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Problem
Solving
Changing Systems
Existing systems are in place for a reason.
While never perfect, they serve enough customer needs so that there is revenue for the business to survive.
Changing systems costs a lot and can distract a business from its core mission.
Most problems with existing systems is that they do not handle the outlying exceptions to the mainstream business.
Those exceptions can be small and just need a small fix so that they can be served like everybody else.
Other exceptions can represent a significant potential market expansion.
For those, making changes to an existing system can be very risky until the market is proven.
It is much safer to make a small prototype that acts as a different front-end interface for the customer to the existing system.
If the solution generates significant revenue, then it will eventually be absorbed into the next generation of the business system.
If not, then it provides a fix for the exception customers and still generates more revenue for the business.
Fixes that work with the existing business system can be for both internal and external customers.
Fixes may only have to last a short time as both customer needs and business systems evolve quickly over time.
Solution Size
Once you get into the groove of working on a solution,
the temptation is to keep working on it forever because it is comfortable and
because you can always find something more to make it better (perfectionism).
The art is to know when to stop. If you stop too early the solution is not complete and your efforts are mostly lost.
If you take too long the problem may have gone elsewhere to find a solution and your efforts are also mostly lost.
There are tools that can help determine how far one needs to go in creating a solution and to determine when to stop.
The first tool is to use a mind map or Ishikawa (fishbone) diagram to determine what problem you are solving and what the
solution really needs to fix.
Another tool is to apply the Golden Rule by asking yourself: "What would I need/want if I was the recipient of the solution?"
or in other words put yourself in the customer's place.
Examples:
Quick Simple Solutions
MRO Portals - The conventional approach to this task would be to use an SQL database to store each of the parts and their links. A PHP back-end would process form data to search for the part that is needed. A JavaScript front-end would be used to display the results. Done this way it would be a classical IT project with delays, feature creep, etc. I have done this before. I know the process. It is not actually needed in this case. By intelligently determining what features are really needed and what can be essentially eliminated without changing the end result, the project was able to be done in in a few days with straight HTML & CSS. See my prototype portal.
Intensive Effort Solutions
Data Base Scrubbing - Even the most advanced and expensive databases land up with corrupted data. It takes a lot of data validation checks to prevent bad data from being entered into a database. No matter how careful most people are in their data entry, it just takes one careless person to make a mess of things. Also, there is just a lot of bad data out there that well meaning people enter into databases without the knowledge to screen the data before adding it to the knowledge base. Then there is the reality that things change over time. Companies move, get bought and sold, and stop producing obsolete products. In the industrial world there are three important kinds of databases.Glossary Entries - Every discipline has specialized words. Specialists have skills you or your plant need but do not have internally. You and your team may be very technically in your field, but have little experience in the field of the specialists you need to hire. Often specialists speak with their own terms that can feel like they are talking to you in a foreign language. Communication with them is absolutely necessary for any project to succeed. You have to learn their language and they really should also learn your language. This process starts with a list of confusing words or phrases and puts a definition in plain language for all to understand. The plain language part is the difficult bit. For most existing technical glossaries you have to already understand the field in order to understand the definition. Writing a simple easy to understand definition is much harder than it sounds. The more understandable you want the definition the harder writing it becomes. To be able to explain something simply requires that you really understand it very well. Usually one has to learn a lot more than what is being described in order to provide the necessary context and comparisons for full comprehension. When there are hundreds of terms that need explanation the learning and writing takes a lot of time. See the results so far with my Glossary.
Process Log Analysis - Computers are great at producing mountains of data. However, data is not the same as information. To extract useful information from data it is often more effort to justify what data can be ignored so that you can be left with a manageable set of more meaningful entries. Data in a table, no matter how meaningful, is still very difficult to gain insights from. For this, one has to employ various data visualization schemes. Sometimes a simple plot of the data is enough. But when many things are happening in many places on has to get more graphical. In this example visualization thousands of log entries were reduced to 36 events where the plant changed state in a meaningful way. Each state was illustrated on a common base diagram and all states were then put together in an animation. It took time and effort, but it paid off in the end.
Tools
Experience
Technique
This website is a demonstration of this principle. A resume is just a list of claims. By being able to show what has been done, how it was done and with what tools, and the thought that drove the process, one can show what performance can be expected in the future.
Sales in the industrial world is about ensuring repeated business from your customer.
It is much more of an agricultural model where you plant the seed of a relationship and you nurture its growth for as long as you can.
The hunter-gatherer model of collecting a sale and then moving on has severe limitations to growth.
Any customer that feels that they are not benefiting from a relationship with you will soon find someone else to meet their needs.
Likewise, any customer that practices an unreasonably demanding and capricious relationship where the cost of doing business with
them is higher than average will soon find their prices increasing significantly.
Industrial business relationships are a lot about empathy. Effort is required to understand your customer business environment.
Why they ask (even demand) for things that appear unreasonable often comes from failing to fully understand their environment.
Advanced technology and manufacturing imposes very new and often counter-intuitive ways of doing things. What may appear unusual
can turn out to be necessary for an industrial firm to maintain and improve quality so they can stay globally competitive.
The sales team also has to work to get understanding by the customer why they cannot get everything they request.
Usually there are good reasons why our company cannot do everything. Explaining the reasons why
in a convincing and trustworthy manner goes a long way to maintaining the relationship.
Sometimes unusual requests can lead to significant opportunities. If you are the one person willing to listen and consider
a non-standard requirement and can even find a partial solution, you most probably will have a monopoly on that business
if you can keep up with the customers future requirements. Walking away from anything that is not a quick order is
frequently leaving money on the table.
Is absolutely true that there are a lot of unreasonable people with unrealistic requirements. However, I have frequently
observed that what is perceived to be unreasonable is actually just a lack of understanding and a bit of a disinclination to
exertion.
Personality
