Cyber-Security: Do Manufacturers Have a New Opportunity?

By David R. Brousell | Published: July 25, 2011

As cyber-attacks against the public and private sectors rise, a new framework for protection emerges from what some might consider an unlikely source: the federal government.

 

It seems like almost every day we hear about attacks on computer networks. In just the last few months, cyber-attacks have been reported at Citicorp, Exxon, Shell, Google, PBS, NASA, Fox, Lockheed Martin, and the International Monetary Fund, to name just a few. The type of company or organization doesn’t matter. Any company or organization appears to be vulnerable.

A survey released in June by Juniper Networks puts some numbers on the problem. In the poll, 90% of businesses said their networks had been hacked at least once in the past year. Significantly, this number doesn’t include Website hacks or denial-of-service attacks. Moreover, the survey, of 583 IT and IT security professionals in U.S. organizations, revealed that 41% suffered a financial loss of $500,000 or more from the more significant network and system attacks.

But the growing problem of cyber-security goes way beyond business. It is becoming a larger issue for national security, as demonstrated by a new cyber-security policy announced last week by the U.S. Department of Defense.

Among its policy provisions, the 13-page “Department of Defense Strategy for Operating in Cyberspace” statement calls for a partnership program with the private sector to enable what DoD terms a “whole-of-government” approach to cyber-security.

The DoD said it would establish a “pilot public-private sector partnership intended to demonstrate the feasibility and benefits of voluntarily opting into increased sharing of information about malicious or unauthorized cyber-activity and protective cyber-security measures.”

Industrial companies that are suppliers to the DoD have worked with the department for some time on the cyber-security issue. In 2007, for example, the DoD launched the Defense Industrial Base Cyber Security and Information Assurance program. But the policy statement last week seemed to go beyond the defense suppliers and appears to be a broader invitation to the private sector to team up on the cyber-security issue.

This may be something that other manufacturers might want to take a look at, with an eye toward getting involved. After all, the problem knows no boundaries.

“Cyber-threats to U.S. national security go well beyond military targets and affect all aspects of society,” the new DoD strategy report says. “Hackers and foreign governments are increasingly able to launch sophisticated intrusions into the networks and systems that control critical civilian infrastructure. Given the integrated nature of cyberspace, computer-induced failures of power grids, transportation networks, or financial systems could cause massive physical damage and economic disruption.

“While the threat to intellectual property is often less visible than the threat to critical infrastructure,” the report continues, “it may be the most pervasive threat today. Every year, an amount of intellectual property larger than that contained in the Library of Congress is stolen from networks maintained by U.S. businesses, universities, and government departments and agencies.”

The DoD itself, with more than 15,000 networks and 7 million computing devices around the world, is under constant attack. The report says that DoD networks are “probed millions of times every day,” and successful attacks have resulted in the loss of thousands of files from the DoD, allies, and partners. The report also singles out the IT industry as a weak link.

“Software and hardware are at risk of malicious tampering even before they are integrated into an operational system,” the report says. “The majority of information technology products used in the United States are manufactured and assembled overseas. The reliance of DoD on foreign manufacturing and development creates challenges in managing risks at points of design, manufacture, service, distribution, and disposal.”

Apart from the problems and the risks, the new DoD policy is clear that there are many benefits to be found in cyberspace. As it increasingly becomes a part of everyday life, the DoD says, cyberspace has become an “incubator” for free enterprise, advances in technology, the spread of free speech, and “new social networks that drive our economy and reflect our principles.”

Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, crime has become part of this fabric. The policy announcement from the DoD last week is an attempt to fight back hard. And it sounds like the department needs all the help it can get.

To take a first step, you can access the DoD report.

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Protecting Customer Data in the Cloud

By Chris Chiappinelli | Published: July 18, 2011

Even the experts can’t seem to get cyber-security right. Wouldn’t you like to get out of the business of guarding your customers’ data?

 

During a closed-door cyber-security meeting last month, I listened to network and policy experts discuss the vulnerabilities that define our connected nation and world. The threats are numerous and the attack tactics manifold, even if the motivations are relatively limited—profit, anarchic tendencies, and nationalistic fervor.

