GA Manufacturing Extension Partnership (GaMEP) Georgia Tech

Tips for Implementing Technology Solutions to Help Offset Productivity Issues

By

Tips for implementing technology solutions to help offset productivity issues

Change is hard. If this pandemic year has taught us anything, it’s how to adapt and adjust our way of thinking and doing business. The same goes for technology. It is always changing. Whether it is the latest upgrade for your smart device or the newest gadget to simplify your life, technology touches every facet of our personal and professional lives. The choices out there can be daunting and sometimes overwhelming, especially if you are a small to medium manufacturer. Do I really need technology to grow my business and thrive? Is technology safe for my company? What about my personnel, how will they be affected? The answer is not the same for everyone, but using these tips below can help guide you to the right solution for yourself and your company:

  • One size does not fit all: The fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) is the use of technologies to form an interconnected and autonomous manufacturing environment. You do not have to implement all of these technologies at once. First, identify the pain points in your business such as operational inefficiencies, quality issues, or asset reliability. Then, let that business case help you decide the technology to pursue first and the depth of that technology that is needed to solve the issue on hand.
  • Start small: A complete overhaul is not necessary and unfeasible in most cases. You do not have to start over and connect your entire production line to the cloud all at once. There are affordable, easy to implement options available. Examples include adding a sensor or two to a machine center to track performance data in real time to better understand missed opportunities, or integrating one standalone machine to the network to facilitate smart decision making. These types of solutions allow you to ease your business into Industry 4.0 and simultaneously use technology to positively impact your business. Adding up a few of these technology implementation wins over time will help build confidence in your team and lead to a long-term Industry 4.0 strategy that becomes an integral part of your core business.
  • Don’t be afraid: Implementing technology does not necessarily lead to a reduction in employment. In fact, in many cases it will lead to workforce development. Even though machines are accurate and repeatable, people are still needed to manage the process, analyze the data output, and act on what to do with that data. Also, by adding a technology solution (like a sensor), you can capture that employee’s tribal knowledge and machine data, then create a recipe to automate the process of how to run that machine in the future. This helps create a culture that emphasizes learning, which leads to an increase in team members feeling more comfortable working with technology.
  • Data, data, data: If you have a choice, do you want to know when a machine will fail? Most will answer “yes” to this question but are still doing maintenance the old-fashioned way and guessing when it will fail (preventative maintenance). But by using the right technology you can tell exactly when a machine is going to stop working and do the corrective action just before it happens (predictive maintenance). Over time, using a conditioning monitoring device will give you the data to know when a failure will occur, and time to prepare for maintenance issues to avoid a catastrophic problem. This will lead to less unscheduled downtime and increased productivity, which impacts your bottom line and revenue. This is just one example of how a technology solution can help capture data and use it to solve real problems in your business.
  • Safety and security: As your organization progresses through implementing technology solutions and leveraging the power of data, there is an inherent risk of cyberthreat that must be carefully managed and mitigated. It is not a matter of if, it is matter of when your data could be compromised. The same principle of starting small and following basic data hygiene such as controlling when and who has access to your data and managing how data moves in your organization would go a long way. If you are planning on doing any work for the Department of Defense, the need to establish and demonstrate your organization’s maturity level on the cybersecurity front is key to your success. Working with professionals who can assess and guide you through each step in Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) is paramount as this certification will be a requirement for all vendors in the very near future to be able to be awarded contracts from the Department of Defense.

By keeping these tips in mind, your path to implementing Industry 4.0 solutions can be less intimidating, more manageable, and allow you to leverage technological innovation to grow your competitiveness and gain new business.

If you are a small to medium manufacturer who needs help identifying or implementing technology solutions, contact your GaMEP Region Manager and they can connect you to one of our experts on questions related to Artificial Intelligence (AI), Industry 4.0, automation, and other technology needs that will lead to productivity gains for your company.

By: Raine Hyde, Marketing Strategist, Georgia Manufacturing Extension Partnership

Key Ingredients to Growing Your Business through Technology

By

Manufacturers, like other organizations are constantly being faced with the challenge of developing a growth strategy. When developing this strategy, it’s important to consider technology options. Two ways technology implementation can be successful are: 1. Bringing new technology into your company to increase your offerings to your current customer-base (they already know and trust you) or 2. Taking a technology you already have, that is proven, and introducing it to a new market.

