Episode 1: Tech Talk - From Whiteboards to Real-Time: Why Digital Management Systems Are Now a Manufacturing Imperative

Speaker A: The Manufacturing Edge, where ops leaders break barriers, drive growth and redefine what's possible. Hey there, folks, and welcome back to the Manufacturing Edge, where we break down the strategies driving operational excellence across the ever evolving manufacturing landscape. I'm your host, Will Merriman. Today we'll be looking at the critical shift from analog to digital on the shop floor. More specifically, talking about digital management systems and tools like IOBEA and and hour by hour tracking solutions. We'll explore why physical whiteboards in Excel just no longer cut it and how to prevent digital tools from becoming just pretty wallpaper. Joining me today is an esteemed panel of consultants and members of our digital solutions team who will provide a round, detailed view of how TBM approaches management systems and how our experience informs our digital solutions. First, I'd like to introduce our TBM Senior Client Manager, Dave Hall. Dave brings an executive perspective into how digitization can be a catalyst for operational excellence. Dave, welcome. Thanks for joining.

Speaker B: Thanks for having me.

Speaker A: Joining him is a close colleague of TBM's digital consultancy, Guy Spina. Guy sits at the intersection of business and technology for our clients and translates operational pain points into digital solutions. How's it hanging, Guy?

Speaker C: Hey, how's it going? Happy to be here.

Speaker A: Well, yeah, good to have you. And last but not least, rounding out the panel of esteemed participants today is Colin Tiller, TBM's resident software engineer and data analyst. Colin brings the technical view on what differentiates a scalable system from just another dashboard application. Hey there, Colin.

Speaker D: How's it going?

Speaker A: Glad to have you all to get right into things. We talk a lot in this industry about what it means to go digital, but I think it's important we touch on the why behind organizations actually want to and have the need to go digital. And before we touch on any real solutions, what's that friction that actually causes a company to make that change? Dave and Guy, I'll start with you. In your experience, what's one moment in your career where you realized physical whiteboards and Excel were no longer enough? Dave, I'll start with you.

Speaker B: Well, thanks. Um, one of my previous clients had multiple departments, multiple plants, and when you look at how to roll up all of that information in a manual format, it's very cumbersome, very time consuming. And what we're looking for is, you know, we're trying to get real time information so that we can adjust, make changes so that we can drive the optimal performance. So really I think size is an indicator and complexity. So that's really when I said you Know, we need a different solution to allow data to flow more into systems and dashboards so that we can see what's going on and again, make those adjustments.

Speaker A: Is that your view too as well, guy, how you've experienced it?

Speaker C: Yeah, I think I'm right in line with that. Uh, for me personally, it was working closely with leadership and recognizing that they can't get to all the plants. Right. And seeing the. The actual logistics of being able to have a visibility across all plants, across all sites, and even for a plant manager of these large sites. Right. Uh, if you track their walking for them to do a boardwalk, uh, depending on the plan, it could take. Could take more over an hour or hours. Right. Uh, depending on how complex the system is. So that level of visibility, it was pretty immediate once I started working with leadership at that level and seeing. Because working one department in one line, the physical boards may seem to be enough. But really when we're looking at scale and for an entire plan, for an entire organization, I would say that would be the first piece. And the second piece is seeing all of the value in the data that we were collecting not being used to its fullest potential and losing the data that we were collecting per month. Right. That was another thing is, uh, whenever we erase that whiteboard or whenever we get rid of the paper sheets for the month, that data, we could collect that over years. And now with what we can do with that data, it becomes more and more valuable. So I think those were the key elements for me. And then, uh, well, there's a lot that we can speak to, but I'd say that's. That's really when I first saw it was. Was when I saw the visibility and the full, full use of the data.

Speaker B: Yeah. I think there's one more thing to add. You know, when, when I was running, uh, plants, when we started having discussions on how. How can we add more resource to collect data to display what we really want to see at the point of impact. That was the light bulb that said, you know, we need to do something different because, you know, time is of the essence. And he makes a great point about, you know, when you do your rounds around a large facility, uh, current client here, we have five different facilities. So it takes, you know, a couple, two, three hours to get through it all. So it's. That's, uh, a very good point.

