Transcript 0:00 [on-hold music] Talk to me. Information, news and entertainment on demand. WUS radio.com. 0:11 [on-hold music] Welcome to The Peggy Smedley Show, the voice of IoT in our connected world with your host, Peggy Smedley. [on-hold music] Hello, listeners, and welcome back to The Peggy Smedley Show. 0:26 My next and final guest of the day is a long and dear friend of mine. 0:31 For the past twenty-five years, his company has worked side by side with management employees to improve operational results throughout the manufacturing industry. 0:40 In addition, his previous work as a naval architect and marine engineer has helped groups make the transition from mainframe to PC-based technology. 0:48 Please join me in welcoming Paul Vragel, president for, For a Better Business. Paul, welcome to the show. Hello, Peggy. Thanks, and it's great to be with you again. 0:59 You know, Paul, it's been a long time since you've been on the show, so I'm so glad to have you on. It's, it's just exciting. I feel like we're having a big hug right over the radio show here. [laughs] So it's great. 1:08 It's great to hear your voice. So let's talk about it. You know what? My guest today, we've been talking about, um, getting manufacturing companies to actually b- embrace this digital kind of thinking. 1:20 And, you know, you are one man that really gets having people do a lot of change management. 1:25 You know, that idea that, you know, even when you came here to help us think differently about process and, you know, it's, it's hard to get people, employees to think differently. 1:34 And that's what we are in this digital world. People have to think differently. You know, how do you do it? How do you get companies to, to, to get out of their own selves, you know, to think a little differently? 1:47 Well, we founded, founded For a Better Business on, uh, on a couple key principles. 1:51 One, uh, ninety plus percent of the issues in a company are embedded in the system with large people, process, technology, information, all that. And the employees are the world's experts at their local systems. 2:07 One of the keys to getting technology implementation is to really understand what is the business process, where are the critical outcomes, and from a technology perspective, know where the value is to support and improve those outcomes. 2:29 And of course, one of the things that requires is speaking in the terms that management understands in terms of outcomes as opposed to just capabilities in software. 2:44 Well, when you think about that, though- So those are- But, but, but take a step back when you say that. Th-think about the software, though. I mean, you, you get different people think about it differently, though. 2:54 You've got a lot of different ages now. You know, you've got an aging workforce, you got millennials. I mean, uh, somebody out here-- out there is going, "Yeah, that's easier said than done." So that's... 3:03 I didn't mean to interrupt, and I apologize for that, but I'm sitting there going- No. No... you know, you've got different mind... And that's what our last guest said. You know, you've got an, an... 3:11 You know, you've got a different mindset. How do you get them? I mean, it takes days now. 3:16 I mean, it was easier when you had one age group, but now you, you got a different group sitting in that room, and you're starting to get them to think about things. Well, the, the, the common understanding of process 3:31 bridges, uh, really all of those gaps because that common understanding lets people apply different perspectives to say, with that common understanding, here's what we could do, here's what we have done. 3:47 Um, I had a-- I just did a, a presentation at the University of Michigan and, and laid out an approach of how do we get to that common understanding. 3:56 And, uh, [laughs] when I, when I posed the question to them, all forty of the millennials immediately shot up their hands and agreed that would be a way they would like to work. 4:07 And it, and it came down to that common understanding of process and understanding how do you get... What, what kind of decisions are you trying to make? 4:20 Uh, where is the information that people need to be able to make those, uh, those decisions? And what does that result turn into in outcomes for the business? 4:36 But it really comes down, back down to that common understanding of process. Understanding is, understanding is easy. Common understanding is really where the rubber meets the road on that. 4:51 So do you get buy-in from that? I mean, is the idea that you say, "Look, I've get this amazing buy-in from top down. Is it bottom up?" How do you get that buy-in from that approach? 