Who Watches the Watchmen?

Who Watches the Watchmen?

                               By Dave Edstrom
                         For the June 20th, 2012 IMTS Insider

"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" is roughly translated to "Who will guard the guards?" As manufacturing becomes more and more about software, the importance of monitoring your computer networks will increase significantly. By computer networks I am referring to all of your systems that are not specifically manufacturing equipment. The ability to absolutely know that your software is up and running well becomes imperative. Typically this is done with monitoring software. This begs the sometimes obvious and not-so-obvious questions that are worth exploring.

Back in the late 1980s there was a huge rush of companies to come out with network monitoring programs. Companies realized they were investing significant sums in their servers, PCs, Macs, workstations, routers, bridges and networks so they needed to monitor and maintain these expensive and important resources. Sun Microsystems was an early leader with a product called SunNet Manager. It was a great product and showed really well with all of its graphics and the ability to drill down, send alerts and keep everyone updated on a real-time basis

There were two big challenges with network management and these were not technical, but a combination of cultural and business challenges. Those were so prevalent that I would start my presentations off with this statement: “I am going to ask you two questions. The first question you will answer ‘everything,’ and that will be the wrong answer. The second question you will answer ‘I don’t know,’ and that will be the right answer.”

The first question — answered “everything” — was, “What do you want to monitor?” I would then explain that with hundreds of metrics, monitoring everything is not viable. What would I suggest? It depends, but certainly there are important metrics for any system in terms of CPU load, network load, disk drive access, memory usage and types of applications running to name just a few.

While this answer was technically accurate, it really did not address their question. For example, many times monitoring software would be used as a foundation for high availability (HA) class of systems. HA systems are those systems that typically require four nines or 99.99% or greater uptime. This means a total downtime of less than one hour per year. However, just because an HA system is up, does that mean that the database is running properly and accepting transactions? Just because a computer is running and all the processes appear when you issue a process status command, it does not mean it is operating properly end to end.

The second question — answered “I don’t know” — was a very tough one, “What do you want to DO when one of these events occur?” This is the human side of monitoring the monitor. That was the really tough question because it would involve both technical and business input. For example, your primary server is running very slow because it is running out of memory. Which processes do you want to kill? Not an easy question on a shared server. You can certainly take a look to see if a specific process is out of control, but what happens if this has just been a slow and gradual increasing of load over time and not an obvious out-of-control metric? What if everything is running fine, you just have too many processes for the server? Buying and installing more memory or even buying another server might be an option, but that does not answer the question – what do you do right now? If this happens at 2:30 a.m. on a Saturday, who makes the decision? Who is monitoring the monitor? Is it software and/or a human? Are all the decisions automated or is it a work flow that involves humans at a specific point?

There are many common threads between both monitoring your shop floor and your computer network. These common threads are why I decided to follow up with this article after my previous discussion of Turner’s Five Laws of Manufacturing. Monitoring your shop floor or your computer network is not enough. You must have a culture of being data driven with a champion. Data driven manufacturing is where decisions are made with data from a variety of systems in a logical fashion with input from all of the stakeholders. As a refresher, here are Turner’s Five Laws of Manufacturing:

1. We measure what goes Into production and what comes out, we have little data on what really happens on the production floor
2. If anyone says “I know exactly what is happening on my plant floor” – don’t believe them
3. We don’t gather data because it Is hard, and someone has to look at it
4. No one solution or set of data works for everyone
5. If you don’t have an avid champion, save your time and money

Monitoring your computer network is much easier than monitoring your shop floor because it is a well-understood science and there are tons of tools out there in terms of open-source and proprietary monitoring software.

It used to be that you had to install the software locally for computer network monitoring. Today, there are numerous cloud monitoring services that will monitor your systems. Very detailed monitoring still typically involves locally installed software. More and more companies are using software in the cloud to substitute or augment software that they previously would load and run locally. Many of these companies in the cloud monitor their own systems and have impressive uptimes.

