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Articles by Dan Jacob
EHS Software Evolves to Enable Operation 2030
Environment, Health, and Safety (EHS) software is no longer a nice to have for manufacturers to achieve long-term success in a dynamic and competitive global landscape. The dramatic increase in risk and demands for more sustainable operations has only raised the bar for solution providers to deliver more robust, integrated, and connected solutions to manage risk, ensure compliance, and retain talent proactively.
3DEXPERIENCE World 2023
Visions and Opportunities in the Virtual and Physical World 3DEXPERIENCE World was Dassault Systemes’ first global SOLIDWORKS event since Covid. The conference was well-attended, with 4,000 people in Nashville’s Music City and 10,000 connecting from cyberspace. The event’s theme was "Imagine", which refers to visionary leadership and the goal of imagining what we all can do together.
Lines are blurry, and it’s not helping Quality 4.0 program leaders
My LNS Research colleague Tom Comstock recently wrote an update to the IX Platform landscape that was published in our Industrial Transformation blog. There is one theme from that post that I want to pull the thread further on here; Blurring lines of demarcation between architectural elements of Industrial Transformation (IX). This was a significant issue when I was on the other side of the table, trying to develop my strategy.
Quality 4.0 Predictions for 2023
Every year, LNS Research puts forth predictions surrounding the key trends in Industrial Transformation (IX) topics on which we focus our research. As the Quality Specialist at LNS Research, I have the opportunity to make predictions for what to expect in 2023 for the Quality 4.0 space, and here is what I foresee coming... The rise of the Digital Quality Leader In our 2021 Quality 4.0 Maturity Survey, only 9% of Quality 4.0 Transformations were led by the Chief Quality Officer title.
Why your Digital Performance Excellence (DPX) Initiative Will Fail
Digital Performance Excellence (DPX) involves embedding the process and management of Performance Excellence in the digital environment. This approach leverages advanced digital tools to bridge the gaps in knowledge, speed of execution, and results commonly associated with traditional operational improvement methods.
What is Quality 4.0? And What It Isn’t.
Quality 4.0 is a concept LNS Research first introduced in 2017, and it has been gaining momentum ever since. However, the concept has also picked up some misconceptions along the way. To clear up any confusion, we will redefine Quality 4.0 here and answer several key questions about its scope, value, and role in Industrial Transformation (IX).
[Infographic] 6 Steps to Reposition Quality to Gain Executive Sponsorship
Earlier this year, LNS published the core of its executive business case for quality research, which delivered strategies, frameworks, and data to plan, gain, and nurture executive sponsorship for quality. Executive sponsorship is the key to improving quality maturity, because it results in funding, cross-functional engagement and Operational Excellence improvements needed to help companies achieve differentiation.
Delivered Quality: The North Star of Embedded Quality Success
What are Delivered Quality, Embedded Quality, and Quality 4.0? Before we take a closer look into the importance of and the elements within an Embedded Quality Strategy, let's begin with some definitions: Delivered Quality: The customer recognizes the quality of your product, service, or solution. Delivered Quality can be characterized by multiple aspects important to the customer, such as reliability, consistency, fit for purpose, performance value, etc.
Are Quality Leaders Best Positioned to Transform Quality?
We have written about some of the woes for Quality 4.0 Transformation programs here in the past, such as Quality: Being seen as a policing function Having goals that are misaligned with organizational goals Operating with shoestring budgets Needing to focus on reducing the cost of the Quality Function Being too focused on compliance I could go on. In our most recent research on Quality 4.0 from 2021, we asked a question about things Quality 4.0 leaders had a deep understanding of.
Being Gay and Christian
Can you be gay and be a follower of Jesus? In this episode we have an honest conversation about how one man reconciles his sexuality and his love of Jesus. Rick Lockhart II, current native of Chicago’s northwest side, has been broadcasting in radio and livestream media for several years.