States face threats to their critical physical infrastructure, their banking systems, and their highly confidential information. Private companies are vulnerable to theft of intellectual property, exposure of their customers’ important data, and other maladies.

Many private businesses seem baffled and flat-footed when it comes to cyber-security. That’s no surprise, given that a leader in cyber-defense, RSA Security, was itself the victim of a significant hack just months ago.

So, it occurred to me, as I watched the cyber-experts scratch their heads last month, that one of the original objections companies voiced about cloud computing may eventually become its greatest virtue. In essence, a company that runs its ERP system in the cloud or rents storage from a cloud service provider is outsourcing the security of its data to that provider. For the moment, security certifications for cloud computing providers resemble the chalkboard at an ice cream shop: too many flavors to choose from.

But soon the industry will rally around a winning security standard for cloud computing. Then the real battle will begin—crafting service-level agreements that will define the responsibility for any breaches of data. Of course, no private company will welcome a data breach that exposes its customers’ sensitive data. But it may welcome the chance to point a finger at the cloud computing provider.

Against the advanced persistent threats that exist in today’s networked world, even paragons of cyber-security can become victims. Wouldn’t you want to shift that responsibility to another company if you could?

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The Future of Humanity: Will We Be the Last to Die?

By David R. Brousell | Published: July 14, 2011

Now, there’s a provocative thought if ever there was one! Underlying it is the notion that technology is advancing so rapidly that we can envision the day when people won’t die anymore in the conventional sense, but will simply replace body and brain parts with high-tech equivalents and keep on truckin’.

Just think of the implications! Or, better yet, listen to someone who gets paid to think about such things. I did just that on July 12 at Cisco Live, the annual customer and partner gathering of network equipment giant Cisco Systems, in Las Vegas.

Dave Evans, Cisco’s chief futurist, readily admits that he’s got the best job in the company. It’s not hard to see why. Evans gets to explore lots of seemingly far-out things, most of which have something to do with high-tech in general and networking in particular. Hey, he works for Cisco, OK?

But Evans is not just poking around to come up with stuff that will make people say “Wow!” What he’s really trying to do is understand how things happening in technology, business, and with people will play out long term. In doing so, he can make Cisco smarter and, therefore, more attuned to what to provide to customers.

Cisco, of course, isn’t the only company that has people who do deep dives about the future. Most smart companies, usually the large ones, have someone doing this. That’s a good thing, even if only a fraction of what they may predict or envision materializes.

Evans certainly had my attention on Tuesday. In a session entitled “Ten Tech Trends That Will Change the World in 10 Years,” Evans painted a picture of a technologically intense future, one in which knowledge will be created at astounding rates. Now, human knowledge is doubling every two to three years, Evans said, compared with a time when it took a century to do so.

“The more we know, the faster we know more,” Evans said, quoting Buckminster Fuller.

Here are Evans’ 10 predictions:

  • The Internet of Things: There will be 50 billion devices connected to the Internet by 2020, clearly resulting in more things being connected than people. Information on literally every object in our environment will become available, opening up vast new possibilities of control.
  • The Zetta Flood Is Coming: The tremendous growth of connectivity as well as what Evans called the “insatiable desire for rich media” will result in the creation of mega-volumes of data, far beyond the petabytes some large companies are grappling with today. He predicted that by 2015, one zettabyte (how many zeros is that?) will be traversing the Internet. This quantity would be the equivalent of a stack of books stretching from Earth to Pluto 20 times. That’s 72 billion miles in length, he estimated. Frankly, I can’t grasp a number that big, but I get the gist of it.
  • Wisdom of the Cloud: By 2020, Evans said, one-third of all data will live in or pass through the cloud. Computer systems will become infinitely smarter, making possible certain specializations. “What if Watson [the IBM supercomputer] got a medical degree?” Evans asked.
  • The Next Net: Evans was confident that the Internet will scale in the future to meet the tremendous demands he envisions. In this regard, many people at Cisco Live were talking about IPv6, the next iteration of domain names, which will provide billions more addresses than the current IPv4. Interestingly, though, not everyone I talked to is sold on IPv6. More on that later.
  • The World Is Flat: A twist on New York Times columnist Tom Friedman’s best-selling book of a few years ago, the prediction here is that network-enabled communication, with its “unprecedented transparency,” has become a catalyst for social and political change and will ultimately advance the human species. See the recent Middle East upheaval.
  • The Power of Power: Demographic shifts now underway will result in 500 million urbanized people, Evans predicted, creating vast new energy requirements that will have to be managed by the net. “Anything that generates or consumes energy will be connected to the network,” he said.
  • All About You: The mega-shift Evans sees with high-tech has to do with adaptation. People, he said, have always adapted to technology changes. Now, he claimed, technology is adapting to people in the form of augmented reality or gesture-based computing. By 2020, he predicted, very sophisticated brain implants will be available that will enable people to “control the world by thinking about it.”
  • Anything on Demand: Products will be made that will be specific to you. Additive manufacturing, which he defined as the process of joining materials to make objects from 3D images, will enable the “printing” of life-size homes or even human organs. “We will download things as easily as we download music,” he said.
  • Another Family Tree: OK, brace yourself; this one really gets sci-fi. Calling Dr. Frankenstein! Here, Evans predicted the development of what he called “artificial entities” — intelligent beings with human characteristics. By 2032, he predicted, robots will become mentally superior to humans, and, by 2035, robots will completely replace humans in the workforce! Holy s–t! The Terminator is really coming! Arnold will get that sequel after all!
  • You — Only Better: Evans isn’t put off by the possibilities he described. In fact, he’s encouraged that they mean a better — and longer — life for people. “We as a species are beginning a new era,” he said. “We are controlling things at the sub-atomic level. We have become masters of our own destiny.” So much so, he thinks, that by 2015, life expectancy will advance by one year each year and, by 2029, the end of aging will be at hand. “Are we the last of our species to die?” he asked in his closing remarks.

I don’t know about you, but I’m “dying” to find out. I’ve got places to go and people to see! But, seriously, folks, Evans’ predictions may seem like they come from someone with a lot of time on his hands. The same thing, however, could have been said a century or less ago when other visionaries talked about bacteria, air travel, landing on the moon, heart transplants, even wearable computing devices. They were probably laughed at, mocked, even scorned.

So, allow yourself a chuckle or two. I certainly did in Las Vegas. And then….

 

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Chambers Outlines a ‘Next Generation’ Cisco

By David R. Brousell | Published: July 13, 2011

John Chambers, the chairman and chief executive officer of Cisco Systems, has been at the helm of the network equipment giant for many years. As such, he has had to pilot the company through bubbles, economic downturns, technological shifts, and a changed competitive landscape.

His latest challenge, as he outlined to a gathering of about 15,000 of his customers on July 12 in Las Vegas, is to shape up Cisco organizationally to accelerate the company’s innovation, its speed, its position in its core switching market, and to improve its relationship with customers.

“Cisco will change in the future in many ways,” he told a packed stadium during a keynote at Cisco Live, the company’s annual customer and partner meeting. “We are continuing to reinvent ourselves. We need to streamline, be faster in the future. But in many ways we won’t change. Our culture won’t change.”

Chambers’ remarks came as news reports, citing Wall Street analysts, suggested that Cisco needs to cut up to 10,000 employees, or about 14% of its workforce. Cisco had reportedly said in April, following a disappointing earnings report, that it would have to achieve $1 billion in savings by eliminating jobs. On May 5, the company announced it was streamlining its operating model, reducing its cross-functional council structure as well as making changes to its sales organization. Cisco said that it would have the new sales organization in place at the start of its fiscal 2012 year on July 31.

Chambers did not address the workforce-reduction reports in his speech. Instead, he focused on what he called Cisco’s top five priorities: leadership in its core switching and router businesses; collaboration, to drive a 5%-10% productivity gain per year; cloud computing, which he called the “next IT architecture”; video, which he predicted would become the “primary form of IT” in the next four years; and basic network architecture.

