There’s a lot of buzz these days about leveraging the internet and the ‘cloud’ for business — especially in the realms of product development. Phrases like Internet of Things (IoT), Machine 2 Machine, Product as a Service, Internet of Everything, Cloud Things, Connected Products and others get thrown around daily. Regardless of the term you use, the real intent of any of these IoT projects is to generate some additional value. That could be from more capability, deeper customer interaction, predictive maintenance, new revenue streams, market share, knowledge of how the product is being used or many other scenarios. I thought it would be fun to leverage it for gardening!

This time of year, there are a lot of northern gardeners are doing a dance with garden plants they’ve started from seed while winter was still rolling along. Now the seedlings want to be outside in the sun, but its too cold at night. The plants are getting crowded and too big to park in a window in the living room. Build a plastic tent outside as a make-shift greenhouse and it’s too hot during the day. So you’re left with shuffling the plants inside and outside to follow the spring sun and avoid a late frost. But how do you balance this while keeping your day job?

Enter the IoT and a little project in our parking lot… With a little creativity, some parts we had around and a few extra parts from the thrift store, we built an ‘almost’ free greenhouse we can monitor through any web-browser. Our interest at first is simply to monitor the temperature, relative humidity and light level both inside and outside the greenhouse. It’s fun to see the values ebb and flow with the day and with the weather. This was achieved through an Ethernet connected Arduino wired to a photoresistor and a pair of DHT11 Digital Humidity and Temperature sensors. Currently the system feeds into ThingSpeak for graphical representation with plans to port it over to ThingWorx in upcoming days.

Since the sun is hot this time of year but the cold weather isn’t over, we’ll likely experience some high temperature spikes and some cold nights that could damage the tomatoes. This brings up phase 2 — ‘control.’ Our near term plans are to have powered ventilation and heating to kick in either by reaching through the internet or with the internal controller. Eventually we’ll get to a fully autonomous greenhouse that manage temperature, have sensors in the soil monitoring moisture and turning on/off soaker hoses and misting fans all the while keeping us informed on a smart phone. Those are going to be happy tomatoes with their own twitter account…

Maybe all this tech and automation will take some of the fun out of gardening and fiddling with the plants to get it ‘just right’. What’s more likely is that it will just encourage the acquisition of more plants and the need for a bigger garden and a bigger greenhouse with more automation — but that would be fun too…

EAC Product Development Solutions is a Minnesota based company providing engineering and product development software, service and consulting to the discrete manufacturing industry. With 20 years of product development experience, EAC is seeking to help companies that desire to get more from their products through the IoT. We engage in all aspects of product strategy, product design and enabling technology to achieve those goals. Please contact Rob at rmiller@eacpds.com to find out more.

I’d like to talk about systems thinking in the context of your overall product development operation.

At EAC we’ve developed a framework that we use to analyze the operation of product development at our customers and clients. Our Product Development Operating System, this framework, is broken down into three subsystems. The first is an Information Flow subsystem. The second is a Workflow subsystem. The third is a Continuous Improvement subsystem. The Information Flow subsystem is analyzed as a whole, but the other two are broken down into subsystems of their own.

Within the Workflow subsystem we have an Innovation subsystem, a Leadership subsystem, and an Investment decision subsystem. In the all-important, critically important but often missing, Continuous improvement subsystem — we break that into Expertise, Learning, and Strategy. All of the elements of this system are critically important for your system to operate optimally. If you have a missing or sub-optimal subsystem, the effectiveness and productivity of your overall product development system will diminish.

So let me challenge you. Look at your product development system. Look at it through this framework — through Information Flow, through Innovation, through Leadership, through Investment Decisions, through Development of Expertise, through learning, and through strategy. Are any of these elements in your operation either ineffective or missing? If they are missing, or ineffective, don’t be too concerned. Moving to a product development operating system is an evolution. Your evolution simply may not be complete.

In fact, look to other materials in this series called the Product Development Operating System Evolution. That will give you both a mental model to reinforce your knowledge of the system and some insights into how to evolve your system to one that is more effective and productive.