Speaker A: Along that same vein too, with the changing of technology advancements and changes in what leadership actually wants to track, have there been any developments or changes maybe looking back to five, 10 years ago or are a lot of the same tenants as far as a robust management system the same in today's world?

Speaker B: Well, I think, uh, for me, with the availability of data today, where it wasn't as available 10 years ago, what executives are asking for now back to the time element is, hey, I want to make decisions, I want to make them impactful and I want to make them correct. So therefore that flow of information, real time data, is critical. And what you had before in the whiteboards is a delay of that information to get to the executive level. Right. So it was calculated on the board. You had it at your tier one meeting, but it might be a week before you would see that roll up through the tier level at a tier 2 or tier 3 meeting. So I think the power of this digitization is that you can collapse that time and be more effective and you can turn the performance or maintain the performance much more effectively than ten years ago.

Speaker A: Uh, almost like having your finger on the pulse in a sense.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker A: Much more reactionary.

Speaker C: And the availability, I think, as Dave said, as data became more available leadership, we've seen this change, becoming more interested in making sure we're using data to drive decisions. Um, so I think that that became something fundamental. Uh, and then along with that, I think it's also important to say that some items stay foundational. Right. From the Toyota production system, from what we used to call managing for daily improvement now management system, uh, sqdc, one of those, making sure that we have daily, weekly trends, monthly trends, different visibilities, paretos. So there's a lot of foundational items and actually that's something that we have to do a lot because there's so much access to data that we work closely with the clients to make sure that we identify what actually drives value, right. What, what is directly tied to driving value and then what are the levers in terms of leading and lagging indicators that drive that next layer. Right. So that we not collect everything but, uh, work with what's most impactful.

Speaker B: Yeah, I agree 100% with that. And I think the transition for organizations is we're moving from, you know, a gut feel, um, action oriented organization to data driven. Right. But yet it's, it's quicker decisions and, and more precise. Right. Um, but I will say that to your point, foundational pieces, uh, one of the things that no matter how you start, if you start, you know, from a manual management system, which I would suggest, right. So you get the muscle memory and, and the feel for the tools and the flow, but Then when you go to digital, it doesn't replace the fact that leadership needs to be on the floor supporting those tier one meetings driving accountability and also, you know, given the support to the, uh, associates on the floor. Right. So that's no matter what, what methodology you're deploying. You have to have that critical element.

Speaker D: Yeah. The digital aspect should be an enhancement, not a crutch.

Speaker B: That's exactly right.

Speaker A: That's a good one there, Colin. We should use that in some of our marketing. Right there. But I think your understanding of both our offering and management systems in general, uh, is very thorough. A little exercise for you, a fun one to pick your brain, if you don't mind. If you had to explain IOBEA, ah, TBM's digital management partner and power hour, TBM's hour by hour tracking app to a plant manager and say, 60 seconds or so, how would you do it? You know, what are the important things you would hit on that you want them to take away from that conversation?

Speaker C: All right, 60 seconds. So I, uh, would put you on the spot. Yeah, that's right. I would say what IOBEA offers is digital, uh, obey rooms through boards. So we can think of these as essentially fully customizable boards that we can interconnect in different ways to recreate a management, existing management system. Um, and of course that's not only limited to management systems, but even beyond that, really we have a blank template of boards that we can interconnect and customize in, uh, what is most impactful. And then we have the layer of synchronization of both quantitative and qualitative data. So not only can we connect these boards, but the way that we do so is both with actions, with that qualitative data and with metrics, rollups, um, in that sense. So really that single source of truth, what IOBEYA offers in Power Hour, that's our digital hour by hour, uh, solution where the same as we know of an hour by hour, but now something that we can access, um, on the phone or uh, through a tablet and have that immediate visibility that digital offers us in real time.

