that executes a project in adherence to an organization’s product development process.  But as our model takes a systems view of which the process is a constituent element, our conception of the system team is higher level with the project team just one element of it.   Product development system excellence is dependent upon individuals and teams in each hierarchical tier of the organization.  These are responsible for supplying input to other subsystem elements of the model essential to these other subsystems’ effective operation. Our model represents this system team element as the columns of the PDOS matrix.  These pillars of the system are labeled both with their functional role within the PDOS and with the tier of the organization responsible for that role.

The third attribute of our operating system is that it is dynamic.  Without the investment of maintenance or improvement energy, entropy will degrade its structure and operation.  On the other hand, a commitment to ongoing improvement will facilitate maturing of the system and carry it through the four levels of our maturity model. Our maturity model includes a system improvement tool that not only accelerates the rate of maturing but also damps the organizational turbulence often characteristic of transitions to a new level of maturity.

The subsystem elements of our model exist in the cells of our matrix.  The relative strengths of these elements vary during progress to full maturity; at full maturity the seven elements interact in harmonic balance.

Three elements of a competitive system:

Our most visible competitive systems are sports franchises, and the keys to their success are instructive for business operation:

1. Successful teams start with getting on the same page, literally.  The team’s knowledge is captured in carefully guarded Playbooks and Game Plans.  Everyone understanding the common goal and their role in it is a key to success.  Successful, systematic businesses operate with shared goals that are captured in long term strategies, shorter term initiatives, and near term tactical plans.
2. Teams invest time and energy in becoming more capable of competing well.  The clearest example of this is practice, time spent working on improving the individual and collective skills that are brought to the competition.  But the improvement to competence also includes improved infrastructure, equipment, anything that better positions the team to compete.  Do businesses generally make this investment in planful improvement to their product development competency with the mind’s eye on the competitive nature of product development?
4. And finally there is the competition itself.  For teams the competition is head to head, and the metric is clear and clearly displayed on a scoreboard.  In product development, the competing occurs in the execution of a program or project.  The ultimate metric for product development is its productivity, total value created against the total investment made in creating this value.  Execution of a project is the game, execution of the portfolio’s roadmap is the season.  The ultimate competitive nature of product development is frequently lost in the common check-box nature of administrative project management.

The rows of the PDOS matrix:

In the EAC Product Development Operating System model, the rows represent the three elements of a competitive system.  The Information row establishes the knowledge that must be shared – strategy, initiatives, tactics, process workflows – among all product development team members to create common goals and unify efforts.  The Preparation row focuses on the improvement efforts that raise the level of corporate competence.  And the Project row is where it all comes together, where we execute the game plan and compete.

Pillars of the System:

The columns of our system represent the pillars of the PDOS.  Each pillar has two identifiers; the Product Development sub-team associated with that pillar and the focus of the contributing work done by that sub-team within that pillar.

Knowledge Base:

Knowledge is the Value currency of Product Development, and the PD Knowledge Base supports and glues together the other PD operational subsystems.  The PD Information System, beyond housing data and information that serve as the building blocks of PD knowledge, also holds standards, transactional processes’ workflow, and functional tacit knowledge shared between project teammates.  PLM has emerged as the critical PDIS tool.

Strategic Planning:

The work that culminates with a successful new product being delivered to market initiates with the development of a Strategic Plan.  The compass heading provided by the plan informs decision making throughout the organization, including within the other PDOS subsystems.  Critical decisions regarding the investments in the development of core and other competencies, as well as of new products align to the strategy.

Innovation (New Knowledge):

The Innovation subsystem elevates the competitive capability of the organization, its competences.  It creates new knowledge in the form of disruptive technologies and novel methods of applying current technologies.  It focuses on challenging all existing organizational standards, looking to continuously improve how it operates, and to compete in the marketplace from a position of greater strength and competitive advantage.

Expert Workforce Development:

In any competitive venue, it is understood that success ultimately relies on having great players.  The competitive performance of your players is developed outside of the bounds of the competition itself.  The intention of, commitment to and execution of investing in all of your product-development-critical subject matter experts – your assets –not only directly results in a more competitive team, but facilitates the recruitment of additional skilled players.

Investment Strategy:

The actual marketplace competition fulfilled by product development  begins with strategic decisions about how to execute the product roadmap and elaborate the product portfolio.  The informed decisions that lead to the significant investments incurred by product development create both the range and limits on profitability and corporate growth over the mid-range future. This late maturing subsystem determines the level at which you’ll compete.

