What Failures Can Destroy your Product or Service

You could use your gut, previous experience or your natural genius foresight to c determine what failures can cause you serious headaches. Or you can use failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) that will include all the previous aspects mentioned in a structured way to determine and address the possible problems. You will be able to identify failures and their effects on your system, function or process and create solutions to prevent them or mitigates the effects.


FMEA is very effective when developing a new product/service, developing service/ maintenance procedures, or resolving an existing complex system problem.
 
 
When creating your product/service there are functions that must work at some level of performance under various conditions. Safety compliance issues must be met to sell your product/service so you must determine the failures that would create unsafe effects. Some performance failures will generate foreseeable undesirable effects and others maybe discovered during testing. FMEA will give your team a road map to identify critical functions and trouble spots.
 
If your product or service has a maintenance component FMEA is also a great roadmap to generating efficient processes to find the root problem and fix it.
It may seem obvious, but the right people need to be in the room even if its virtual when brainstorming effects that signal performance failures. Those who are writing the requirements, those designing, those testing equipment and those performing the process. Your team will get a much better sense of failure severity, risk and interactions which helps in prioritizing and determining critical paths.

Environmental conditions in which your product will be operating, stored, and transported must be considered i.e., hot, cold, wet, dry, dusty, corrosive, windy, noise, EME/EMI, concentrations of elements in air surrounding it, radiation, altitude etc. (I’m sure there are more, I just listed the ones I had to deal with resolving).

Processes for a service function has some major components like workers education/training, the tools / equipment being used and the people personality performing the “job”.  Creating a robust system that yields consistent results within limits despite variations in multiple factors is the goal.  Just like designing hardware components developing processes is similar as you can make a process multifunctional.

Mapping out what is causing the most impactful effects for your product or process is priceless in determining fixes in a timely and effective manner. Some will go old-school drawing Ishikawa diagrams aka fishbone diagrams, Excel or more complex data driven programs to do FMEA. What ever you use remember garbage in equal garbage out so focus on the quality input.
 
 
Resources:
       Books   , ASQ , EXCELL , Reliasoft

What stories do you have about using FMEA?


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How can key performance indicators (KPI) help your business thrive? Business owners and CEOs need to ask themselves what they are trying to accomplish with their business. Yes, this is where the mission statement / philosophy is important to be communicated to everyone in the organization but also internalized. Organizations with a powerful sense of mission and purpose helps in empowering employees to act on their own in a responsible and productive way.
 
Developing the right KPIs can keep the business on track to accomplish their goals. Creating the most effective KPI is a team effort which will allow stakeholders to spot trends and aberrations to expectation, that they can act. The landscape is ever changing as assumptions and circumstances change. Your KPIs should act like a feedback loop showing what is happening compared to your projected targets. Best practice is to have the data entry as automated as possible and done at frequent and regular intervals if you want to use it as a management tool not just something to show investor how you are doing.
 
Favorite KPIs executives love:
Revenue growth, customer growth, profit margins, costs reduction, sales growth
Company divisions or departments have different KPIs that may include:
Customer satisfaction, cost per part, defect rate, production rate, employee satisfaction, ship rate, web site traffic, sales rate, customer retention rate, cash flow
 
The best KPIs are characterized as:

• Objective and Specific
• Able to measure progress (quantifiable) to your projections
• Realistically attainable,
• D relevant to your groups mission
• Time frame for achieving your goals with check points along the way

 
There are various software programs which can help your organization create and track key performance indicators. I personally like going old school and creating customized formulas in an Excel spread sheet although this may at time meet the best practice of automated inputs.
 
Tells what you’re doing to not just monitor your business performance with KPI but how you use it to get better.







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Developing new products is fun and rewarding for your customers who can be more productive and increase their performance. Getting them the right product or service to do the job is the big challenge especially when they only know what they don't like.. They may know what they don't  want and have no clue on how to fix it that will make them happy. That is your job as the creator.

You want to create that new thing that solves a problem that most people in your target customer base profile, really value a good solution. You've pick that direction based on some assumptions on how to get to the right solution and how your customer will respond. You must validate those assumptions with real quantifiable facts as soon as possible.

There are some best practices for product development expressed by  various articles from Harvard Business Review. I have used many of these in my career to cut time to market in half and developed some very successful award winning products.

1. “Make queues and info overflow visible to everyone.” Transparency is key to find bottlenecks quickly. Create key performance indicators (KPIs) that every stakeholder should have input in creating. They all need to know what the values and trends over time mean. Automate updates on a frequent and regular basis.
2. “Quantify and factor the cause delays in your decisions.”
3. “Resource slack where utilization is highest.” (don’t overload your people with tasks to do every minute) self-education, tinkering and recharging are essential in getting the teams’ best performance and maintaining happiness.
4. “Shift focus of control systems from efficiency to quicker response time.”
5. “Reduce transaction cost and time with smaller batches for faster feedback.”
6. “Experiment with small batches.”
7. “Treat the development plan as it will evolve with added information as it becomes available.”
8. “Start projects when ready to make a full commitment.”
9. “Aim for simplicity, investigate what features can be removed…” Do not throw the kitchen sink at that customer hoping the right combo sticks. Know what those potential customers truly value when it comes to functions or services you want to provide.
10. “Experiment early rapidly, frequently with modeling, prototypes in a controlled and customer environment.”
11. “Emphasize overlapping iterative process designs…”
12. “Focus on quick feedback vs doing it right the 1st time. Learn and repeat.”