Speaker A: Awesome. Well, I have to say, if I was a plant manager, I would be tickled by that response. So great work. It provides a great view into the system and how systems today, they do have a ceiling, uh, management system, a physical one, and it seems like a high one. You can do a lot with a, uh, physical system. But I think what muddies the water a little bit is when we start throwing around terms like digital management system or digital Bayer. It can be confusing and buzzword heavy for someone who doesn't necessarily work in those systems every day and are familiar with the digital aspects of things. So I'd love to ground this topic and kind of define what we're talking about a bit more. Um, so starting with you Dave, looking at some of the building blocks um, of a management system in general in classic lean terms, what did this management system look like pre digital? What worked well and what must we not lose going forward into a digital solution?

Speaker B: Yeah. So I think um, what it looked like was if you take a facility there were whiteboards in every area right. That, that displayed the sqdc uh formats. Right. So you had hour by hours going on. Uh, so you had small teams working together to make tomorrow better than today. Right. You know, talking about the issues, whether it be from a um, you know, what downtime did we see, what quality uh issues did we see? How can we prevent those for tomorrow? That's what they look like pre digital. They look the same today in digital. But again the difference is that the data flows upward and across the organization faster. So again you can make quicker, uh, better decisions. I think that um, you know the things that worked really well that we need to maintain within the um, the structure of a digital system is the engagement of the employees. Right. That's critical in a management system to be able to drive performance. What we're looking for in a uh, in the management system is how we can predict the end of the month every day. Right. So we can impact that and make decisions that drive that performance without the engagement of the people, without the leadership, you know, down on the floor coaching and providing the support required. It won't happen. Right. So I will say that the digital is great but again I think what we need to keep is the fundamentals. Right. Make uh, sure that we, we don't lose them in the, the digitization or the speed of the information that is moving m now within the organization. Yeah.

Speaker A: Without buy in, doesn't matter if a system's digital or physical.

Speaker B: That's right.

Speaker A: Building off of that we've defined uh, at a basic level what a management system does and the aspects uh, that are required to keep it running. Switching to a digital management system, is there anything different in that regard? What are some of the essentials of a digital management system as opposed to, to a traditional one or are a lot of those things the same?

Speaker C: I think the difference is that we're using a screen instead of a whiteboard because everything else, especially with IOBEA is very paper like it's very similar. What changes is just the interface, right. So instead of inputting into paper, we're now inputting um, right through a keyboard or a mouse into um, a digital format of that. But I think biggest misconception, right, that as we go digital we need to really change the method in any way. But I think previously when we looked at earlier technology, that was the case because of the limitations of the software and where we were at with the technology itself. But I think now both looking at hardware and software, if we think about uh, having touch screens, having um, a lot of that easy accessibility, wireless keyboards, we can really set something up that's as interactive as uh, an expo marker on a whiteboard, but with all of those benefits that, that Dave said. And I think that's what Iobaya allows for, is, is for us to put that all together and create the digital management system exactly as TBM has done it for 35 years now on paper, but just digital, just changing the interface essentially with all of the benefits that that, that brings. So, short answer is we keep the same components, um, but we add speed, we add connectivity, we add visibility and scalability and repeatability as well. Because now it's very quick and easy for us to double.

Speaker D: Right.

Speaker C: We don't need to create another whiteboard, we don't need to get the tape out and put. It's as easy as just clicking a button. And now we have a new one and that works for everything. We essentially now can package an entire room, an entire tier, and launch it in another site like that. So your standardization is pretty much automatic across the board and, and you have visibility to changes, auditing in terms of an audit trail. So a lot of those perks, but the engagement, the interaction is all the same. And it's all uh, foundational, as Dave said. A foundational piece that can't be changed. Right. And wouldn't be changed for a functioning system.

Speaker A: Yeah, you'll crawl, walk, run method there. You also, you mentioned there's an expectation for uh, digitization, that it can be a quick fix, kind of a band aid on any problems that are going. I think that's a misconception that stakeholders have in a management system. I'd love to pose that question to the group. Are there any other misconceptions that organizations have when they hear, oh, we're going digital with our management system? Here's what we expect to achieve. What are some of those misconceptions that organizations and individuals have when implementing a system like this. And I'd love to pose that to the whole group as more of a conversation to have on this.