Have you ever tried to do either of these? Maybe both? Have you ever responded to a customer’s request to develop a product with a promise of great market potential, only to be disappointed in the results?

Both of these approaches can lead to significant growth for your company, but each has risks. By taking a disciplined and orderly approach, these risks can be minimized. Here are some key points to consider before you get started:

If you plan to bring a new technology into your company:

  1. Reach out to your customers – see if there are trends in unmet needs; then see if there is a technology to help fulfill those needs.
  2. Research the technology – search patents, academia, and the government. Don’t forget to interview experts in the technology field.
  3. List your options. Then use a tool (such as a SWOT analysis) to rank them against the customer criteria list, cost of capital, and competence in that new technology.

If you already have a technology that you want to bring to a new market:

  1. List your technologies capabilities. Even though you think you know what your technology can do, you may be surprised what you discover.
  2. Be creative in seeking new markets. Conduct numerous market scans and then rate them based on industry, size, growth, and geography.
  3. Note the market leaders, channels to market, and major suppliers and customers.
  4. Look for new or proposed government regulations that will cause markets to be willing to adopt products or services using your technology.

No matter which path you decide to take, it is important to take the following precautions when jumping into technology growth strategies:

  • Search patent literature of the market leaders. You may discover areas where there is a gap between need and solutions.
  • Establish your rules of confidentiality up front – agree on what to disclose and what to cover with Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs).
  • Review all of your ideas with the possibility of protection by patent or recognizing them as trade secrets.
  • Use a collaborative tool like a Mind Map to collect and organize all information from your entire team in one place.
  • Make sure you record everything.
  • Hold regular, scheduled, but brief team meetings to review progress and make commitments to next steps.
  • Don’t jump at the first thing that sounds good – complete your research before committing to a course of action.
  • Walk the floors of tradeshows.
  • Pick your development partner (customer) very carefully.

These steps will help you avoid wasting time and valuable resources. The last you thing you want to do, as it could be detrimental to your business, is developing a product for a new market or bringing in a new technology only to find that the market is not as big as you were told or that you can’t practice what you wanted to because someone has a patent that prohibits you.

 

By: Ed Murphy, Project Manager, Georgia Manufacturing Extension Partnership

Best Practices Guide to Virtual Communication

By

During the Spring of 2020, the pandemic caused almost all in-person meetings and classes to transition to a virtual format.  These sessions have become imperative to maintaining our country’s infrastructure and ensuring business continuity.  During this time, we’ve learned that a virtual, remote setting can be a poor substitute for in-person interactions.  Many facets of communication are transmitted via eye contact, body language, and facial expressions.  Even video calls often miss these small gestures of affirmation or disagreement and cause confusion.  This guide includes sections on: logistics, scope, etiquette, engagement, facilitation, and security.  These best practices will give insight on planning and implementation strategies to streamline online sessions and get the most out of virtual communication.

Logistics

Good planning is the cornerstone of any business meeting, educational class, and collaborative webcast.  Being thoughtful about the virtual platform you are using and being familiar with all that system’s features, tools, and your own hardware will prevent many issues and enable you to troubleshoot problems that do occur with ease.

