A Message From A Mill Girl and Emu's Skypes

A Message from The Mill Girl

STOP THE PRESSES!

I've always wanted to say that, but it wasn't until the weekend when Emu

skyped me ranting about IT and Lean, something about Firewalls and Big Data - and how would a primitive creature from the Outback be hearing about Big Data and the Cloud anyway? - that I realized that this creature who can't fly and only has prehensile wings might have something going there. Emu says we can't really bring manufacturing back to the US until we bulldoze the Firewall. Huh?

"What firewall?" I interjected between his squawks and honks.

"Why the firewall between IT and manufacturing, " he blasted. "Haven't you been listening? I read your restrained review of Beyond Lean, you know, that book from the MIT professors? Now go read the Shingo Guidelines for Pete's sake, and then come back and tell me about IT."

I mumbled and hesitated.

"You know," he continued with great irritation, an aggrieved rasp distorting his voice, "we've been talking about this for months - you called it an anti-technology bias. Go fix it, take down the firewall, plug the computers in again, and I'll get back to you next month."

And then..... he was gone from the screen... at least until after the holidays. A Mill Girl

When we lose manufacturing, what happens to the hollowed-out town? Well, unemployment checks. And people become fat commuters. Nobody walks to work and the kids can’t walk to the big consolidated schools. It’s unhealthy, and it breeds government improvement efforts that focus on diet and exercise… duh

Our theme is the Integrated Enterprise. It’s time to put the pieces together, but as Emu says in his nightly Stealth Skypes, he sees a big black chasm between supply management and the Cult of Lean. We’re simply not ready to bring back the manufacturing we gave up in the 70s and 80s. We’ve got twenty plus years of hollowed and rusted out infrastructure that simply won’t support the weight of our global industries. We’ve unplugged the computers and focused on single digit over-simplified improvement philosophies. We let our systems break apart and die. Too many good companies have let their Bill of Material structures crumble. Steve Jobs told the President that if he could have come up with 30,000 mfg engineers, he would have kept the iPad in the US. And where are the iPads now? They’re in China, not the US!

Even our organization structures have fractured and grown apart. It frustrates me greatly. There is a basic hierarchy problem in organizations that separates the supply management people who can cut costs and create revenue big time from the people in the manufacturing organization who focus on limited opportunity areas.

Supply management and Tech can put the pieces together, starting with outsourced contract manufacturing. But we face some challenges with Big Data, Cloud computing, technology stretched over fragmented global networks,risk management and a legacy of anti-technology bias in manufacturing.

Remains of the Pepperell Paper Company mill on the Nashua River's Babbitassett Falls in East Pepperell, Ma,,demolished in the summer of 2011.

Babbitassett means in the Algonquian language "between two streams."

There had been mills - a grist mill, a forge, and later a rag paper mill founded by And Emerson in 1837,

here since the 1700s. The red wooden structure sits over what would have been the sluiceway

to drive water turbines next to a brick building erected on what started out as an island on the Nashua River.

The Anti-Technology bias

Despite the proliferation of certificates and awards, no one but Emu is addressing the Big Question of Integration. Lean certification and training houses, as well as Shingo Awards and their guidelines, despite the millions of dollars spent on these initiatives do not include key pieces of the Integration challenge, especially IT. It’s all there, folks, scattered, and it’s time to put the pieces together. Our theme is Integration, Putting it all together. This is a huge challenge, one that we've ---

But wait, excuse me, do you hear that noise? Yes, I’m getting some buzzing here- yes, yes, it’s…..We have a Communication from Emu, The Stealth Skyper. I swear he slips into the motel office under cover of darkness and ravages my work time with badly spelled emails – he’s only got those little claws on the end of his prehensile wings, and Skype.

A Message from Emu

Hey – I want to talk about The Shingo Prize and Technology –

Yes, technology, I’m still on it, the big T word. Emus don’t give up easily, we were built to survive in the Outback. We eat dirt for Pete’s sake to digest our diet of small mammals and insects and we can go for days without water. We’re tough birds… er animals.

Anyway, back to Assessments, a big piece of the big Integration puzzle.