Speaker C: Well, I think, I think I, I already started it off with, with the first one which, and actually I think Dave, you first pointed to this where the misconception is a lot of times when we think digital we think okay, everyone's now going to be glued to their screen and it's something that's going to silo separate instead of bring a team together. And I think that is probably the biggest misconception. It's understandable. Um, but, but when we look at how a digital management system works we actually see the opposite effect where now we have the same team engagement on site. Uh, again instead of using a whiteboard, using a digital board. But now we can bring in someone from another site. Right. We can bring in uh, other individuals who may want to participate and they can actually add items to the board in a brainstorm in a problem solving. So I think that's the biggest misconception where we actually see the, the opposite impact of what one would, would expect with this, this misconception. Right.

Speaker D: From a uh, developer perspective, something that I've seen is some people will think that digital aspect is going to be some fix all. Not necessarily a band aid but like a magic band aid. Right? You switch to digital and everything's gonna, all your problems are gonna go away. You don't have to put in the effort anymore. But one big thing that I've tried to do as a uh, developer of Power Hour is tried to make it as close to the paper hour by hour experience. And I know I Obey has done the same for those large Obey rooms. So you still have to put in the work. It's just, it's online, you have access to the data, you have access to additional tools, um, and tracking but you still have to put in the actual work.

Speaker C: Yeah, we were, it reduces the friction but, but like you said, the work still has to happen, right?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And I'll say, you know that um, the shiny object is oh, we're going to get time back for all our people. Well no, we're just going to replace and utilize that same time. But the meetings are going to be more effective, right? Because again the data is there. You can, you can look at it from a historical perspective. You can you know, basically look at, at the trend of performance and can I maintain that what's actionable to, to drive that? I think there's some also when we first talk about digital, you know, moving to A digital platform, it's. Well I'm not sure my people are capable of doing that. Right. And in reality they all have iPhones, they're all in the digital world today. So it's really just presenting that. And I think know the developers, Colin and Guy have done a really good job from a user friendly perspective. And so that angst goes away and we saw it, you know, most recently here at my current client where it's a multi language environment where they were like well this won't work because we have these barriers and in fact it works fantastic. Right. So that's an angst that I think a misconception that we can get over real quick.

Speaker A: Yeah, I'd love to dig into that a little deeper, kind of peel back the curtain on that misconception. Colin, I think it stems from what you were talking about Dave, what you were just mentioning. Uh, the fact that there are different technical languages, different expectations from users, but also people who are managing and overseeing the execution of the system. Colin, to touch on that a bit, when you're working with people at an organization and maybe one of our consultants or uh, someone internal says we need a flexible configurable system, what does that actually mean for you as far as coding goes, building out architecture, any trade offs that you have to weave in?

Speaker D: I think one of the biggest things that I have to balance is one scalability. So being able to design an interface that can work for an organization of 50 versus an organization of 5,000. And also just always referring back to our own internal documentation and our management system, talking to different consultants like Ghee, asking for feedback from even as high up as people like our CEO Bill of what do our clients really need? And then I'm just there to sort of aggregate all of that information from everyone and try to build it in a way that will work for any of our clients.

Speaker A: It's the marrying of many languages. I'm sure that's not an easy thing to do, uh, especially when you're having to translate that into code. So bravo. Are there any, Colin, would you say constraints that people have requests that they underestimate as something that's a quick fix when in reality it could be a bit longer.

Speaker D: Uh, everyone wants to throw around AI nowadays, right. And we are building AI into our Power Hour application. But like I said again it's not going to be that magic band aid that is going to fix all of your problems. It's going to be able to aggregate all of your data, communicate with you in that natural language that everyone wants to do, but it's not going to magically fix all your problems and having to explain, yeah, we're going to have AI, uh, you're going to be able to talk to a chatbot about your data and have it run real statistics and analysis on your data, but it's not going to automatically fix it for you once it responds.