Improving Compliance And Manufacturing Efficiency In Life Sciences
By Dan Jacob Life Sciences companies are attempting to improve compliance and manufacturing efficiency while they drive to grow revenue and margins. However, current market conditions are creating substantial headwinds to attaining these targets. Some of these headwinds originate with regulators, both because of increasingly complex global regulation and regulatory oversight, as well as recent FDA expectations that industry shift from a compliance view to an “organizational excellence” view.
Changing Profiles of Industrial Transformation (IX) Leaders
What we see about Leaders within Industrial Transformation (IX) LNS Research has been studying Industrial Transformation (IX) for all 10+ years of our existence. We know it has now gone mainstream, with more than 50% of companies reporting they are actively executing a transformation program. We also know that the way companies are executing transformation is changing. One clear example of that change can be seen in the changing profile of the program heads leading Industrial Transformation.
It's not the Program that matters
We see it in quite a few areas of our research: Sustainability Quality 4.0 EHS 4.0 Digital Performance Excellence Analytics IX Readiness Improvement in Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) litter our research. What is interesting to me about this is that the KPI improvement is seen in areas that are not typically the expected areas for improvement of a targeted initiative.
Quality 4.0 in Life Sciences: Selecting Technology for Competitive Advantage
What a difference a year and a half make. In mid-2017, LNS Research coined the term “Quality 4.0” and published definitive research on the topic. At that time, an early but large group of manufacturers started to make Quality 4.0 one of their top digital transformation initiatives. This continues to accelerate, and today large groups of manufacturers are investigating Quality 4.0 and deploying pilots.
Prognostic Quality Leads to Reimagined Cost of Quality
We hear many of our member companies tout predictive analytics capabilities and insights. Predicting a problem is great and an expected result from an Industrial Transformation (IX) program that is less than halfway through the journey of Advanced Analytics. Application of prognostic analysis practices leads to a re-examination of the traditional Cost of Quality framework and the potential realization of a long-sought ideal in the Quality profession; Zero Defects.
AWS re:Invent 2023: Doubling Down in the Cloud
With more than 50,000 attendees in Las Vegas from November 27 – December 1, 2023, and more than 300,000 watching online, AWS re: Invent is the biggest cloud computing conference in the world. AWS re:Invent is a learning conference hosted by AWS. The event is so big that it is more accurate to describe it as a collection of co-located events, including multiple keynote sessions, trainings, certifications, over 2,000 technical sessions, and an expo featuring AWS and partners.
What is the Digital Innovation Cycle?
Agility, adaptation, and innovation are prized commodities in today’s business climate. Disruption is top of mind because it is a genuine opportunity and risk. Today’s manufacturers are exposed to unprecedented external forces, but also have the potential to access unprecedented insights. These insights can lead to innovative products, achieve new levels of quality and productivity, and create innovative new customer experiences.
More Profitable, Higher-Quality Product Introductions
Developing profitable, timely, high-quality products is more important today than ever before. Business-to-business customers and consumers alike are swimming in a sea of unprecedented product performance and product quality insights—about your products and your competitors—with a direct impact on purchasing decisions. What's more, the global value chain continues to squeeze margins and time to market for many manufacturing companies.
7 Common Roadblocks to Successful IIoT Deployments
Divining actual product usage has been a blurry proposition at best for many manufacturers, who struggled to capture operating times and cycles, much less operating stresses and conditions. Many have had to make blanket assumptions (e.g. usage duty cycles), and hope that these assumptions and use cases held true. Click here to speak with Dan The IIoT opens the door to gain unprecedented connectivity with fielded products.
Quality 4.0: What Defines Successful New Product Introduction?
Dan Jacob And how do companies drive it? Developing profitable, timely, high-quality products is more important today than ever before. Visibility of in-use product performance has never been higher, while competitive pressures continue to squeeze margins and time to market. Manufacturers devote considerable cost and effort to new product introduction (NPI).