But what happens when these services are down? How do you know? Are you notified? What actions can you take when a vital cloud service that your business depends on goes down? This is where "quis custodiet ipsos custodes" or "who watches the watchman” comes into play. 
As a company starts to put monitoring in place, it is very helpful to remember The Eight Fallacies of Distributed Computing by Peter Deutsch, James Gosling and others at Sun Microsystems.

1. The network is reliable.
2. Latency is zero.
3. Bandwidth is infinite.
4. The network is secure.
5. Topology doesn't change.
6. There is one administrator.
7. Transport cost is zero.
8. The network is homogeneous.

The main point of the above list is to never assume the condition of your network when developing software or monitoring systems – you must know.

Whether you are monitoring your shop floor or computer network, there is no “insert here” canned magic solution in terms of what is important to monitor and what should I do when these events occur. What is most important is putting together a team that is led by a champion to evaluate the data, take action, monitor your actions, and continue to adjust. This team should be made up of a variety of disciplines and must meet on a regular basis.

As you introduce monitoring into your shop floor and your network, remember Turner’s Five Laws of Manufacturing and the Eight Fallacies of Distributed Computing. Finally, your goal in monitoring is the ability to answer these five simple monitoring questions:

1. Who will be our monitoring champion?
2. Who will be on our monitoring team?
3. What should we monitor?
4. What will we do when these events occur?
5. Who monitors the monitor?

Whatever monitoring software you decide to go with, make sure you can try before you buy. This is critical. Bottom line is that you can’t manage what you can’t monitor and make sure you know what and who is watching the watchmen - quis custodiet ipsos custodies.

Turner's Five Laws of Manufacturing

Turner’s Five Laws of Manufacturing

Jun 6, 2012

                                                               By  Dave Edstrom

Note: I wrote this for the IMTS Insider's June 6th, 2012 Edition

I first met John Turner when he was working for GE FANUC and I was at Sun Microsystems. We met at an MTConnect meeting. I was immediately impressed with John’s deep and broad knowledge of manufacturing and his ability to take complex concepts and synthesize those into clear, concise and compelling points.

John and I work together on MTConnect as consultants and we have presented together on a few occasions, and I always learn something new from him. Recently we were discussing that just having a shop embrace MTConnect as the standard, open and royalty-free protocol as the means to connect the shop floor to applications is not enough. You must have a data driven manufacturing mindset and a champion. I told John that what we need to do is educate shop owners and plant managers on Turner’s Five Laws of Manufacturing. Let’s explore this topic, but first a little background on John:

• More than 30 years’ experience at GE and GE Fanuc Automation
• Specializes in Manufacturing Process Intelligence and Systems Optimization
• Six-Sigma Black Belt trained
• Broad business experiences
• Product and operations management experience
• Applications engineering experience
• Software systems development experience
• AMT Technical Issues Committee member
• MTConnect Technical Advisory Board member

These are Turner’s Five Laws of Manufacturing:  

1.  We measure what goes into production and what comes out, but we have little data on what really happens on the production floor
2.  If anyone says, “I know exactly what is happening on my plant floor,” don’t believe them
3.  We don’t gather data because it is difficult, and someone has to look at it
4.  No one solution or set of data works for everyone
5.  If you don’t have an avid champion, save your time and money

John’s five laws really are critical points that any shop or plant should discuss before they invest in a shop floor monitoring package.

Law #1 is something that we hear about far too often. This is where a shop or plant that has a great deal of data and processes regarding both part design and part inspection, but has a big hole in the middle regarding data on actual part manufacturing. This is analogous to a race car team spending a lot of time and money on the design of the race car and then breaking the car down after the race to see what held up, but providing the driver with an instrument panel and then not gathering data during the actual race. You would never see that scenario in racing, yet we see it all the time in manufacturing.