Speaker C: So, and I think that's a space where tbm, where we've always thrived. Because regardless if, if AI is, is looking at your data and putting a plan together or whatever, if it's human, the, the bottom line is that we have to have boots on the ground and make the changes and make them sustainable. Right. So, so that's why our digital management system is in support of a holistic view of, of operational excellence and, and the work we do. So, and Dave can speak even, even more to that. So it's something that's foundational to, to a lot of work we do and what, what makes us stand apart. Because plans are one thing, but we see a lot come up in execution. So there's always that, uh, navigating it. And that's also what the management system supports as well.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: It's the sustainment of, of improvement activities, uh, too. So abnormality management. So I think Colin, you, you bring some great points.

Speaker B: Yeah, I agree.

Speaker A: And Guy, to follow up on that, what Colin was talking about, kind of the expectations we see from organizations we work with all the way down to end state, what do you think is a successful result when a management system is implemented in direct relation to some of those expectations? You know, what's the relationship between that, the juxtaposition and when do you see true success for our clients?

Speaker C: I think every client is different, but I think there's some foundational pieces that we can always look at. Right. First, uh, the way I would look at it is really pqdc people, quality delivery and cost. So people, are we using the system? Is it being used correctly? Looking at our adoption, which is as we were talking earlier, probably one of the hardest parts. Right. In terms of change management for either paper or a digital system, um, especially in software implementation, looking at people looking at quality, is it producing usable outputs? Right. And the same way, uh, with the workflow we want to make sure, is it, is it actually working for us? Are we increasing our meeting time or are we being more effective? Are we doubling our efforts? And then of course delivery and cost seeing, is it actually speeding up, increasing our time to decision? Um, right. Reducing meeting times and do we see that, that output in our actual operations as well. So we can view it from two perspectives. From the success of the digitization engagement itself, um, as well as that final impact on our operations, which really is what we're moving towards. Uh, and then of course, always looking at our costs. Right. Are we opening up that capacity value? Because Dave's right, what this allows us to do is, is we're going to use that same time to fix more problems, right. To really get to the root cause and reduce the time. For example, I've seen places where what they do is they have to take all of that paper data and input it into an Excel, right. So there's also a lot of that manual data entry time that's reduced. Um, but I would say that's how I would really look at it. Looking at what I would call the ROI ledger or the levers that actually drive ROI in the bottom line in terms of the actual operational side, in terms of the impact and then within the implementation of the engagement itself, uh, the success of the system that we've put into place through those specific levers. That's what I would say. But it's very specific. Right. To the client and to what we're implementing within our standard management system framework.

Speaker A: Um, seems like there's always going to be some back and forth between what leadership wants, what management wants to see, and then what we can actually develop and have sitting in the system. Would you say there are any other tensions between those two parties? Leadership and actual product development or uh, are those the main ones?

Speaker C: Yeah, I would say there's less of a, of a friction between what we can put on the boards themselves. It's more of, um, and Dave can speak to this. It's more of a friction in deciding what we're going to put there and saying no, we're only going to have one spot. What really is the one that drives the most value, that's most actionable, that's going to be most valuable to us. I think that's where we get the most difficulty because these implementations, they're, they're cross functional, right? We, we have to bring in finance, hr, um, operations, all of them together to align on the system itself. So that's where I would say we see the most friction is in, in that same process, like I said to, to define success, part of that process is defining what those KPIs actually are. And I'd say that's where in my experience I'd see the most friction.

Speaker A: Yeah, it seems like the groundwork getting Started is kind of the hardest thing

Speaker B: in this sense to that point. I mean, um, you know, the KPIs are the critical piece, right? So developing KPI trees that say, if, if we have these levers at every point in the organization, what are the ones that we really want to pull that's going to get us to the right, you know, ultimately the profitability. Right? So, so as, yeah, as we work through these tiers, that's not something that you can just throw together in a day or two. You have to really say, what's the, what's the causal effect of this KPI in the organization throughout the, the period, right? So whether it's a, a week, a month, you know, a quarter, we have to understand, are those the right levers? Are Those the right KPIs that we want to drive actions to? Because you can spend a lot of time on a KPI and never see a result at the top end. So that's the critical, that's the friction, that's the one that takes the most time to develop. And then from that the data flows on. How are we going to collect the data and flow it through to me, instrumenting the process.

