Managing complexity is the key to successful manufacturing in the 21st century.

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Running a plant is like optimizing a massive multivariate, nonlinear equation. It requires manufacturing products of the highest quality at the lowest possible cost, fulfilling the production plan, maximizing use of equipment, using energy efficiently, complying with environmental, health and safety regulations, and adhering to regulatory agreements.

How can this multivariate equation be optimized?

Communication is perhaps the most important aspect of a perfect plant. Everyone in a perfect plant knows how the plant is performing, what is coming down the road and what the effects of their actions are. The second part of being a perfect plant is pretty obvious-performance. The best plants optimize the multivariate equation at all levels.

The people in a perfect plant are interdependent. They know that they can make better decisions if they cooperate. The best plants systematically work against isolation by setting up rewards for achieving common goals. A common technique that helps break down barriers is visualization and transparency. So the plants report the state of their production lines, materials inventory, their work in progress inventory, their product quality, their waste figures and so forth. At their best, technology and software provide people with what they need to make the right decisions and take the right actions.

The collaborative aspect is all about to get more eyeballs on the problems. Once you’re looking at the same information, continuous improvement scenarios will be put in force soon. This more collaborative model for manufacturing-called Manufacturing 2.0-is already being adopted by leading industrial companies. It includes Web 2.0 technologies like texting, e-mail, wikis, blogs, tickets and others.

How can Xavo help to empower our customers to implement their “perfect plant” initiatives? The Xavo Operational Excellence solutions enable a continuous improvement cycle that consists of the following phases:

• Monitoring:       real-time process monitoring
• Improvement:    collaborative formulation of improvement actions
• Experience:       back-up and re-usage of the acquired know-how

Picture: The Xavo Operational Excellence Cycle

When you have specific questions about your specific “perfect plant” and “excellence” strategies. Please feel free to contact us. We are looking forward sharing our experiences with you.

Many Greetings and ‘Everything is gonna be alright!’

Yours,

Detlef Riedel

Xavo/CEO