Let us know what has worked for you and how you got the amazing solution that your customer couldn't wait to use and were delighted when they did. Thanks hope this helps your business.

Knowledge is power which is made up of 2 parts. First being aware of the information and what action to take on that information. When it comes to innovation it is not just about what tools you may have at your disposal, but how, when, where and who uses it. The following publications have some great insights, tools and methods to help companies be not just more innovative, but more productive, efficient and a create a great work environment for employees.

Seeing Around Corners – How to Spot Inflection Points in Business before they Happen by Rita McGrath

HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Innovation by Harvard Business Review

Hacking Growth by Sean Ellis & Morgan Brown

Future of Management by Gary Hamel

The Startup Way by Eric Ries

The Art of Impossible  - A Peak Performance Primer by Steven Kotler

What’s the big deal about “Big Data”?

Some will say “Big data is a combination of structured, semi structured and unstructured data collected by organizations that can be mined for information and used in machine learning projects, predictive modeling and other advanced analytics applications. “
Getting beyond these buzz words of big data and data analytics, success factors are the inputs, their significance, the interactions and how its manipulated. Taking and old school expression in the programming parlance is that garbage in equals garbage out.
 
While all systems are unique whether it’s a piece of hardware, app, manufacturing process, marketing evaluation or managing a project there are common touch points.
 

1. Know what effects your environment i.e., internal, external factors
   1. Systems engineering: resources, integration, processes, testing, quality
   2. Project planning: resources, timelines, milestones, finances
   3. Project management: communication, roles/responsibilities, risks, stakeholders
2. Know the significance of the factors that create the effect so limits can be determine for your project.
   1. Research historical data
   2. Perform analysis on competitors
   3. Use predictive tools and statistics
3. Interpreting the data should improve productivity, efficiencies, processes, quality. Leadership/stakeholders must determine the value of various output needed to be successful. (Yes, your team needs to know in the abstract what they are trying to accomplish before you start.)

There are a multitude of tools and methods to use; like Design of Experiments, 5 Whys, system modeling, Six Sigma etc. to define, measure, analyze, improve, and control the metrics for solving problems.
 
Keep an open mind as there is no magic bullet to get the answers you want at a push of a button, not matter how much data you may have acquire. You need to have the right data to measure the results that count and analyze what can help your efforts.

How can your company consistently create innovation?
Innovation, what does it mean?

Innovation: to recreate or transform a product or process to a previously unforeseen use or way to make it more valuable. That value may include saving time, saving money, saving steps, making it safer, making it last longer, creating fewer mistakes, allowing multiple uses, solving a problem or just make it more appealing (i.e. usability, esthetically…

When it comes to innovation many times it takes many years but comes together in that eureka moment when perspective of problem changes or cross-pollination of ideas connect. Many companies want to drive innovation by creating an environment and/or systems to create and evaluate new ideas at a more rapid pace.

1. It starts with employees that company hires, have they been on teams, do they have multiple interests/passions outside their job description.
2. Does the company have mechanisms to aspire, discover and act on these new ideas that is easy and leadership which encourages and empowers its change makers (that includes everyone!).
3. Reward that behavior by recognizing everyone along the value chain that created that something new. I could be a patch, an award, paid time off. A percentage of savings or profits to be shared by everyone.

I encourage all potential innovators take the time to kickback on a regular basis and soak in your environment reflect on your blessings (how you do it could be meditation, journaling your gratitude, sitting by the fire, gazing at the stars or clouds, the rising or setting sun, that refreshing shower and more).

 Enjoy some play time and be present in the moment whether squirting your kids with water, running around playing tag, playing 3on3 b-ball, playing cards, chess, golf, biking, skating, walking the dog, swimming, boating, softball, kickball, corn hole, horseshoes, etc. Your subconscious will work on those problems swirling around your head. So, when you come back to focus on solutions, you will be refreshed with multiple perspectives that will present themselves like magic.
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I believe everyone can innovate it’s just a matter of time and perspective. When it comes to teams you just have to listen and build with each other…and pizza, beer, Buffalo wings and bulk barrels of candies from Costco could help too 😊

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Upcoming Boot camps and conferences that inform, connect and will help in improving your bottom line.

Who should attend: young and old, those just beginning a career, those not ready to retire and everyone in between!