  • Selecting a platform
    • Ease of logging-in
    • Bandwidth
    • Special features (break-out rooms, etc.)
    • Cost and capacity
    • Security capabilities
  • Familiarity with the functions/tool of the platform
    • Seamless and rapid execution of desired functions (muting, break out rooms, etc.)
    • Provide attendees “user guide” or tutorial of the platform
    • Consider attendees’ technological knowledge
    • Ensure that guest speakers are familiar with the platform (how to share their screen and advance slides)
  • Video
    • Be cognizant of surroundings and nearby distractions
    • Ensure virtual background choice is appropriate
    • Webcam is clean from smudges and operational
    • Lighting is adequate
    • Consider appropriate attire
    • Be cognizant of camera angle
  • Recordings
    • Be cognizant of recording privileges (FERPA)
    • Make attendees aware you are recording
    • Utilize recording for missing attendees
  • Sound
    • Verify hardware (headset, microphone, earbuds) is working correctly
    • Double-check the mute feature is on to minimize feedback and background noise
    • Consider force-muting all attendees
    • Closed Caption might be available in different languages
    • Audio from videos comes from the host’s computer (host should consider removing headphones)
    • If computer audio isn’t working correctly, consider dialing in via a phone
  • Internet and Bandwidth
    • Consider internet connection (hardwired is preferred)
    • Have a back-up plan for internet shortages (switch to phone)
    • Factors that may affect bandwidth (screen freeze or delays)
      • Using webcams
      • Video virtual backgrounds
      • Actively using chat function
      • Streaming videos
      • Sharing your screen
      • Switching between windows
      • Having too many programs/windows active on your desktop
  • Post-Session Reporting
    • Most platforms include reports to determine:
      • Attendee identity
      • Duration of participation
      • Information regarding access to recordings
    • Sometimes past chats can be downloaded
    • Graphical analytics
  • Multiple Screens
    • Using more than one screen can help with multitasking
    • Smart devises can be used as an extra screen (tablets or phones)
    • Ensure you know which screen is being viewed when sharing your screen

Scope

As advanced as our communication technology has become, virtual sessions are not a perfect substitute for interacting with someone in-person.  They can easily lead to miscommunication without thoughtful planning.  These strategies will help you create a scope to keep your session on track and optimize your time together.

  • Pre-planning
    • Determine session’s objectives
    • Ensure all necessary materials are distributed to attendees
    • Prioritize important topics near beginning of agenda
    • Decide if attendees will use webcams or not
  • Length
    • Shorter meetings prevent screen-fatigue
    • Virtual format doesn’t translate well into all day sessions
    • Limit to less than 2-3 hours at a time
    • Consider multiple sessions, across multiple days, instead of lengthy sessions
    • Schedule more breaks
  • Attendance
    • Fewer people (< 20) leads to increased engagement and ease of facilitation

Etiquette

When in a remote setting, professional etiquette is often the first to go.  Control must be applied consistently for everyone in attendance.  An effective way to establish a professional setting is for the host/facilitator to lead by example.  Overcoming common distractions (pets, housework, demanding children, and flashing words on the computers screen) will help facilitate proper etiquette in a virtual workplace.

  • Host Etiquette
    • Clearly establish the session norms (rules)
      • Hold everyone accountable
    • Review the agenda at the beginning
    • Avoid scope-creep
      • Don’t spend time on topics outside of the agenda
      • Discourage side-bars
      • Suggest taking off-topic conversations “off-line”
    • Timing
      • Start and end meetings on time
      • Avoid catching-up late attendees
      • Consider creating a follow-up meeting if sessions run long
      • Have a time-keeper
      • Create a timed agenda
      • Include time to introduce guest speakers
  • Attendee Etiquette
    • Remove external distractions (auto screen notification, cell phone noises)
    • Remain on mute unless actively speaking
    • Verify name is correct in the participant window
    • Avoid interrupting speaker
        • Wait for a pause in the conversation
        • Use the chat feature

Engagement

Virtual sessions must accomplish everything that an onsite meeting would and attendees can experience screen-fatigue due to the tedious nature of online sessions. These best practices will help you craft strategies to maximize the engagement for all attendees.

  • Use attendees’ names
  • Have multiple communication outlets available
    • Unmute
    • Chat
    • Annotate
    • Raise hands
  • Activate video to enable eye-contact
  • Utilize multiple media to avoid boredom
    • Kahoot
    • Mural
    • PollingEveryWhere
    • Gimkit
    • PowerPoint Live
    • Microsoft Forms
    • Whiteboard
    • QR Codes
    • Quizzes & Polls
    • Slidesmania
    • PearDeck
    • Congregate.live
  • Consider presentation style
    • Less words on a slide
    • Graphics
    • Avoid multiple transitions and excessive use of animation
    • Fonts are easy to read
    • Color scheme
      • Don’t use clashing colors
      • Ensure font and background color makes text legible
      • Be cognizant that not everyone’s monitor presents colors the same way
  • Stretch break
  • Keep updated on latest tools, delivery methods, and resources
  • Utilize rewards to encourage participation
  • Use open-ended questions to facilitate discussion
  • Encourage attendees to share their experiences and opinions
  • Summarize and reemphasize important points

Facilitation

Planning is imperative to an effective, online session, but implementation is where the rubber meets the road.  Careful thought needs to go into running your meeting to ensure effective communication, attendee engagement, and strive to continuously improve this process.