Law #2 states, “If anyone says “I know exactly what is happening on my plant floor,” don’t believe them.” Shop owners or plant managers who have been so close to their operations for a long time sometimes can’t see issues/opportunities from a new perspective. It is the shop owner or plant manager who is in denial. If they do not have a shop floor monitoring package, they are only kidding themselves. The anecdotal stories in this area are endless. The number of shops/plants with a monitoring package is in the 4-5 percent range.

Law #3 states, “We don’t gather data because it is difficult, and someone has to look at it.” I have a lot of respect for this law because it really drives home two key points. The first part is about gathering data, and MTConnect can address that. The second part of Law #3 is a real cultural issue that is not obvious to most individuals in manufacturing. There is also an implied message in the “and someone has to look at it” part of John’s Law #3. The message is that someone needs to analyze the data, make recommendations on how to fix the issue, deploy the fix, and then monitor that the fix is working as designed. Sometimes those in manufacturing think that a shop floor monitoring package provides answers – it does not. Much like an MRI, it provides data that must be properly interpreted and then acted upon.

Law #4 states, “No one solution or set of data works for everyone.” While this law first seems like it is in the common sense category, you would be amazed at how many shops or plants expect a piece of software to be configured out of the box with the ability to grab the exact data needed, analyze the data, and then present it in a format that both management and the machinist on the floor can act upon. A fundamental question such as, “What are the top five problems you believe you have on the shop floor today?” sometimes generates hours of conversations with a different priority list depending on who you ask at the shop or plant.

Law #5 states, “If you don’t have an avid champion, save your time and money.” This might be the most important law of all five. Monitoring for the sake of monitoring will not be successful. Using monitoring as a weapon of mass data on the shop floor is also a great recipe to turn the shop floor against management. The right analogy is one that the military uses. Everyone’s job in the military is either to directly or indirectly support the warfighter. The same should be said of the machinists and those on the manufacturing floor. Everything that is being done with shop/plant floor monitoring should be done with those on the shop floor in mind. I like to think of the machinist as the neurosurgeon with shop floor data being the CAT scans, X-rays and MRIs to help that machinist do their job much better. If shop floor monitoring is being used as a stick, then don’t bother because both your morale and productivity will go down. 

I have become convinced that every time I speak on MTConnect I am going to bring up Turner’s Five Laws of Manufacturing. The reason is that the first and obvious application that individuals think of with MTConnect is the acquisition of a shop/plant floor monitoring solution. Most companies purchase these applications, but some do write their own. This is typically the first step of many for data-driven manufacturing. Once a shop/plant realizes that understanding what is happening on the shop floor can improve overall productivity, they quickly realize the many other areas where this and other data can be integrated to improve all aspects of their business. Of all of Turner’s Five Laws of Manufacturing, the most important very well might be having a champion. In my opinion, having a strong champion that can drive change by utilizing shop floor data will be the single most important factor in the success or failure of a shop/plant floor monitoring project.

Whether it is simply monitoring the shop floor or total integration of all your data in manufacturing, I would first strongly encourage a shop or plant to have an open discussion of Turner’s Five Laws of Manufacturing with all involved parties.

Dave Edstrom Speaking At GlobalSpec’s Machine Tools & Metal Working Online Tradeshow

Dave Edstrom, President and Chairman of Board for the MTConnect Institute to be featured in the GlobalSpec Machine Tools & Metal Working Online Event

NOTE:  This is from GlobalSpec's press release:

The challenges managers of manufacturing operations face to ensure individual components and the factory as a whole operate at acceptable levels will be explored when Dave Edstrom takes center stage during GlobalSpec’s upcoming Machine Tools & Metal Working online event.  

At 12:45 p.m. Eastern Time on June 6^th, Dave Edstrom will be speaking to industry professionals around the globe about how MTConnect can bring end-to-end interoperability to the manufacturing environment.

The MTConnect Institute educational session will be one of several presentations in the day’s agenda that covers leading trends in the Machine Tools & Metal Working industry.