He was quite candid in admitting that $40 billion Cisco, not unlike many companies that grow large, had become too complex, slowing decision-making and making it harder for customers to do business with the company. He noted that Cisco had slipped in its core switching business — some reports indicate that Cisco’s share of worldwide switching revenue had dropped 5.8 points to 68.5% in the first quarter — and he promised that Cisco would address this, in part, by creating one organization that will be responsible for the direction of this technology, rather than the “four or five groups” that had been involved.

At the Las Vegas meeting, Cisco announced an upgrade to its flagship Catalyst 6500 switch product.

Overall, Chambers said the “next generation” Cisco will have a simplified internal structure, a streamlined engineering process, greater functional accountability, and a better alignment between service and sales.

“If you don’t change, you get left behind regardless of size,” Chambers said.

And to hear him tell it, much change is ahead of us. He sees four megatrends reshaping things — mobile, social, visual, and virtual, all of which, not surprisingly, require a capable and resilient network infrastructure.

He emphasized video, in particular, saying that video currently represents 51% of Internet traffic, but will command 91% by 2014. “Video will be the next voice,” he said, predicting that it will be the “primary form of IT” in the next four years.

If he’s right, Cisco’s current exercise in reinvention will most likely be just one step in a longer journey, and one that may very well end up requiring even more changes not yet envisioned.

 

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The Cost of Innovation

By Stephanie Neil | Published: July 11, 2011

In an effort to manage the product innovation lifecycle, engineers are now being asked to design to cost, adding new responsibilities such as comparing suppliers and evaluating manufacturing processes.

When it comes to product innovation, manufacturers readily pour massive amounts of money into R&D just to be sure they have an edge in their industry. In the beginning stages, the budget can be very loose for those enthusiastic CAD engineers who, glued to their desktop, are creating the next best thing, and, we think, are not worrying about what it would take to make.

Indeed, creative engineers are given a lot of leeway to design products that will inspire customers to buy. But the process involves many revisions, the introduction of new materials, and added product functionality. All of this brings more complexity—and cost—into the supply chain and into manufacturing. So, it’s no surprise that the people responsible for product innovation must now comply with cost management policies.

Engineers who have focused only on product form, fit, and function have recently been calculating a fourth “F”, as in finance.

“It is now up to the design engineers to meet target costs, or for the value engineers to take cost out of products on the market,” Stephanie Feraday, the president and CEO of aPriori, recently told me. And, she confirmed, this is a very new responsibility for engineers. “What put a laser point on this was the economy,” she said, “and the maturing of engineering processes.”

For example, engineers have been applying design–for-manufacturability principles for years, which means a product is designed in such a way that it is easy to manufacture. Now, they are being asked to “design to cost,” meaning that they must estimate in advance the total cost of producing the product.

So, when working away on 3D CAD, the designer is taking into account the cost of the materials and whether one supplier manufactures its parts better than another supplier. Not really an easy thing to do unless you have visibility into the suppliers’ manufacturing processes, machine volume, and even the materials they use.

Of course, I was having this discussion with Feraday because she was telling me about the aPriori enterprise cost management product, which can provide design engineers with the visibility they need, she said.

aPriori’s product ties into any CAD software, applying mathematical cost models to the Geometric Cost Drivers (GCD), which include any aspect of the product’s design that drives cost. These GCDs are evaluated within a model of the manufacturing processes; labor, materials, and production parameters are also considered.

The aPriori software not only applies mathematical models to materials and manufacturing processes, but it presents them in a virtual production environment. This is a simulated representation of a plant including every element, from electricity to lighting to people, that might impact cost.

The application has saved snowmobile and ATV maker Polaris Industries $800,000 in the first year of use, according to a customer testimonial video. Even more savings come from cost avoidance by getting the product right the first time, Polaris executives said.

But what really struck me is how peoples’ roles and responsibilities within an organization are changing.  Companies can no longer afford to let departments work in isolation. In this “integrated enterprise,” everyone—whether you are an engineer, a plant-floor operator, or a field service technician—-is responsible for making and saving the company money.

Manufacturing is actually going through its own reinvention, it seems, by creating a new culture of individuals who are cost-saving, revenue-generating innovators.