  • Establish a facilitator or scribe outside the session leader
    • Monitor the chat
    • Troubleshoot issues (muting)
    • Alert leader/instructor
  • Consider saving the “chat” discussion for meeting notes
  • Your phone or tablet’s camera can be used as a scanner
  • Summarize action items before concluding
  • Solicited feedback via survey
    • Limit to 3-5 questions
    • User friendly format
    • Request completion prior to leaving session
    • Utilize input for continuous improvement

Security

During the pandemic, vulnerabilities in virtual security became very clear.  Instances of unauthorized attendees in confidential meetings and cases of “Zoom-bombing” were all over social media.  Care needs to be given to protecting the integrity of your online session.

  • Be cognizant of unauthorized attendees (Zoom-bombing)
  • Restrict unauthorized calendar invite sharing
  • Verify attendee identification for confidential sessions or virtual exams
    • Require use of work email addresses for calendar invites
    • Visual identification can be established by having the attendee hold-up their picture ID to the webcam
  • Use passwords
  • Don’t publish the meeting link on social media, magazines, newspapers, website, whitepapers, etc.
  • Appreciate that different companies have varying levels of control and specific security stipulations
  • Lock session

Clear communication is imperative for business meetings, trainings, and everyday correspondence.  Although circumstances have forced wide-spread adoption of virtual interactions, this remote communication will likely continue even after normalcy resumes.  Misunderstandings are easily prevented through thoughtful planning and consistent implementation.  These best practices can greatly contribute to increased engagement and effective communication, even in a virtual setting.

By Jennifer Stone and Wendy White, with the Georgia Manufacturing Extension Partnership

Just Add Engineers to the Mix

By

GaMEP Project Manager in Food Plant

For the state’s food manufacturers, a Georgia Tech partnership is the secret ingredient to growth.

You would expect a building where vinegar is made to have a sour smell, highly pungent, perhaps with a whiff of apple. World Technology Ingredients (WTI) smells nothing like this. Their manufacturing facility, off a county two-lane in Jefferson, Georgia, has a vaguely mineral aroma. More dry than dank, and not altogether unpleasant.

Maybe that’s because the vinegar made here isn’t destined for grocery store shelves, but for food preservation. It’s called buffered vinegar, an all-natural additive that protects meats and other products from microbes. WTI makes a lot of this vinegar, more than they used to in fact, and that’s partly because of Damon Nix.

On this Friday afternoon, Nix is taking a visitor through WTI’s plant, pointing out its sectors and stations. Here’s the wet vinegar, seven titanic tanks and even more smaller ones, emitting a hiss-and-motor chorus of mechanized blending. Over here’s the powdered version, mixed in towering contraptions on chalky floors (that will later be cleaned), then heated, blended and bagged.

Nix stops at a white board with dry-erase markings that tell another story of what’s going on inside the plant — one of continuous improvement. Sketched out are five days of the work week, four areas of focus (safety, performance, schedule, issues) and an assortment of metrics. One of WTI’s workers happens by, and after glancing at the white board, Nix congratulates him.

“I think y’all are doing great,” he says. “These are good numbers.”

Nix doesn’t work for WTI. He’s an industry manager for the Georgia Manufacturing Extension Partnership, or GaMEP, a Georgia Tech-based, engineering-centric program that helps small and mid-sized manufacturing companies in the state perform better. As the partnership’s food and beverage point person, Nix applies his industrial engineering education from Tech to help manufacturers up their game and lower their costs.