Speaking of puzzles, when you do a jigsaw puzzle, do you start with the edges, or find a familiar object or face in the pile of pieces, and go from there? Go to the Shingo Award guidelines and tell me – you can write to me, put Emu in the topic line, c/o BlueHeronJournalstaff@gmail.com and my staff will read me your message - so tell me how well this vision of Supply Management represents the integrated technology-enabled enterprise.

Not a lean clean-up process from 15 years ago.

Not a post WWII labor-intensive Japan struggling to rebuild its damaged factories and cities.

Not the glutted labor and inventories so evident in 1960/1970 US operations.

Will you find the appropriate tools on page 3, or on page 8 or page 21, or page 27? There’s a lot of talk about culture change and transformational process, and support processes (is that what Global Supply Management is?), and networking systems and support for 400 points on page 27.

Now, tell me, Emu, how this segment of the Shingo guidelines will help us put the pieces together.

You’re right - it won’t - because it can’t. Because the document doesn’t address technology.

That’s a huge missing piece, coming from the US, the creative base of so many technology assists, the “must haves” for a global supply chain. Even if the US were to bring back textiles, electronics, small cars, appliances from their new production spots offshore, we need technology to manage global networks.

It’s time to plug the computers in folks, it’s time.

***

Midnight in the Beater Room, St. Regis Paper Company on the Nashua River at Babbitassett Falls, East Pepperell, Massachusetts, 1969. Photo by Herm McDowell, with permission.

***

TECH RULES!

Lean is an assumption!

IT is a necessity!

Emu says - his photo right here on Blue Heron Journal - he thinks he's entitled -

Enable Engage Manufacturing Management Unity!

INTEGRATE TECH AND LEAN - MANUFACTURING AND SUPPLY CHAIN!

LET'S PUT THE PIECES TOGETHER PEOPLE!

IT'S TIME! A Mill Girl

AND YET AN EARLIER SKYPE FROM THE UBIQUITOUS EMU:

Listen up folks, Emu here. We gotta talk. There’s been too many – excuse me, I must attend to an annoying grasshopper making his way over my foot – there, that’s better, yum – took care of the bugger.

As I was saying, we are long overdue, thirty years overdue in fact, to talk about some serious technology challenges. Yes, I’m an emu and I used the T word…

What, are you surprised?

The T word, the T word. You know, technology – as in optimization of supply networks, and risk management modeling, and new product development simulators. Technology, I could eat it for breakfast, except there’s nothing here in the outback but small crunchy insects and slimy amphibian morsels. So I make do.

But back to technology. How in the world would you expect your typical average design engineer or operative – that’s what she, the Blue Heron lady, calls supply chain and manufacturing folks nowadays – in fact she told me that’s what her ancestor Paul Moody used to call the Yankee mill girls he imported to Lowell from the Waltham prototype factory in 1814 – operatives.

So how would you expect an industry operative of the human species to plan and work well with millions of 10-digit part numbers traveling at supersonic or maybe ocean borne speeds through dozens of ports and customs gates and warehouses and shipping docks and distribution centers – wait, gotta take a breath – okay – as I was saying, how in the world would one expect a good operative to manage the moneyed flotsam and jetsam that he launches daily, even minute by minute, into the global goods network without technology?

I’m an emu, okay, so I’m not talking spreadsheets – we don’t got no spreadsheets out here in the Outback. But we’ve got eyes to see, and let me tell you, the complexity and the number of things that can go wrong is blinding, even for a bird with 50x eyeball power. I can spot a chasm 100 yards out, and believe me you got one. You should hear what the lean folks say about supply management! It’s ugly. Hey, gotta go, sun shift, catch ya later. E.

Well, that was some missive! Emu says he sees a big cloud of technology expertise sweeping east toward the US, and we welcome it to the Integrated Enterprise. We've had the Quality Crusades, the MRP Wars, the Re-engineering Battles, the ISO Incursions, The Cult of Lean, and we're ready to Integrate! It's time to put the pieces together kids! We've earned it!

And there is so much money in the Integrated Enterprise cleaned and clarified by lean manufacturing as a foundation overlaid with elegant simple IT! Let's do it! A Mill Girl

Patricia E. Moody, Publisher

Fortune magazine "Pioneering Woman in Manufacturing"

Industry Week IdeaXchange Xpert

Patriciaemoody@gmail.com, www.patriciaemoody.com

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