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Manufacturing Draws Cheers, But Faces Conundrum

By Chris Chiappinelli | Published: July 5, 2011

Advanced manufacturing industries and techniques appeal to those hoping to strengthen the United States’ industrial base, but they may not mean salvation for the middle class.

 

On June 24 at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, President Obama announced the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership program, which will bring together leaders of academia and private industry, and sprinkle them with government funding to “support the creation of good jobs by helping U.S. manufacturers reduce costs, improve quality, and accelerate product development.”

Sounds like a well-intentioned effort to encourage the type of manufacturing that befits a world-leading economy.

“If we want a robust, growing economy,” Obama told the crowd, “we need a robust, growing manufacturing sector.”

Manufacturing’s supporters have been saying as much for years. Now the rest of the country has digested the news that Internet stocks and rampant homebuilding are not, in fact, the keys to economic prosperity, and they’ve begun to join the chorus touting manufacturing’s virtues.

But the President also hit on a conundrum, whether he meant to or not.

In his Carnegie Mellon speech, he said, “Companies have learned to become more efficient, with fewer employees. In Pittsburgh, you know this as well as anybody. Steel mills that once needed a thousand workers now do the same work with a hundred. While these changes have resulted in great wealth for some Americans, and drastically increased productivity, they’ve also caused major disruptions for many others.”

The Advanced Manufacturing Partnership (AMP) initiative is intended to counteract those diminishing forces by boosting America’s prowess in emerging manufacturing sectors, including nanotech, biotech, green energy, and information technology. Retraining workers for jobs in those industries will keep the manufacturing base healthy, the thinking goes.

But it butts up against another AMP mission, which is to boost efficiency. “How do we do things better, faster, cheaper, [and] design and manufacture superior products that allow us to compete all over the world?” the President asked.

That’s where two forces collide: operational excellence on the one hand, and manufacturing employment on the other. If we strive to manufacture better, faster, and cheaper, can we truly expect to restore the manufacturing employment base that once formed the bulk of our middle class?

Consider that the President delivered his AMP speech after touring Carnegie Mellon’s National Robotics Engineering Center, and that he lauded the virtues of robots during his speech. As translated, “better, faster, cheaper” may mean jobs for robots instead of people. We need only look at the auto industry to understand the effects on a workforce when a quest for operational efficiency combines with advanced robotics. It can kill jobs instead of creating them.

So, are we speaking with a forked tongue when we trumpet advances in operational efficiency while also promising to revitalize manufacturing employment?

Is it time we came to grips with a smaller manufacturing workforce, and, with it, a smaller middle class?

What do you think?

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Apple, Mobility Highlight New York Tech Fest

By David R. Brousell | Published: June 28, 2011

Product innovation in the smart device and enterprise mobility fields occurs at a breakneck pace; time to catch up on some of the latest technologies on offer.

 

OK, all of you gadget freaks out there. Listen to this. Last week I had, like, a really cool “digital experience” at a gathering of some 70 tech companies at a place called the Metropolitan Pavilion on 18th Street in New York City.

I, like, attend these gatherings, organized by an events company called Pepcom, from time to time to, like, check out what’s new and interesting in what is mostly, like, the consumer tech world. Most of the software products, audio and visual products, and electronic devices might not be used directly on the factory floor, but many are sure to be used for personal productivity applications and for, like, pure fun.

OK, enough of that! The “like” is out of my system. So, in a more serious vein, many of the companies at the event, perhaps not surprisingly, were showing add-on and enhancement products for the Apple iPad and iPhone, as well as personal mobility products, devices for social media engagement, and even IT-related devices such as network-attached, or wireless, storage products.