Contact EAC 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

Here at EAC we view Product Development as a system. This stands in counterpoint to the traditional western way of looking at product development as a process. In fact when we promote product development as a system, and that thinking as being more important than looking at it as a process, we often get head scratching in return.

Western traditional management likes to break work down into small pieces and delegate them as tasks. It reduces work into a set of repeatable steps. In some parts of the business that’s wonderful. Think of manufacturing or any area where the process is transactional and non-variable. In those instances process thinking is terrifically beneficial. We can take repeatable steps and proceduralize them because we know if we follow steps exactly we will get consistent output results. Think again of the manufacturing line or something mundane like washing the dishes. You clear the table, scrape the scraps into the wastebasket, rinse the plates to see if anything is baked on or caked on, and then you load the dishwasher and push the button. Then you return later and you get the desirable, repeatable, results of clean dishes.

When we moved to this mental model of product development as a process or process thinking, at first it was advantageous. We brought in patterns of behavior. We broke product development down to milestone phases. It was advantageous to provide guidance to project managers as they trek through milestone phases. But, as issues arose additional management responsibilities and details were added to the process. The focus of product development / project management shifted from the creation of market based value to an administrative checklist — checking the steps you’ve actually accomplished in your product development process.

The way we now implement stage-gate process in product development has made it almost impossible to have a successful project. The antidote to that is to start applying systems thinking. Systems thinking is based upon, not a collection of elements in a system but, the interaction of the elements of the system — the dynamic. We see people, processes, teams, technology, and tools all as elements in the product development system. The operational dynamic between these elements is what determines the quality of your workflow, your information flow, and if you’ve embraced it, your continuous improvement operation inside of product development.

If your product development environment is characterized by conflict and hostility, then you’re probably locked into a restrictive and constrictive process thinking approach to product development. Shift your thinking from that linear process thinking — Task, Complete, Task, Complete — to the closed loop ideas of systems thinking where you have feedback loops and mutual cause and effect of the elements within your operation.

Process thinking was a meaningful advance in the 20th century. It brought improvement to product development, but it’s time to move on to Systems thinking. As you take what ever your washing machine is and redesign it, don’t do it with process thinking, do it with systems thinking. We’re 15% of the way through the 21st century. It’s time you joined the 21st century revolution in systems thinking.

Contact EAC 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.

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.

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”.

I have the great privilege of talking with many of our customers about their experiences with technology and our service options. During many of those conversations I hear customers talk about how challenging adopting technology has been for them. In fact, I hear the same few phrases over and over again. “It takes so much time to get spooled up.” “We don’t have time to learn new technology.” “It’s such a hassle to send everyone through training with new releases.” And, I’d bet that many of you have also said something along those lines.

Many organizations hesitate to update or change technology, especially CAD technology, because it can dramatically impact time to market and project capacity. It simply isn’t realistic to stop or slow production to allow for your CAD users to become familiar with a new tool.

I’m not surprised that this is a common thread among organizations. Many of our customers have told me stories about weeks of downtime and months of a brutal tug of war between man, computer, and the worst enemy of all — change.

But don’t worry; I’ve got some good news. Our customers who have upgraded from versions of Pro/ENGINEER to the new and improved Creo Parametric are seeing a major difference when it comes to adoption. Simply put, it’s easy and fast. I’m not talking about just a few customers who have experienced this — it’s all of them.

Dan Gage, Mechanical Engineer at JR Automation, said, “The transition to Creo Parametric 2.0 was much easier than moving from Wildfire 3.0 to 5.0. The interface is incredibly user friendly, the modeling portion is a lot more intuitive, and the ribbon interface makes it simple to navigate. Everything is right at your fingertips.” JR Automation was able to ramp up and get moving 50% faster than any other CAD release before it.

Imagine what that could mean for your business. It certainly makes the idea of adopting a new technology much, much brighter. So, if you haven’t done so already, try out Creo to see what our customers have been bragging about.