This week's industrial roundup includes articles discussing supplier quality management, the best technologies for food companies, manufacturing operations management implementation, and manufacturing intelligence.
Is there a positive correlation between supplier quality/performance and scorecards? Michael Rapaport of IQS explains how capabilities such as scorecards can yield a 20% increase in accurate measurement of supplier metrics such as on-time delivery and cost of poor quality. As supplier performance is key to every organizations’ continuous improvement initiatives, it is important to remember the impact a scorecard can have. Also included in this article an eBook on Best Practices for Managing Supplier Performance. The scorecard debate continues.
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James Montgomery, Product Manager at Apriso, compares a real-life example of the human nervous system reacting to touching a hot surface with the reaction time of a machine producing bad parts. The faster you remove your hand from that scorching surface or the quicker the machining error is captured, the less negative impact to results. Montgomery describes this as the feedback loop: faster feedback = lower pain, and that feedback must be understood (which is where manufacturing intelligence comes into play). Do you have a highly efficient manufacturing nervous system?
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Plex Systems recently hosted a webinar with Olin Thompson, industry consultant and contributing editor of Food Engineering magazine, discussing the technologies that are available for improving operations across the entire enterprise of food and packaging companies. Thomspon shares best practices that provide a competitive advantage, and:
- how the latest technologies streamline processes, reduce costs, and improve productivity
- how operational efficiency and competiveness can be improved through certain approaches and resources
- how lean-focused integration can reduce waste and provide complete production visibility
- how certain technologies eliminate redundancy throughout the entire lifecycle from product development to production to delivery
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Manufacturing operations management (MOM) has proven to monitor and integrate disparate business and manufacturing activities for safer, more efficient, and profitable operations. Comprehensive system integration is complex and challenging due to the inclusion of cross-organizational people, processes, and technologies. In this recent article, Mark Davidson provides recommendations for implementation and achieving manufacturing operational excellence in 5 steps. Read more.
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LNS provides additional, in-depth details on how to successfully implement MOM applications, align them to overall business goals, and harmonize people, processes and technology to achieve a sustainable model of operational excellence in the Manufacturing Operations Management Best Practices Guide.
In Ray Wang’s recent post on the state of affairs in the Industry Analyst world he does a nice job of calling attention to a troublesome trend, “pay for play tactics”. It is refreshing to see an analyst write about this topic candidly and anyone who has worked with LNS knows this is a topic very dear to our hearts. An especially poignant example of our position on this issue was highlighted in our recent blog post on “EQMS Vendors to Watch in Life Sciences”, which now has almost 20 comments, many on this exact topic.
In Rey’s post he provides a proposed “Code of Conduct” for both analysts and technology vendors. I like much of what he says, especially around providing transparency of who are paying clients. To understand which firms in the industry are pay-for-play, all one has to do is follow the money. Many “analyst” firms today have either completely abandoned the buy-side of the business or moved to a pure lead-generation model; both of which means the best interest of the “buy-side” is not being maintained.
Clearly, Ray is concerned that Constellation Research maintains objectivity and by providing his client list publicly it is clear that both the buy and sell side is well represented. Over the coming weeks we will move to publish the LNS client list in a similar fashion. We are proud of our clients and believe the list to be robust on both the buy and sell side. Our client list, as with Ray’s, also reveals that many of the sell-side vendors we write about are not clients and many of our current sell-side vendor clients are direct competitors; all of which demonstrates our need for objectivity.
I hope other firms follow suit and I am interested to hear other’s thoughts on the industry.
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