Transcript of This is what You Must Know before Building an MES System

so after we announced the boot camp I got an email from an old friend a guy I respect a ton um I'm not gonna say who it is because I didn't give him a heads up that I was going to read the email uh but anyway he said um I wanna I wanna read this because he brought up a bunch of good points about mes okay so number one he said Walker this sounds like what we tried to do at enter in company name only to fail before anyone attempts to build their own manufacturing execution system I would strongly suggest a realistic assessment be done of number one what are the short and long-term must-have and desired capabilities yep I agree number two why not use an off-the-shelf solution if there is such a thing number three what is the desired time frame and he put in some points this should also include an assessment of maintenance anything is possible and with eyes wide open you can build a focused mes solution may still be the best approach but it may not be the fastest okay and so this is a really important point and this is one of the real challenges in mes especially as it relates to digital transformation so let me back up here remember a couple of foundational elements digital transformation okay becoming an industry 4.0 company becoming a company where data is your primary commodity becoming a company that plugs into a digital supply chain becoming a company that can recruit and retain the employee of the future by allowing the employee of the future to identify and solve their own problems in a common digital ecosystem okay if you want to become one of those companies your journey starts with education and very early on in the the not only do the individuals get educated but the organization gets educated and what you want if you look at his original statement which is what are the short and long-term must-have and desired capabilities okay you know in order for you to do a real realistic assessment of what you want you must first acknowledge what it is you do know and what you don't know because in digital transformation what you want is a function of what you know I can't ask for some if my if my education my knowledge my vision isn't broad enough I can only ask for things I can only try and solve problems I'm aware of I also can only suggest solutions to problems that I'm aware of based on what I know is what is possible during digital transformation you become much much smarter very quickly that the learning curve is super it's very steep if you look at the technology S curve for continuous Improvement you get smart really really fast as an organization and if what you want is a function of what you know then it naturally follows that what you want is going to change at the same rate your knowledge goes up okay that's a mathematical we can prove that okay so not only do you have to do a realistic assessment of what your short and long-term goals are your must have and desired capabilities but you me you must do a recurring realistic assessment this is why being an agile organization is so important right being agile accepting that just because I said we want to do something today doesn't mean we're going to want to do that two months from now okay and this is a really really really important point okay super important point that you must be doing not just only realistic Assessments in the beginning but you must be doing them iteratively throughout the process you also need to be documenting them one of the things that we love to do is when we'll do like a I will do this generally I'll do a check in with our clients you know I'll come back a year after you know our our team's been working with them for a year and I'll come back and we will basically graph we'll visually show them how much smarter their organization has gotten just based on the things they've requested and I strongly encourage integrators to do this show your customer how much smarter they are just based on the things they request when you first engage Mario ishigawa must see this because I know Mario is you know Big Time engaging with a bunch of different companies at the beginning of their own Journeys Dave Schultz is doing the same thing John McKeon at GIS they're all seeing the same thing in the very beginning when you're engaging with a client that client has a very narrow list of things that they want they have a very narrow View and it's because they are for the most part pretty blind in terms of what the possibilities are with digital transformation and then as you're engaging over time and you're making your clients smarter they engage with you a lot more and they have much stronger opinions about capabilities they want to see and the volume of capabilities they request goes up and you can plot this I mean you can show them hey you're getting smarter that's what this means as an organization you're getting smarter