·      When:  Wednesday, June 6^th at 12:45 p.m. Eastern Time

·      What:  Connecting Manufacturing & Design

·      Where:  Online -  www.globalspec.com/events

If you would like to join the live day event, please ask visit the following link: http://www.globalspec.com/events/eventregister?eventId=128 to register.  

·      Contacts:  GlobalSpec e-Events Manager, Molly Kray, mkray@globalspec.com or 518-880-0200 x5471.

About the Machine Tools & Metal Working Online Event.

GlobalSpec's Machine Tools & Metal Working FREE online event is a cost-efficient way to learn about the latest in machine tools and metal working technology. From the convenience of your desktop, join key manufacturers and industry professionals from around the globe. Chat directly with suppliers anxious to answer questions you may have regarding metal cutting and forming, CNC programming and controls, or tooling and fixturing. Share ideas and business strategies with industry colleagues, and learn from industry experts during key educational forums. GlobalSpec's Machine Tools & Metal Working online event will help you design products that are easier and more affordable to produce, offer higher quality and reliability, and reduce end-user costs.

About GlobalSpec, Inc.

GlobalSpec is the leading specialized vertical search, information services, e-publishing and online events company serving the engineering, manufacturing and related scientific and technical market segments. The company provides its buy-side users with domain-expert search engines, a broad range of proprietary and aggregated Web-based content and over 70+ product and industry e-newsletters that help engineers and related professionals perform their key job tasks with the highest levels of accuracy and productivity. GlobalSpec provides its sell-side client base of companies seeking to reach the worldwide engineering audience with highly filtered sales leads, product promotion and brand advertising platforms and a wide range of e-media advertising and marketing services.

GlobalSpec, SpecSearch, The Engineering Search Engine and The Engineering Web are registered trademarks of GlobalSpec, Inc.

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Spike - The Best Dog Ever

On June 17th, 1998 Spike was born.    In July 1998 we picked up our very first dog as a family.  John was ten, Michael was seven and Tim was four.  Today, John is 24, Michael 21 and Tim is 18. 

Above is Spike when we first got him next to a baseball.  

Above is Spike with Tim (shirt off) and John helping me build the boy's fort in the backyard.  Spike was 5 months old.

Above is Spike, John, Tim and Michael at Christmas in 1998.  You could tell how much the boys loved Spike just by looking at how Tim and Michael were starting at Spike.

Spike was the best dog of all time.  I know everyone says that  about their dog.  Spike was an "oops" litter.  Spikes father was a champion Lab and his mother was a champion Golden Retriever.  We picked Spike up from a great breeder named Alice Judah who owns  Deja Vu Kennels Bealeton, VA.   Alice went on vacation and these two champions got together by a mistake.   Alice gave folks a break on price and instead of $1,100 each, they were going for $200 each.   We did not care about a purebred and felt that this might actually be better.  Sometimes purebreds can have problems.  We could not have been more right about a great combination.  Alice always took great of Spike, especially when he got older and needed to be inside and not outside.   We also picked up Photon from Alice and he has been a great dog as well.   Photon is a purebred lab.

Above is Spike at age 4 lying in the kitchen.

Above is a picture of Spike going through the snow a few years ago.  Spike loved the cold and hated the heat.  No weather was too cold for Spike.  The boys named Spike and I think it was primarily from the name on the old Rugrats cartoon on Nickleodeon.

Before getting Spike I said I wanted to fence in our 1/2 acre lot.

Above is Nero, Photon and Spike.  We picked up Nero in July of 2011.  Photon is 8 years old.

I need to tell a somewhat long story about the importance of a fence in our yard BEFORE we got a dog.  One of the driving reasons to do that was when I was in 5th grade I was walking to a high school basketball game in Trenton, Illinois.   I was walking with the next door neighbor who was in 7th grade.  Most people just let their dogs run free in small midwest towns back in the 1960s and we did the same.  When I notice that our dog "Trixie" (my mother named her - the rationale is that every animal on her Randolph and Zumbrota farms growing up the animal's last name had to rhyme with "eeee" - made no damn sense to me then or now.  Anyway, when Trixie was following us I said, "I should take Trixie home".  My freaking idiot next neighbor convinced me that if I threw rocks at her she would go home.  We did throw rocks (small ones - large pebbles might be a better term) and I yelled at her to to home and it looked like she was heading home, so kept going.