Speaker C: And I think that's exactly it, especially in digital, because as we were saying, we have more and more access to data. And once we incorporate, uh, IT and all of those possibilities and looking into integration, it's very important that we're, that we're being thoughtful and selective about our efforts.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: Because there is an effort to integration, for sure.

Speaker A: It's safe to say we want the process to lead the tech in these scenarios and not the other way around.

Speaker B: 100%.

Speaker C: Yeah, just as Column said.

Speaker B: Yeah, the. Yeah, that's right. One of my fears, you know, when I first, um, started getting into the digital management system was, okay, I don't want to overlay a system and then build a process around that. The process should flow into the system. In other words, the system is an enabler, an enhancement of what we're doing on the ground. Uh, and that gets back to the fundamentals of the production, you know, Toyota production system is you have to be in the Gimba, understanding what's going on, understand where you're going to make improvements and then how that performance flows through. If you don't do that, you're going to get a view of, um, from a digital perspective of basically what you have, you're just going to get it sooner.

Speaker A: Seems, yeah, a little frivolous. Just paying the extra money for a technology solution. That's not actually optimized.

Speaker C: And I think that's that, that's part of the reason. One of the reasons of our partnership with IOBEA is because that's what it allows for. Right. We don't have to adapt the system to the technology. The technology is intended to work with the system, to fit with existing systems and to give that level of flexibility. So I think Dave is spot on. And that's why it's taken us the time to feel confident in the technology once it's gotten to this point where we can really make this transition to digital while maintaining all of those foundations back to the Toyota production system.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's all about reducing the amount of friction as much as possible. That's right. The business and the technology. I think I can guess where a lot of that friction usually comes from. And if I had to guess, I would say it's from the war room or the Obeya room. Um, I'd love to speak a bit about that and look at a macro view of the war room and how that plays into a management system. More specifically a digital system Guy, what does an Obey a room become when you move it into iobea? What's the biggest gain you get from that?

Speaker C: I would say the visibility and accessibility, um, which I guess we can tie it into too. But what I mean by visibility is immediate real time visibility. Right. We can be anywhere and open up any device that has a web browser and access to the Internet. We have our boards right there. Right. Immediately to see. We uh, can see who's engaging what all, whatever. However we've set up our system, we have visibility to it. And then in terms of accessibility is that we can do this wherever we are and involve whoever we would like to involve within the organization. Right. So we can immediately jump to the same board. The same way that now with teams we can immediately see each other face to face and discuss what we need to discuss. Now we can do that and have our board in front of us, uh, interact with it together, see who's interacting with what, um, and then tying in the fact that we don't have to limit it to only digital, uh, or only remote or in person. We can blend all of these items together. So that's what I would say.

Speaker A: From a leadership perspective, that seems huge. Being able to easily access the information in real time, but also do it from wherever, whether it's your mobile device, a laptop. Being off site and having that ease of accessibility I think is a, uh, big driver. Dave, do digital obey rooms change leadership behavior like, you know, they have that ease of access, being able to access from a phone. Should that change the behavior? And do executives actually use them differently than a physical, hour by hour board or physical obey a room?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think it does change the leadership behavior in a way that, uh, let's take a step back and talk about the management system as it was. If an executive or a senior leader or manager wasn't able to attend the, let's call it a tier one meeting, let's use that, uh, for our example in today's world, when it's digitized to Geese Point, that executive, if they have a multi site, which is what the client here has that I'm in, they can be traveling, they can be down at the other site, they can still tune into the tier meetings and still drive what I'll call that support and that leadership, um, there. So to me that's different than what it was in the manual system when it was a gap. Right. And if you had key actions that needed the support of that leadership member and they weren't there, it just delayed the, the outcome. My point there is now that they, they can virtually be anywhere and still give that support and drive those actionable items. It's a game changer. Right?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker C: No, I was just going to mention like, I can't tell you how many times have we had leadership, uh, come, you know, a VP and say, what do you mean? I, I'm only hearing about this now and I could have solved this weeks ago. Or you could have just.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: Uh, if only I had known, right. So many times that, that essential communication piece and if they would have just been able to walk by the action list or walk by the uh, accountability board, whatever it may be, they would have immediately had that visibility. That really essentially saves money. That's what it is. The bottom line is if we're not fixing issues that are causing us to um, waste, that's the business that we're in, is reducing waste. So that in itself is waste due to not having that visibility. So I think that's exactly, that's exactly right.

