Manufacturing Executive - January/February 2009 - (Page 23) Fons Hoekx Reinoud Visser Jan Snoeij Michael Walsh Julie Fraser Fraser: That’s a great lead-in to one of my pet topics, which is, in fact, metrics. I’d like to get an Telukdarie: I think there’s a bullfight idea from some of you of how you going on, and unfortunately it comes Carlos Eduardo DaSilva leverage the data from your MES out in personalities and who’s the Global quality manager, Freudenberg-NOK system into your operational key strongest. Even on different projects, an performance indicators, or metrics. Also, how do you get the engineering manager can be stronger than an IT manager. financial metrics linked into the operational metrics and the Brousell: Have the expectations at the business level operational results? within your company with regard to the return on inWalsh: It’s actually quite difficult to roll up from a KPI all vestment in the MES technology been met? Or have the the way to financial data. Customer complaints is a real key expectations been so soft or so much in a gray area that area, but you can’t get anyone to put a financial figure on that nobody’s really gotten a hard metric around what to exone. I once tried it as an accountant. The quality manager pect from the technology? came to see me. He said, “Michael, can you tell me how much it costs for each quality complaint?” I said, “Yes, your job.” Walsh: For my sins, I’m an accountant by trade, and the That’s about it. There are certain KPIs that you will never be reason why ERP was so successful and why people still able to pull back into a financial figure, although if you read push it is because it’s very easy to get clear wins. You can all the books, there are all these things about how to calculate calculate a saving. When you go to the shop floor if you the cost of quality. But it’s hairy fairy. can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. That’s the problem. Even if you do implement that manufacturing system, the DaSilva: Mike said it’s hard to measure the customer complant manager is going to say that he improved the plant. plaint. It’s not a soft savings; it’s a hard savings. We can prove The IT guy who installed the system — the team — will MES can support reduced costs related to customer comsay, “We improved that plant.” The problem you’ve got is plaints. This is my understanding, Mike. a political element. Hoekx: What I see from MES is that it’s also a cultural thing. If you have a strong IT manager, then ERP could be favoured. If you have a strong engineering department, they say, “OK, we do it from down to up.” We can prove MeS can Support reduced coStS related to cuStoMer coMplaintS. “ manufacturing, and other things. Of course, we need all those indices to put where we were earlier and where we are now. “ Sreenivasan: Taking the decision for ERP implementation and MES implementation, the company took a very conscious position that we should not evaluate this project based on the ROI. Biddle: What was your justifier? How did you justify MES? Brousell: What is the perception of MES within your top management, with your president or CEO? Do they view the technology as strategic to the business or do they view it as an operational technology that they don’t really need to know much about? Biddle: I think it’s very much the latter of those two. MES has still not got the immediate recognition that ERP and PLM have got. Snoeij: I see a trend. In the past, we did our business primarily with the technical guys and company maintenance people. Then the IT people came along, and to a certain extent the senior levels are aware, but what we see today is that it’s more strategic. It’s not the CIO who is in charge of the discussion, note. But we are going to measure the ROI later, only not for the sake of approval of the project or approval for the investment. We are not taking ROI into the prime consideration. Brousell: How will you measure the ROI later? Muley: Now we are targeting the KPIs, like reselling, Muley: It is more than ROI, and ROI would be difficult to Manufacturing JAN/FEB-09 Executive 23
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