Just thirty seconds later and I hear screeching tires and I look back to see Trixie get hit by a car that was going about 55mph.  It trapped her up on the passenger front bumper area and dragged her 70 yards or so.  I ran home screaming and crying for my parents.  My dad went out and was going to at least drag her out of the highway.  When he dragged her she yelped and to his surprise was still alive.  He carried her home, took her to the vet and they were able to save her.  He built a special cage so she could not move around.  She always had a slow gate after that, but lived a long time going from Trenton to Kansas City, MO to Burke, VA.

When it came time to have her put down because her body was full of cancer, I was 24.  I remember my parents called me at work and said, "it is time to put Trixie down and we discussed this and since she really was purchased on your birthday, we would prefer if you did it."  My response was "no way in hell I am doing that."  My parents took to the vet.  They tell the story of dropping her off there.  The vet had on her a leash and said, "I will take Trixie now."  He then said, "when you walk out, do not look back, just keep walking out the door."   My parents said they were able to keep it together until they got near the door when they did both stop and look back.  At that exact time, Trixie stopped and looked back as well.  Both my parents started crying.    To this day when they tell the story it brings near tears to their eyes.

So, that is why I insisted on a fence before we got Spike.

This is different than when Bootsie (noticed the whole "eeee" thing) was hit by a car in the Philippines when I was seven.  When Bootsie was hit by a car, some local Filipinos asked if they get have Bootsie to cook up.  My father immediately agreed.  As a matter of fact, he went down there where they were roasting Bootsie and had a bite.  This further substantiated the legend of John Kenneth Edstrom as a person you do not want to screw with - one minute he is petting you the next he is eating you and his blood pressure did not change by a single point.

Photon loved to lie on top Spike wherever he was - including the couch.

Spike and Photon in front of the Christmas tree.

Above Spike and Photon don't want Tim sleeping during the day so they decide that together they should wake him up.

Above is Spike, Nero (when he was a puppy) and Photon.   Spike taught the other two the proper way to sleep like a dog.  Spike was smarter than Photon and Nero put together.

Spike had a TON of energy.  He ate two couches and big grill we had just to name a few things.  He was a master at catching animals as well.  If there was a bird that got into the screened in porch, I would let Spike out there and he could literally jump when the bird flew by and catch it in his mouth as it flew by.  Goodnight bird :-)   Same thing with rabbits in the backyard.  Spike was big and fast - 90 pounds of muscle.   Spike had so much energy that we called the breeder and asked for advice.  Buying new couches and grills gets expensive after awhile :-)  She suggested another dog and had one we could use for free.  The dog was a female named Toot.  Toot was a very sweet dog who had done her share of having litters.  Toot was like bringing a grandma to Spike.  Toot was happy to carry around a tennis ball in her mouth and walk around the yard.   Toot was also a "submissive urinator" as we come to learn AFTER we got her.  This means that when she gets scared, she urinates.  If you come up on her too quickly she urinates.  Imagine trying to tell three young boys who are 10, 7 and 4 to be gentle when you are around Toot.  We learned how to quickly clean up urine :-)





Above is Spike and Photon wrestling which I just happened to catch in May 2011 when I was walking around the back yard and they start playing together.

Spike developed a fatty, non-cancerous tumor on his left rib cage.  It grew to about the size of a football.  The vet said the operation would kill him and it was not causing him any pain.  On May 29th we took Spike to Dr. Jones of Ashburn Veterinary Hospital.  Spike had stopped walking and we had to feed him by hand as well as give him water by hand.   We had to help him up and down the stairs.  He stopped moving and would not get out of his crate.  Dr. Jones ran a bunch of tests and explained that Spike's larnyx was closing down, his hips were very arthritic, his tumor was the size of a very large football and he was in pain.