“What I really do is facilitate problem solving,” says Nix (B.S., ISyE, ’01). He is careful to emphasize the facilitation part. He doesn’t arrive as the dreaded efficiency expert, handing down mandates and new processes to those on the floor. Rather, he operates as the quintessential engineer — conducting research, listening to people, and fostering ownership of change. When he introduces new knowledge, such as time-tested principles of lean manufacturing and quality control, it’s more as a coach guiding a player who’s motivated to improve.

“In organizations that really succeed, teams are empowered by top management,” he says. “The team has to own the process. I could go to a meeting and offer a bunch of ideas, but half of them wouldn’t be nearly as good as what people inside the company put forward and act on.”

Rise of an engineering partnership

Georgia Tech has been in the game of helping small and mid-sized manufacturers for a long time. A century ago, the idea of creating an engineering counterpart to America’s agricultural experiment stations was being debated in Congress. But the Georgia General Assembly didn’t wait for the debate to conclude — it voted in 1919 to launch an “engineering experiment station” (EES) at Georgia Tech.

Curiously, lawmakers didn’t fund the new enterprise. It wasn’t until 1934, midway through the Great Depression, that EES got its first state allocation of $5,000 and was assigned an acting director, Harry Vaughn, who described the experiment station as “Georgia’s first agency designed to aid in a comprehensive development of industry.”

In 1960, the General Assembly ratcheted up Georgia Tech’s assistance to industry, passing a bill to form an Industrial Extension Service as part of the earlier EES. That authorized Georgia Tech to create field offices around the state to provide “technical advice and assistance to local development groups and to establish(ed) business and industry.” The new service was the forerunner of today’s GaMEP. The partnership sharpened its focus on manufacturing in 1988 after Congress passed a national program, the Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership. The Industrial Extension Service was later designated GaMEP as one of 70 MEP affiliates. (EES, by the way, later became GTRI, the Georgia Tech Research Institute.)

GaMEP, which turns 60 next year, is today housed inside Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute — a good fit, given its economic development focus. With 10 offices throughout Georgia, it now has a solid track record of helping small and mid-sized manufacturers grow. One of these is Dalton-based Precision Products, which manufactures a wide range of parts to order and has achieve two crucial ISO certifications that opened the door to new customers and industries. Sales grew by more than $3.5 million. And Goldens’ Foundry and Machine Co., a 130-year-old enterprise, wanted to strengthen employee communication and problem solving. GaMEP helped them introduce a management system designed to bring company conversations to the plant floor and improve information flow.

Packaging insight into food processing

One area historically underserved by GaMEP is the food and beverage industry. “It’s the state’s top manufacturing sector,” Nix says, “yet it had not been our number one customer.” So, in 2016, he was assigned to develop an initiative to broaden and deepen partnerships with businesses in the industry.

Driving much of the food and beverage industry’s growth in Georgia are companies of 50 or fewer employees. These are the makers of local craft beers, hometown jellies and artisan mustards. Nix says about eight of 10 food processing companies fit that size profile, though they are dwarfed in sales by the other 20 percent, the larger manufacturers.

So he developed a market analysis and concluded that super-sizing a commitment to food and beverage would be a good fit. The demand was there, too. Food processing employs nearly 70,000 Georgians and accounts for $12 billion of the state’s GDP every year, according to a 2016 report from Georgia Power. Since GaMEP stepped up efforts to serve the industry in 2017, the average number of projects with food and beverage companies more than doubled, from 20 to 45.

When asked to describe the greatest problems facing these manufacturers, Nix quickly cites compliance with safety regulations, which, to a small food business, run from complex to bewildering. “If you’re in a business of 10 to 20 people, you may not have a food scientist on staff,” he says. “So, you’ve got to figure out compliance on your own, or else bring in consultants.”

Safety, he notes, is more than just following protocols in production. It involves attending to details in reporting and paperwork, all the way down to the product label. Nix shares the cautionary tale of an Oregon maker of seasonings that neglected to include hazelnuts in its list of ingredients on the label. “Of course, nut allergies are a huge issue,” he says. “That one mistake could have ruined their entire product distribution. The damage to the brand, and the cost of bringing back the brand, is so significant.”