Knowledge Based Decision Making:

The Knowledge Based Decision Making subsystem is the Product Development sibling to the executive function’s Fact Based Decision Making.  While KBDM permeates successful Product Development organizations, in the actual competitive venue of development projects, the critical decisions that are captured as the product Concept are informed by pre-existing and newly generated knowledge of the marketplace and of corporate capabilities.

Project Execution:

The Project Execution subsystem is the part of the Product Development System that in the most narrow of views is seen as Product Development.  The realization of the expanded view of the Product Development System does not diminish the critical importance of execution.   Supported by new execution paradigms and product development specific information technology tools, longed for improvements in project predictability and reliability are now being achieved.

Tiers of the Organization:

Each of the three tiers in the organizational hierarchy – the executive, the managerial, and the individual functional specialist tiers – makes critical contributions to the effective functioning of a fully developed product development system.

Functional Roles within the PDOS:

The Product Development System Team comprises members in the executive, managerial, and individual subject matter layers of the organization.  Each tier of the organization contributes to the effectivity of the system:

Executives set strategic direction, including the investment strategy for product development.

Directors and managers are guardians of critical product development knowledge and responsible for seeing that the right knowledge is available to the right individuals at the right time.

The functional specialists, subject matter experts generate new knowledge and use this and pre-existing knowledge in the execution of product development projects.

Maturity Model:

The EAC Maturity Model is a four level model that distinguishes the degree of structure and organization in the product development system at different periods in the evolution of the competency.  The four maturity levels are:

• Tribal & Heroic
• Silo’ed
• Systematic
• Intelligent (self-managing)

System Improvement Tool:

EAC recognizes the value to both the rate of maturing and the ultimate level of maturity that is provided by a well ingrained root-cause problem solving system.  The best of these are based on the PDCA cycle, also known as the Deming Cycle.  Developed at Bell Labs in the early 20^thcentury, and introduced to Japan in the wake of World War II, PDCA played a significant role in the rapid recovery and rise of Japanese industry.  A particular version of PDCA was developed by Allen Ward, modeled on the way PDCA is executed at Toyota, and tailored by Ward to suit the way Americans prefer to work.

Today we continue our discussion about System Archetypes with an archetype known as “Accidental Adversaries.” This system starts with two partners working to cooperate, but it leads to a negative outcome. The cooperation comes from each partner filling a need of the other. But, once the cooperation or system is put in place, each of them looks to individually optimize their part of the operation — a local optimization. This local optimization has unintended negative consequences for the partner. As each partner feels the negative consequence of what the other is doing, feelings erode, the partnership dissolves, and both sides feel the other side is inconsiderate and taking advantage of them.

The classic example used to highlight Accidental Adversaries is that of Walmart and Proctor & Gamble. Walmart needed product for their shelves and P&G needed distribution for their products. So the two companies cooperated. Once the cooperation was in place P&G tried to improve their position by running a lot of specials and sales. This created extra work and costs for Walmart. Walmart tried to recover those costs by buying extra quantities of the discounted product, stockpiling, and then burning through their inventory after the prices went up — selling them at full price to make extra profit and recover the burden put on them by the sales themselves. Proctor & Gamble then started running more sales to move more product and make up for the loss, and this turned into a cycle. Both sides felt the other side was operating against their interest and this cooperative venture became an adversarial relationship.

We see something similar happening in our organizations. Let’s use the relationship between marketing and engineering as an example. Marketing needs some organization to realize their vision and design. Engineering needs someone to come up with a vision and awareness of what the market needs in order to execute and do their work. As marketing learns, deep into a development project, some new information, they will try feeding it into a project. This is often called scope creep. Engineering will try their best to fulfill the new requirement. However, it may cause a problem for engineering. It may cause a project to be late. So, engineering puts in place some rigid rule like a spec freeze. Marketing, losing the flexibility of the process, will amp up its early requirements and put in stretch goals instead real goals. The idea being that if engineering can meet the stretch goals, then the product will still be strongly competitive in the market place. This cycle repeats itself and marketing and engineering find them selves in an adversarial relationship.

The antidote for this archetype is dialogue — continuing dialogue about the cooperation throughout the entire life of the system. Dialogue can’t end once the initial system in place. There needs to be ongoing dialogue between marketing and engineering. This is part of the design of the interface between the two groups. To come full circle, design of the interface is one of the key elements of systems and systems thinking…the topic that we’re heavily focused on in this series.

Contact us to learn more about how Systems Thinking and the application of our Product Development Operating System can help your organization become more efficient, productive, innovative, and competitive. Follow Bill at http://www.twitter.com/systhinking