We ended up putting Spike to sleep today Thursday the 31st of May at 6:25pm.  Spike was the best dog ever....

Memorial Day 2012

My cousin Chris Edstrom has done two tours of duty in Iraq AND two tours of duty in Afghanistan.   My father did two tours of duty in Vietnam and is the world record holder for number of years with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL). 

Above is what Julie and I saw on the way to Ocean City on Saturday May 26th which I thought was very cool.

Thanks as well to Brad Kirley, Paul Warndorf and all the many veterans of the United States of America.

We should thank ALL VETERANS today for their service to our country.

Skyland and Ocean City, MD

On Friday May 25th, we left early and had breakfast up on Skyline Drive at Skyland.

Above is Julie on Stony Man Mountain on Skyline Drive.

Julie and me on Stony Mountain.

Great view of how Skyline drive winds over the top of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Great day to take the top off the Grand Sport Corvette

Julie under the umbrellas.

The waves were perfect for body surfing and boogie boarding.

A nice 360 degree of Ocean City Beach down near where the boardwalk begins.



Above is me boogie boarding at Ocean City, MD on Saturday the 26th.  Last year the beach was terrible with shore breaks (waves breaking right near shore with a record number of neck injuries).  This year, because of winter storms that flattened out the shore, the waves are now breaking further out and are perfect.

We also had a record return from Ocean City, MD to my house in Ashburn in 2 hours and 53 minutes - no speeding - just got very lucky on traffic.

One of the benefits of living in the DC area is that you are less than 2 hours from the mountains and less than 2 hours to the ocean beaches.

Fox News Viewers Least Informed AGAIN

"Another study has concluded that people who only watch Fox News are less informed than all other news consumers.

Researchers at Fairleigh Dickinson University updated a study they had conducted in late 2011. That study only sampled respondents from New Jersey, where the university is located. This time, the researchers conducted a nationwide poll."

Education Heaven Is A Playground

Education Heaven Is A Playground

                                                               By  Dave Edstrom

NOTE:  I wrote this for the May 23, 2012 IMTS Insider

Creative teachers in schools, creative instructors in business or creative mentors in any walk of life can make all the difference in the world.  We know this is true, yet we shackle our teachers in the classrooms and complain about how hard it is to find good people in business. I would argue that it is not a lack of good students or a lack of smart workers – it is a lack of creative thinking by school administrators, teachers union leaders, politicians and business leaders that is the real problem.

In the newly released book Imagine – How Creativity Works, by Jonah Lehrer, he recites a survey of teachers who were asked about student creativity. One hundred percent of the teachers stated they wanted creative students. When the same teachers were asked about traits that were important to them, a very high percent stated the exact opposite. These teachers said that conforming and listening were the most important traits they wanted to see in their students. The teachers clearly did not want students speaking up and challenging them. I once worked at a company where a sales VP had physically removed the door from his office to prove he had an open door policy. What was most ironic about this individual is that he had a reputation as being the most closed-minded individual in the entire office. How often do we hear leaders state they are for education and creativity only to refute it with their actions? Is it being purposely disingenuous or is it ignorance?

When my youngest son, Tim, was in elementary school, I asked him at the dinner table how the Standards Of Learning (SOL) tests went that day for him. He responded, “My stomach hurt.” My first reaction was to think that his teacher had said something to the class that put unnecessary pressure on the students and in particular, Tim. When I asked why his stomach hurt, he told me something that exemplifies what is wrong with our education system. Tim said that the principal said that kids do better on tests when they have breakfast, so they all had to eat breakfast – again. Tim went on to say that he told them that he had already eaten a big breakfast, but his teacher said he had to eat again so that the principal would not get mad, and that is why his stomach hurt. 