Speaker A: Seems like theoretically speaking an executive could be traveling to the moon on a SpaceX flight still, if they have access to the Internet, they could still get into IOBEA and check in on their, their sites. Um, update. Colin, following up on the comprehensive capability, uh, of a tool like iobea, what do you think are some of the main reasons that make it feel natural instead of clunky as opposed to a physical system?

Speaker D: There are a few things um, as far as the development process goes that I really try to keep an eye on, one of which is making sure that mobile stuff is accessible. That's something that isn't really thought of, uh, by the end user hopefully, but is really heavily thought out by myself as far as development goes. So on hour by hour, at least whenever you're on a, uh, tablet or a phone, certain aspects and components on the website will collapse into easily accessible, mobile friendly versions of the same thing. So that whether you're on a tablet, on a computer, on a laptop, uh, whether it's on a TV or, or right there in your pocket, everything will be just as accessible to you as the end user. Um, and another important thing is just showing it to as many eyes as possible. So I may think something looks good and is easily accessible, but I'll show it to someone, you know, some of our SMCs or MCs and see what their thoughts on it are. And we'll, we'll get some feedback like, hey, this isn't working. Um, and I've even gotten some of that feedback while one of the mcs under Dave, same client has said, hey, could we change this? Could we change this? And um, so just making sure that, you know, my listening ears are turned on and tuned to exactly what both our client needs and uh, our internal

Speaker A: needs are is super important in marrying those two together.

Speaker D: Yep.

Speaker A: Well I think that gives a great view of a kind of a bird's eye view of the war room looking at alignment looking how executives strategically plan. But all that strategy can be for naught if uh, you don't win hour by hour on the shop floor. I'd love to drill down into some of those executive dashboards and how they translate to an operator station, talking about how a digital hour by hour hour board can play into that and how we translate uh, a tactile whiteboard experience into a live system like TBM's at power hour. Dave, what was the original intent of hour by hour tracking on the shop floor and what problem was it solving?

Speaker B: When we developed this, there's um, a few elements that we really drove in what we call the hour by hour today. One is, you know, as you know, tak time is an important um, element. So how do you translate taktime of an organization? In other words, what do we need from a throughput perspective in a, in a cell or an area? How do we translate that down to the associate level? And that's the hour by hour. So we take that takt time, we calculate that down to the hourly rate that we need to get from that process. So one is it's a goal. Right? It's a goal so that we can meet the customer demand in a given day, week, month. Right. Secondarily, it gives the associates a target. So associates come in without an hour by hour, and they are, uh, working as productively as they, they think they are, but yet we're not seeing the results. So this gives a goal. Here's what we need to meet every hour. And if we have inconsistency in meeting that, it's actionable, it's something that we can change for the next hour. So in the old world, without hour by hour, you wouldn't see it till maybe the end of the day, end of the week that you missed your, your commitments. Now you're seeing it every hour and you have that time to adjust. So that really drives into the problem solving, uh, tools that, that you look at now over an hour, a day, a week, a month, and you're driving to solutions to eliminate those causes of poor performance. Right. So that was the intent. I think, uh, the behaviors were the engagement of the associates. Now they have a stake in the game. They say, okay, here's my expectation. If I'm not meeting that I have two decisions. I can continue to not meet it or I can do something to change it. And, and without having that engagement, leadership is, they're really at the mercy of, of that performance. So this is a predictor that says we can hit these goals. If we don't hit them, we can course correct in time to save the, the, the monthly financials.

Speaker A: And it seems like when, when that's working well, when people are bought in, that's when you can bring in other tools and lever something like a performance management system, some type of incentive. It opens a lot of options when people at that level are fully bought in and know the actual goal, uh, that needs to be hit.