While GaMEP knew it could help food companies in an array of ways — from process management to energy usage to business growth — leaders found they had a gap in food science expertise. Food science determines the safety profile of every jar, tin, box and bag of product. So they brought in a food manufacturing safety whiz, Wendy White, who had experience overseeing a portfolio of food products. White is now leading a new GaMEP program on safety, funded by a three-year grant totaling nearly $1 million.

For the ingredients company WTI, the primary challenge has not been safety but improving processes and efficiency. When asked what impact he’s seen from GaMEP’s help, Stephan Georg, the company’s director of strategic sourcing, recounts a conversation between a shift foreman and consultant in front of one of the Gemba white boards.

“The foreman said the plan was to make two batches of a product,” Georg says, “but the consultant answered, ‘Well, I think you can do five batches. The foreman thought that was unrealistic. So we brought in Georgia Tech, and the first thing Damon does is conduct time studies. It gave us that baseline information we needed. After that groundwork, we determined that three batches would be a good goal.”

Since then, Nix has visited with workers from WTI’s round-the-clock shifts and consulted with management. Together, they work through improvements born out of lean manufacturing, which are processes engineered to reduce waste and improve customer satisfaction. The goal is to reach 40 percent OEE for producing buffered vinegar, a metric built on several components of the manufacturing process.

More recently, Nix introduced a new tool to these efforts: A software platform called Impruver, developed out of Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC). It’s designed to help small and mid-sized manufacturers of consumer products spot trends in metrics, track performance and monitor ongoing issues. “It’s great to have another entity inside ATDC working with us and our clients,” Nix says.

While all of GaMEP’s contributions are welcomed, Stephan Georg has special praise for the non-engineering side of Damon Nix. “While he looks at the facts and explains things in a scientific way, he also treats people here with respect,” Georg says. “They see that he’s not here to get them fired. He’s the guy who’s here to help.”

 

 

 

By Michael Baxter, with the College of Engineering at Georgia Tech

Achieving Your Company’s Long-term Goals

By

As with any pursuit that is worthwhile, unfortunately, there is no “magic wand” that can create long-term change and growth for a company’s operations or culture. Instead you need a lasting commitment from your leaders for change to occur and be sustained.

Implementing an Organizational Excellence Model is about more than an assessment or incorporating shiny new visual management boards on your plant floor. It is about the willingness of an organization and its leaders to want to pursue greatness and take their company to that next level.

In order to achieve Organization Excellence a company must be willing to do four things:

  • Get out of their comfort zone
  • Gain top management’s buy-in
  • Commit time and resources
  • Be willing to push forward, even when it gets hard, the team gets busy, or the “new excitement has worn off”

Seasons-4 Inc., an industry leader, in commercial and industrial HVAC manufacturing company, is seeing long-term growth and impressive results from their continued pursuit of Organizational Excellence. Mike Stonecipher, GaMEP project manager said, “We first started with an assessment and interview of their team to get a better understanding of their actual needs and base recommendations off of those needs. From there, we’ve helped them implement a Management Daily Improvement system, problem solving strategies, and lean tools for consistent job training.”

Once those plans were in place and had become part of the team’s daily routine, Seasons-4 has worked with GaMEP to move onto developing their leadership skills. The team has since sent more than 40 team members through eight modules of training on everything from “building and sustaining trust” to “driving change” to “resolving workplace conflict”, all as part of their overall approach to improvement.

Saibal Sengupta, President Seasons-4 Inc. said, “The advanced leadership training conducted by GaMEP has been greatly beneficial to Seasons-4’s frontline supervisors. All our supervisors have great product knowledge but most of them needed the required soft skills to lead, engage and motivate their employees. After this training we have seen a noticeable improvement in employee engagement, accountability, productivity and team performance. The training provided tools to tackle some of the most difficult employee related situations. We believe that this training helped them to make the transition from a good supervisor to an effective leader. Ultimately, all these have a direct positive impact on the continued profitability and success of Seasons-4.”

Stonecipher said, “I’ve trained a lot of organizations, but there’s a difference between conducting training for a tactical reason versus the strategic pursuit of the organization to improve as a whole.”

In manufacturing, as in anything else, if you look at the entire picture, instead of just pieces of the pie, you are better able to position your company for the future while tackling the most pressing issues you are facing.