The United States is ranked 27th in the world in mathematics and 22nd in science according to the 2009 Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development Survey (OECD). Note that OECD does these surveys every 3 years. There are many reasons for the United States' poor ranking. What is clearly not the problem is the amount of money spent per student. We spend twice as much as other countries. The problem is that we are not spending that money on getting the best teachers and teachers unions are very reluctant to get rid of the bad teachers. Finland is ranked No.1 in both math and science. There is a very interesting article written by Stuart Conway for the Sept. 2011 Smithsonian Magazine titled “Why Are Finland’s Schools Successful?” The first step was a conscious decision in 1963 to use education as the means to an economic recovery. Here is a quote from the article. “The second critical decision came in 1979, when reformers required that every teacher earn a fifth-year master’s degree in theory and practice at one of eight state universities—at state expense. From then on, teachers were effectively granted equal status with doctors and lawyers.  Applicants began flooding teaching programs, not because the salaries were so high, but because autonomy and respect made the job attractive.” Think about that for a second – doctors, lawyers and teachers were all on equal status. I also heard on National Public Radio (NPR) that to even apply to be a teacher in Finland, teachers must graduate in the top 10% of their class.

I was initially all for SOLs until my sister, who is a high school guidance counselor, as well as a licensed counselor, told me, “Just watch what happens – teachers will teach to the test.” I was 100% wrong on SOLs and my sister was 100% right. Teachers teach to the test and creativity be damned.  In the same Smithsonian Magazine article, there is a great section on the fallacy of standardized tests. “Finnish educators have a hard time understanding the United States’ fascination with standardized tests. “Americans like all these bars and graphs and colored charts,” Louhivuori teased, as he rummaged through his closet looking for past years’ results. “Looks like we did better than average two years ago,” he said after he found the reports. “It’s nonsense. We know much more about the children than these tests can tell us.”

Heaven Is A Playground is the name of my favorite sports book by the famous author Rick Telander. This is a fantastic and award-winning book about Telander spending the summer in Brooklyn coaching a youth summer basketball team. The title of the book comes from a quote by author G.K. Chesterton, “The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.” The problem for the United States is that we have turned schools into task gardens and teachers into robots. As parents and professionals, we know this is not a hard problem to solve. Hire the best and get out of their way. It is the same in any industry. When I hear a teachers union leader state, “It is very hard to rate which teachers are the best,” I have to say that is complete and utter nonsense. I think about when my wife and I were walking one of our three sons to the bus stop on their first day of school. A parent with an older child  asked us who our son's teacher was. We could instantly tell whether our child got the best teacher or an also-ran. With a cross section of parents, you would know which are the great teachers and which are not. Students obviously know as well. I have the utmost respect for teachers and guidance counselors, but not politicians and teachers union leaders who spend more time arguing than getting to work and making improvements.

In the Lehrer Imagine book, he talks about how Google borrowed the idea from 3M regarding the 15% personal time per week to work on their own projects of their own choosing. How many manufacturers are doing that? Right now some of you are likely thinking that that would be crazy to do for manufacturing! Why would that be crazy? Seriously, why? We read and hear constantly that there are over 600,000 unfilled jobs in manufacturing in the United States because of lack of skilled workers. Whose fault is that? Is it the workers? Is it government? Is it industry?  President Obama mentioned manufacturing eight times in his State of the Union message. That is seven more times than President Bush did for all eight of his State of the Union messages, but what has really changed? We keep hearing about the problem, but what are the creative educational solutions? I hear the same old solutions being brought out again and again with different results being hoped for. That is the definition of insanity. No disrespect to my generation, the 50-plus year olds, but we are the wrong ones to be solving the problem of creative manufacturing education. I go to these manufacturing conferences and I can count the number of young people on one hand. True, I am old, so theoretically everyone is young compared to me, but I am talking about folks in their 20s. I would love to see a manufacturing conference where every person over 50 had to bring with them two 20-somethings in manufacturing to the conference. A session on creative education would have a number of the young manufacturing folks on stage with a roundtable on creative education. It’s worth a try in my humble opinion. There are some young folks, like Joel Neidig of ITAMCO, who are doing amazing things in manufacturing. I wish we could clone Joel!