Speaker B: Yeah, I had a, um, situation come up, um, one time and uh, the solution was always we need more people. Right. But in reality, as, as we added or as they added more people, their productivity or their throughput went down. And you might say, well, how can that be? Well, the way it goes down is you don't have these goals and you don't know if you're meeting it. So now you have multiple people in that process that are doing less than what they should be doing. Right. It's just human nature. So the answer isn't add more people. The answer is give a goal that is realistic and attainable and people will meet it, they'll exceed it. Right. So that's really the, the essence of what we're doing with the hour by hour.

Speaker C: That was an eye opener for me when, when someone had told me that the uh, that the work time expands to, to the target essentially. So we need to set realistic targets. But, but Dave's exactly right. If we're adding more people, but there is no target, then that uh, that level of, of efficiency. Right. We see, we see go down. But I think, I think Dave is spot on really. We're, we're driving an understanding of tact all the way down to the operator. Right. So that we're getting as close to the point of impact as possible and as close to real time as possible to, to resolve any issues before they impact, uh, the bottom line. And we see the impact at the end of the day or at the end of the week, at the end of the month.

Speaker A: Right, yeah. To follow up on that, I mean, how would you transition a physical board to an app like TBM's Power Hour? What are some of those processes? What stays and what needs to be changed going from physical to digital?

Speaker C: Well, I think uh, the what stays the same. The same behaviors, the same patterns, all of that stays the same. I think what changes is the engagement with the interface. So it's, it's more of a training of how to input the information. But as Colin was saying, really if you look at Power Hour, it looks just like the hour by hour board essentially that we would put together with, with a few minor changes and some added features for ease of setup. So really those same rituals stay the same, setting up, populating the hour by hour with the targets for every hour, which supervisor will do, um, and then same for the operator every hour completing uh, where we read or green. And then as we know, if there were any issues, if we were read the causes and countermeasures issues, countermeasures and so on. So all of that stays the same. The difference is more of understanding how to work with the system, but because there's such a reduction in the friction between the two interfaces, it makes it pretty easy. Especially as Dave said, almost all of our operators have used a computer and are using their iPhones. Right. So it's becoming a natural, becoming very natural to engage with, with software, with technology. The way that it's, that it's put together for us now and the way that we present it in the digital management system.

Speaker A: Yeah, I know most if not vast majority of people in today's world are getting very familiar and in touch with technology, things like mobile devices. I know there might be some people though who aren't necessarily software people, people who may be resistant to that change. Colin, when you're designing a uh, system like Power Hour or a uh, digital management system doing the backend work, how do you think about that with people who may not be, quote software people, but still need to interact with the

Speaker D: system all day, trying to make sure that everything is as close to the paper alternative as possible so that the, the transition between them would be frictionless.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker D: We're pretty much always going to start with paper anyways, just the, the management system in general. And once they get used to that, being able to transition to the technology aspect of it should be as painless as possible, um, because I'm trying to, you know, make it as close to the paper as possible and you know, in, in some of these places that they might not have the ease of accessibility as just a giant, you know, touch screen. Um, and so also if all they have is just a little tablet or their phone, just making sure that that user interface is going to be as, as painless and seamless as possible is um, one of my number one goals.

Speaker A: So yeah, like it almost seems like the end goal should be if you can work within the physical system, it's going to be no different. The only difference is going to be it's digital, guys. Well, I've thoroughly enjoyed speaking with you all. Not just about TBM's digital solution, which I think is a fantastic product, but also learning about the history and some of the building blocks of why management systems are so important, what it takes to actually run one, and then also that transition, uh, into a, uh, digital system. I'd like to thank you all, uh, Dave, Guy and Colin for joining me today. Um, if you guys have any closing remarks, please now is the time before this, uh, episode of the Manufacturing Edge wraps. Uh, but if not, um, thank you so much for joining us, providing your insight, uh, and being here today. I had a great amount of fun talking with you.

Speaker C: Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much. Will, it was great. We really appreciate the time.

Speaker A: For all of our listeners out there, be sure to tune in to the next episode of the Manufacturing Edge where we'll be discussing change management as it refers to a management system, what it takes, uh, to effectively manage the change, uh, from a physical to digital system or to just implement a, uh, physical system. Thanks so much and we'll see you next time on the Manufacturing Edge.