2020 RPCN Consulting Business Boot Camp (co-sponsored by SCORE) register early before slots fill up for boot camp sessions: 5 Mondays Feb. 10, 17, 24, March 2, 9, 2020
 
MIT – Harvard Medical School Healthcare Innovation Boot camp register before February 1st 2020 for Boot Camp March 21-27, 2020 in Cambridge MA
 
AMA Business Boot Camp: Management and Leadership Essentials (4  Online sessions) register early for  Feb10-13, April 6-9, Jun 15-18
 
Skilled Nursing Facility Billing Boot Camp register early for Boot Camp, Feb. 20-21 (El Segundo,CA), May 7 -8 (Nashville, TN), July 27-28 (Denver, CO)
 
The Entrepreneurship Bootcamp at Babson College , May 18-22, 2020 , Babson Park , MA
 
Deep Learning Summit, January 30-31, 2020 , San Francisco CA, USA
…Our events bring together the latest technology advancements as well as practical examples to apply AI to solve challenges in business and society. Our unique mix of academia and industry enables you to meet with…
 
 
East Meets West 2020 Summit, January 30-31, 2020, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
…East Meets West Summit is an intimate pre-event limited to 100 participants that includes all the speakers and VIP guests for East Meets West 2020 at Hilton Hawaiian Village Lagoon. Participants will take part in ocean activities, speaker one-on-ones, roundtable discussions, and lots of networking opportunities in paradise. Roundtable discussions will be led by experts in their fields - with no more than 15 participants in each discussion…
 
Future Festival , February 5, 2020, Minneapolis MN. , USA
…With our one day Minneapolis Innovation Conference event, Trend Hunter is bringing our best innovation content, keynotes and seminars to Minnesota. By combining research-backed keynote sessions with an immersive afterparty experience, you’ll learn about the future of trends and consumer insights in a whole new way. We hope to see you there!” – Jeremy Gutsche, CEO & NY Times Bestselling Author… see other locations and dates to catch 1 day events for Future Festival
Save the date for 3 day World Summit event in Toronto Canada September 15-17, 2020
 

Time to give thanks to friends, family and relationships which helped us over the years and thrive this year or help us to survive. The period of gratitude mindset is refreshed anew in the holiday season. People are a little nicer, a little more patience, willing to help that stranger in distress. Yes Thanksgiving kicks off the holiday season. 

So what are you, thankful for?

From a tech point of view I'm thankful  for inventions like: fire, electrical power, light bulb, rechargeable batteries, microchip,  print, computer, telephone portable generator, automobile, the radio, television,,,

Conferences and Forums 2019
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What conferences, seminars and forums are you attending before the year ends? Here is just a few that include data science, computing trends even logistics and more. Please share with us your information about events happening around the world. 

Open Data Science Conference & Expo ODSC – Oct. 29 – Nov. 1, 2019, San Francisco, California, USA
...ODSC West 2019 is one of the largest applied data science conferences in the world. Our speakers include some of the core contributors to many open source tools, libraries, and languages. …. learn the latest AI & data science topics, tools, and languages from some of the best and brightest minds in the field....

IEEE Rebooting Computing Week, November 4 -7, 2019, San Mateo, California, USA
…There is multi-Society participation from the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society (CAS), IEEE Components, Manufacturing, and Manufacturing Technology Society (CPMT), IEEE Council on Electronic Design Automation (CEDA), IEEE Computer Society (CS), IEEE Technical Council on Superconductivity (CSC), IEEE Electron Devices Society (EDS), IEEE Magnetics Society (MAG), IEEE Nanotechnology Council (NTC), IEEE Reliability Society (RS) and IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society (SSC). In addition, RC collaborates with the IEEE International Roadmap for Devices and Systems (IRDS™)…

Freight Waves Live, November 12-13, 2019, Chicago, Illinois. USA
… the premier freight conference of the year, featuring quick-fire demos of the latest technologies, keynote presentations from top-ranked speakers, and visionary fireside chats designed to keep attendees on the cusp of the latest trends and factors impacting the freight industry as we head into 2020. Data-driven discussions and presentations will provide deep insight into current, near-term and forward-looking trends that are shaping the freight and logistics…

Big Data Event London Conference, November 13-14, 2019, London, United Kingdom
…Discuss your business requirements with 130 leading technology vendors and consultants. Hear from 150 expert speakers in 9 technical and business-led conference theatres, with real-world use-cases and panel debates….

New England Venture Summit 2019 , December 4, 2019, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
… pitch to active investors in your industry. Join 100+ Top Innovators presenting across 6 tracks. Best Presenter awards given to one Startup in each track….
… Join the exclusive community of 1000+ top-tier VC Investors and leading startup Founders….

SAVE the Date
Consulting Business Boot Camp by Rochester Professional Consultants Network starts Feb 10th 2020  Register early (before Jan 13, 2020) to save $$ and before it fills up....RPCN has put together a 5-week program offering a unique set of presentations, workshops, and panel discussions designed to shed light on the path ahead and provide the knowledge and tools you need to navigate it…