Everyone agrees that Steve Jobs was a genius at creativity, but few know what he did to create the environment. At Pixar, he looked at creativity in the same way Darwin looked at evolution. You need the right environment and the right mix for new life to be created. Jobs changed the environment at Pixar and here is how Jonah Lehrer tells it in his book Imagine. “The Pixar studios were largely designed by Steve Jobs. People at Pixar will often refer to the building as “Steve’s Movie.” And the original plan for the Pixar Studios called for three separate buildings. One building for the animators, one building for the computer scientists, one building for everyone else, the writers, directors, editors and so on. Jobs took one look at this and said that’s a terrible idea. He then insisted everyone be in the exact same space because he realized the success of Pixar would depend on these cultures learning how to collaborate; getting the engineers and the computer scientists and the animators to work together, to learn from each other, to share knowledge.”

The next time you are evaluating or creating an education program or determining how to best have a creative environment for your employees, think about Finland and also ask yourself,“What would 3M, Google or Steve Jobs do?”

Actuate's Insights Newsletter Highlights AMT's MTInsight

Actuate and their BIRT onDemand cloud service have been a great partners for MTInsight and I was very pleased to see MTInsight mentioned in Actuate's Insights Newsletter Q2/2012.

Below is a quote by Doug Woods, President of AMT - The Association For Manufacturing Technology: 

“Our team required a solution that could eliminate server management costs and reduce IT involvement, as well as integrating BIRT natively into popular mobile platforms for our large base of end users. The flexibility in delivery model really provided an edge...” says Douglas K. Woods, President, AMT. “Overall, MTInsight powered by BIRT onDemand enables our members to resolve their own questions, saving them a huge amount of time and money.”

Virginia Tech's 3D Printer - DreamVendor

Here is a link to Virginia Tech's 3D Printer - DreamVendor video showing how students can create 3D objects for both educational and personal prototypes.

Very cool!

The Shot Peener -- "A New Age In Manufacturing Is At Hand"

 There is a great article on MTConnect in The Shot Peener called, "A New Age In Manufacturing Is At Hand" written by Kathy Levy of InfoProse.

The article starts out discussing ITAMCO:

"THIRTY CRITICAL MACHINE TOOLS at ITAMCO have been selected to provide real-time, accurate information about their performance. Improvement opportunities will become apparent to everyone, from machine operators to the Chief Financial Officer. “Right now, we don’t know what we don’t know,” said Joel Neidig, an engineer at ITAMCO. That’s a typical problem for manufacturing facilities that rely on verbal and paper records to evaluate machine performance and workflow. Machine statistics are very difficult to gather and organize into any kind of coherent picture. If machine data is tracked manually, the information might be outdated before it’s compiled or inaccurate."
 
Below is a quote that I really like by A.J. Sweatt:

 MTConnect Is a Free and Open Bridge

•      “To say MTConnect is revolutionary is a gross understatement. Connecting machines and collecting data using the same protocol not only gives in-plant management far greater agility and control; it also allows for a level of communications between suppliers, customers, OEMs, sales and international partners that could easily be the greatest achievement for manufacturing since CNC. Or even the Internet itself.”  

–The Shot Peener | Spring 2012   A.J. Sweatt AJ Sweatt Logic and Communications

 

Below is another quote that I really like by Stephen Luckowski:

 "A noteworthy point regarding alarms was made by Stephen Luckowski, Chief of Materials, Manufacturing & Prototype Technology with US Army ARDEC at the 2011 MTConnect conference: “Typically when the machine alarms, it’s too late, the tool is already broken. That means that just collecting and reporting alarms is only part of the problem. To prevent alarms that relate to downtime, we need to use MTConnect to understand the alarm and develop a pattern of what causes the downtime.”