Friday, December 8, 2006

Leadership lessons Got a new example the other day of how (not) to introduce new technology to your workgroup. Say you have a mix of older and younger people. You want to announce a new feature on the workgroup computer application that contains several options. The people work in pairs, so the pair must coordinate. So my new "pointy-haired boss" example explains the new feature to the group. To point out the need for collaboration, she says, "suppose 'John' (who is older and is assumed to not like new technology) doesn't want to use all the features and 'Bill' (who is younger and assumed to like new technology) does. Well then you'll just have to get together and work it out." Fine except that she used names from the group in a pointed way singling out certain people. Once you have established a pattern of pointing out people's supposed faults to the group, then every time you single out people in a meeting it will further deflate morale. It's not really a good way to get people on your side. Better would have been to leave personality out of it. Just explain the features, what they do and why and then how each pair of people will need to get together to determine how they will implement it. Emphasize the why and do a little evangelizing. By the way, it's also not good to assume that young people love technology and old people hate it. My new son-in-law is a great guy, but he's a techno-phobe. There's dirt that's younger than I, but I love technology. Lesson two is watch your assumptions. 9:12:25 PM    comment []

Make2Pack Demonstration I drove down to Cincinnati to the Procter & Gamble central engineering facility yesterday to attend a meeting of Make2Pack or ISA 88 Part 5. The purpose of the meeting was to demonstrate the benefits of adopting a standard approach to control and machine design for packaging machines. After a chat with Dave Chappell of P&G's central engineering staff (also an ISA 88 and Make2Pack leader), I think I finally have a grasp of what the organization is about. This group of end user engineers and technology providers has been working to expand the state model and tag database developed by the OMAC Packaging Working Group (see below) into actual ways of control and machine design. The Cincinnati meeting yesterday showed how several different suppliers had written modular code for their controllers. The impact of this is manyfold and has great potential for cost reductions and better equipment for both packaging machinery builders and their customers. I was surprised to see technology providers there that I had not seen previously at these meetings. The companies involved (and I think there would have been more--as well as more end users in attendance--had it not been for some bad weather that hit Ohio Wednesday night and Thursday morning) were B&R Automation, Baumuller, Beckhoff, Rockwell Automation, Wago and Wonderware. A model form-fill-seal demo was constructed and a B&R Automation controller, then a Rockwell Automation controller, all supervised by a Wonderware HMI were used to control the demo. The programs were written in modular style based on PackML and Make2Pack guidelines. The controllers were connected to the demo equipment alternately with no change in perceivable performance. Because of the standardized use of tags and programming model, the Wonderware setup was minimized to cover an additional controller after configuring the first. Baumuller, Beckhoff and Wago demonstrated their controllers also programmed using the Make2Pack guideline. OEMs will benefit (some already have) through the development of libraries of software modules with standardized nomenclature and methods. After developing these the first time, programming and debug time of subsequent machines can be cut up to 80%. For end users that specify these standards in their procurement, this means faster delivery of machines, faster commissioning and easier integration and maintenance. End users on the committee hope that they will see a price decrease eventually as OEMs adopt Make2Pack. A little history. The organization that began discussing machine control interoperability and standards about 10 years ago--OMAC--developed a packaging machine working group several years ago. This group was very active and developed a state model (PackML) and tag definitions (PackTags) that were common to all packaging machines. The model for this work came from the ISA 88 (batch control) standard. The problem remained about how to bring the state model into reality in actual machinery. A group was formed jointly by OMAC and WBF (the organization formerly known as World Batch Forum) to accomplish this--and thus Make2Pack was born, although now it is the Part 5 committee of ISA SP-88. These groups are all part of the Automation Federation, an umbrella group seeking to coordinate the efforts of manufacturing standards development. 8:25:50 AM    comment []