Here’s a sampling of some of the stuff I saw:

  • ooVoo. The name of both the product and the New York-based company that makes it, ooVoo (the name is supposed to reflect two pairs of eyes on either side of the “V,” as in video) is a cloud-based video chat service that enables you to conduct chat calls with up to six people at a time. The service supports PC or Apple systems. ooVoo just announced the availability of a free video chat service for up to three users on the iOS platform for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch devices. The service is priced at $9.95 a month for the six-user version.
  • Looxcie. Described as a wearable, mobile-connected “social” video camcorder, Looxcie (also both the name of the product and the company that makes it) is worn on your ear, allowing for hands-free video recording. An “instant clip button” automatically rewinds, captures, and saves video that can be uploaded to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube via a smartphone. On June 6, the company introduced Looxcie 2, demonstrated at the conference, which can be worn on the ear, on helmets, or caps. A version with 10 hours of video storage is priced at $199.99, and a version with five hours is $179.99.
  • Snap for TV. This is an application that allows photos from 16 social media and storage sites including Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, and others to be viewed and slide shows to be created on an Internet-connected television. The Snap for TV application, from a Princeton, N.J.-based company called Exclaim Mobility Inc., can be downloaded through Yahoo! Connected TV.
  • PocketCloud. Designed for smartphones and tablets, PocketCloud is a client-side application that allows IT administrators and end-users to access their PC and virtual desktops remotely on the iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad. Last week, Wyse Technology, the developer of PocketCloud, announced version 2.1, which now has a “tablet-optimized” interface as well as the addition of a number of services that were part of a premium version of the product. Wyse also said today that downloads of PocketCloud have now passed the 1 million mark across the Apple iOS and Android platforms.

 

As I mentioned earlier, there were also a number of wireless storage products demonstrated at the event. One of them was Hitachi’s G-Connect product, the first in a family of wireless storage devices for the iPad and iPhone. G-Connect, with 500 GB of storage, will be available next month for $199.99.

The above is just a sampling of what was on display. It’s pretty clear that Apple’s iPad and iPhone are far more than just interesting products. They are whole markets, with sub-markets, in and of themselves. The same is true for mobility. This is not just a trend; it’s, like, a revolution in behavior.

Uh, oh. There I, like, go again.

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M2M Innovation in the Cloud

By Stephanie Neil | Published: June 27, 2011

A slew of new applications are on the way as machine-to-machine technology taps into the cloud computing infrastructure.

 

Product innovation takes time. Look at the smart phone. Mobile phone makers began with basic calling capabilities, expanded to include texting, then web browsing, and now fully featured mobile applications. Suddenly, there are all sorts of uses for that little device.

The machine-to-machine (M2M) market is following a similar pattern. M2M is a way for intelligent devices to communicate without human intervention. The market development started with embedded-device vendors, who eventually teamed up with the communications infrastructure companies. Now the platform providers have emerged, providing a way to develop applications. As a result, in the past few years, fleet management, intelligent metering, and remote monitoring have become standard apps. But, as we noted in a recent Enterprise Mobility blog, there will be many more applications on the way.

The next game-changer isn’t the 5 trillion devices that might someday be connected with M2M capabilities, but, rather, the computing infrastructure that will help connect them.

Cloud computing will usher in a new era of M2M, said Dale Calder, founder of Axeda, an M2M platform provider. The cloud era is one filled with all sorts of product innovation and new applications, he recently told me.

“Cloud computing is like an electric grid in a way,” Calder said. “It is a place data can go and be easily distributed and consumed by lots of different applications. It becomes an enabler that spawns a new generation of applications.”

To date, companies leveraging M2M capabilities have most likely had to develop their own applications and manage their own network infrastructures. But as new teams of embedded device vendors, carriers, and app development providers deliver cloud-based service solutions, they aim to resolve a major management headache.

Axeda, for example, handles 300 million M2M conversations per day, which requires a lot of computing power to process the data. But management of those systems goes away when it is handed over to the cloud, Calder told me.

 In addition, in the cloud there is a lot of room, he said, to create innovative M2M applications in the supply chain, for asset tracking, and to weave intelligence into consumer products of all shapes and sizes.

“Ultimately, a product without connectivity to the cloud will seem odd for manufacturers,” Calder said.

In the not too distant future, all of our devices will be digitally connected and communicating much like we humans already do on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, he said. “M2M will be bigger than social networking,” he predicted.

Do you agree?