5:02 So we start with that, th-those two core pieces, I s- I said. Ninety percent of the issues are in the system, and the employees are the world expert. And, and literally, I start by 5:15 starting a kickoff of a major initiative like this by expressly saying that. First, management has to be on, this has to be on a no-fault basis. But second, the employees are the world's experts at their local process. 5:33 And if you freely acknowledge that upfront and that you're going to use it, use that expertise, collect the understanding of the processes, fix things as we find them with no fault involved. 5:52 Uh, we've, [laughs] 5:54 we've actually gotten that kind of buy-in, everybody raising their hand saying yes in seventeen minutes.It sounds incredible, but, but that level of directness and respect for what people know and the knowledge they have of their individual processes, 6:14 uh, it's, it, it works wonders in terms of getting their engagement and participation and, and collaboration. Can you speak about the technology implementations in which you've been involved in? 6:28 'Cause that thing, I think is a, a key part of all of this. Sure. Uh, we had a, a recent example of a, an, uh, a company that needed... They, they had issues with delivery. They had issues with inventory. And 6:46 nominally, what might have made the most sense was, well, let's think about, uh, a barcode system. 6:56 And it actually took, uh, quite a while to get to the point where we could actually clean up the processes so that the inventory that was being, uh, that was part of that system, 7:10 we, we were no longer manufacturing bad inventory. 7:14 And, and along the way, we identified a couple thing, a number of things that I think are good cautionary tales for anybody doing a large-scale, uh, technology implementation. O-On the one hand, uh, we, 7:30 we had to work with a company that had not kept their software up to date. So that turns out to be a critical piece because that affects functionality and the ability of other modules to work with that. 7:45 Uh, Wi-Fi in the warehouse. It's, it's not as simple as it sounds. There's an issue that people may be aware of called sticky clients, and it affects the accuracy of data capture. Uh, the, 8:01 the module that the software vendor provided for doing integration of the data into the, directly into the MRP system, in fact, was 8:14 not f-not correctly functioning on a number of key aspects. So test the software you're going to use. Test the critical pieces. Uh, test them to break them, and find out where those issues are. 8:28 You can address those before you go live with it. Obviously, employee participation and buy-in to do all of this. Uh, I'll, I'll give you one example as, as a part of this. 8:40 When we went live, everybody was concerned about getting bad data into the MRP system, so we actually set up something called the Good Stop program. 8:53 We gave everybody a certificate and said, "If you find something that doesn't seem to be working, stop. That's okay." Okay. "We don't care about the productivity. Stop, because we wanna address the issues." 9:07 Hey, Paul, and that's where we're gonna have to stop. So quickly give us your URL so our listeners can follow up and talk to you later, 'cause we're out of time. Okay, great. It's, uh, www.4abetterbusiness.com. 9:21 That's the number four, followed by the words abetterbusiness.com. Hey, Paul, thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it. All right, listeners, we're out of time. Thank you. 9:31 But remember, we broadcast live every Tuesday at twelve PM Central. You can check us out at connectedworld.com or always thepeggySmedleyShow.com. And you can tweet at me at Peggy_Smedley or ConnectedWMag. 9:44 Thanks for listening as always. This is The Peggy Smedley Show, the voice of IoT. And remember, with great technology comes great responsibility. Have a wonderful week. 9:56 [upbeat music] With great technology comes great responsibility. Follow Internet of Things tech expert and futurist Peggy Smedley, repeatedly ranked as a top IoT and M2M influencer. 10:13 Go to Peggy_Smedley on Twitter for her take on the latest tech news and lively interviews with other industry insiders on her weekly radio show. Visit twitter.com and search for Peggy_Smedley to follow her today. 10:27 [upbeat music] Video consumption is on the rise, so to reach this audience, Constructek Magazine created Constructek TV. 10:39 Constructek TV helps construction professionals leverage emerging solutions to better their business. Tune in to constructek.tv to catch the latest show on the first and third Tuesday of each month. 10:50 Like, view, and subscribe to constructek.tv, bringing dynamic video to construction. 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