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Eli Goldratt Lives on in Manufacturing, and Life

By Chris Chiappinelli | Published: June 20, 2011

The man behind the Theory of Constraints died this month, but his legacy will endure in the questions we ask ourselves.

 

Eliyahu Goldratt died this month. Goldratt was the rare person who will live on after his death, not just in the hearts and minds of those close to him, but in the daily activities of millions of his fellow humans. Sports heroes survive on highlight reels. Great singers give us soundtracks for our lives. Eli Goldratt gave us a better way to conduct business.

Here on the Operational Excellence channel at Managing Automation, we often champion lean manufacturing, but Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints deserves its own place in the pantheon of business philosophies. Its beauty lies in its simplicity, in Goldratt’s refusal to see even the most intractable problem as anything but a series of questions to be asked and steps to be solved: Establish the goal, identify the constraint, exploit the constraint, and be alert, lest the constraint return to previous form.

It is as much a philosophy of life as it is a treatise on business. We live in an overcomplicated world, and much of that complication is self-imposed. If I apply the Theory of Constraints to my own life, for instance, I might say the goal is to live a less hectic, more considered existence. Many of my peers would say there just aren’t enough hours in the day. They would throw up their hands and declare that we are busy people, continuously besieged by the commitments of modern life. But Goldratt wouldn’t despair. He would look for a constraint. And he would find it in the TV show “Wipeout.” Watching people fall haphazardly into pools, it turns out, is not the hallmark of a considered life. It also shrinks the day by an hour, making me feel frenzied during the other 23 hours. It does not support the goal.

For those of you who don’t consider my life a paradigm by which to set your clocks, take an example from the business world. In 2009 we honored Rain CiiCarbon LLC with a Progressive Manufacturing Award for its use of the Theory of Constraints. The producer of petroleum coke for the aluminum industry used Goldratt’s philosophy to reduce plant shutdowns by 25% and generate $400,000 in annual revenue.

And they did it by first understanding their goal and then identifying the constraints. It’s a remarkably simple edict, as all great business theories are. As Goldratt himself said, “An expert is not someone who gives you an answer, it is someone who asks you the right questions.”

Goldratt’s questions will live on for a long, long time.

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Manufacturing: Overconfidence Can Lead to Missed Opportunities

By Chris Chiappinelli | Published: June 13, 2011

U.S. manufacturers can make their rebound more sustainable by embracing the growing field of sustainability, which they’ve let other countries dominate.

 

The domestic manufacturing industry is flush with confidence as it leads the U.S. economy back from the brink, albeit at a slower pace lately than most would like. For years, manufacturers were the also-rans of the U.S. economy. We gritted our teeth as doomsayers predicted the sector’s demise and lines on employment charts sloped in the wrong direction.

Now, manufacturing’s back in vogue. Those who got sick of riding in the caboose now enjoy the view from the locomotive. But when the conductor comes through to check tickets, we’d better have a stub that takes us far, not just to the next stop.

I say we’re not doing enough to punch our own ticket. The automotive sector has bounced back from its doldrums, and our global military sprawl feeds the aerospace and defense sector billions in contracts. But what’s new in American manufacturing? Where’s the sustainability in this resurgence?

In one of the most promising manufacturing markets, at least, the U.S. lags. Clean energy manufacturing has fallen disproportionately to efforts by China and other Asian countries, whether it’s development of hybrid batteries, wind turbines, or solar panels. The United States’ stubborn belief in a limitless oil supply, combined with that sector’s powerful lobbying interests and many other factors, has left us flat-footed.

Now is the time to get the spring back in our step and apply our ample skills to an industry that can extend our stint in the economic driver’s seat. The sustainability market, with its hybrid cars, wind farms, and geothermal ingenuity, can help make U.S. manufacturing’s resurgence that much more sustainable.

China just agreed to stop subsidizing its wind power manufacturers. U.S. manufacturers asked for a level playing field, and now that it’s leveling off, it’s time to get to work.

The U.S. rose to dominance in global manufacturing in part because it created the automotive sector and parlayed its first-mover status into decades of leadership. Sustainability could just be the next great opportunity, and it’s not too late for the U.S. to take a leadership role.

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