Quality’s Role in Successful New-Product Introduction
Developing high-quality products is more important today than ever before. Market visibility to product quality has never been higher, and competitive pressures continue to squeeze margins and time to market. Manufacturers must consistently deliver better, faster, cheaper. It’s easy to deliver on any one of those adjectives, difficult to accomplish two, but a strategic, collaborative, and digitalized effort is required to consistently achieve all three. How do you measure up against the market?
Empowering Manufacturing with GenAI: A New Frontier of Possibilities
Imagine holding the key to unlock a technological revolution in the manufacturing world, akin to the impact of the PLC. Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping the manufacturing landscape, with the potential to transform major value streams within the industry. This blog post serves as an introduction to a Research Spotlight on Generative AI, which delves into the capabilities and applications of this cutting-edge technology.
Quality 4.0 in Operation 2030, The Journey to Zero+
LNS Research’s annual, The IX Event, is a global platform for Industrial Transformation (IX) leaders to convene, share thought leadership and best practices, and discover new research and perspectives from the LNS Research Analyst Team and other top industry executives. This year’s event will take place in Chicago, October 17th-19th. The event theme is Operation 2030 - The Journey to Zero+, an industrial world with Zero Harm, Zero Waste, Zero Net-Carbon, Plus Step Change Productivity Gains.
Life Sciences Manufacturing and Quality: The New Path to Performance
It is no secret that Life Science manufacturers have substantial compliance challenges. Regulatory burdens are getting more intense, regularly changing, and growing in complexity. This is most keenly felt by those that are delivering products in multiple markets. Successful manufacturers will plot a journey from conformance to performance by merging the objectives, cultures, processes, and technologies between quality and manufacturing.
Next-Gen EQMS does not equal Quality 4.0
Installing a cloud-based Enterprise Quality Management System (EQMS) does not equal Quality 4.0. EQMS accomplishes a portion of the scope of a Quality 4.0 program, an important part, but it is not the sum total of a Quality 4.0 journey. At LNS Research, we defined Quality 4.0 in 2017 to be the application of digital tools and systems to transform the work of Quality and achieve step change improvements in the customer value chain.
Quality 4.0 | Quality Digest
The most recent decade has seen rapid advances in connectivity, mobility, analytics, scalability, and data, spawning what has been called the fourth industrial revolution, or Industry 4.0. This fourth industrial revolution has digitalized operations and resulted in transformations in manufacturing efficiency, supply chain performance, product innovation, and in some cases, entirely new business models.
Kick up KPI performance with better quality management
Don’t you just love that eureka moment? The exhilaration you feel when you find that missing piece of the puzzle that cascades into many other pieces quickly falling into place? It’s a swell of satisfaction, pride in perseverance, and joy in the outcome. A eureka moment occurred for us recently when conducting our research on supplier quality management (SQM) – it might lead to a similar moment for you.
A Culture of Quality Through Supplier Quality Management
Honey is an amazing creation. For those of us with a sweet tooth, it’s wonderful to watch a swarm of honeybees at work. Of course, the bees are doing much more than making honey—they pollinate roughly 90 percent of flowering plants, making this one of the most important symbiotic relationships in nature. Pollination happens in other ways as well, but honeybees make it much better.
Can Innovative Supplier Quality Management Be Disruptive?
Two years ago, would you have foreseen the shift from taxis to Uber? Would you have predicted that HVAC units would be offered as a service rather than purchased as a product? These disruptive changes and many more were driven through use of the cloud, connectivity, machine learning, and mobile apps as important technologies that enabled digital transformation and the industrial internet of things (IIoT).
Driving the Quality Initiative
You’ve identified a fledgling quality initiative to fix the bottlenecks in your processes. Or perhaps you need that application with the latest technology that is sure to improve performance. You might have even discovered the approach to advance a culture of quality. Now that you know the solution, the real challenge is to promote your vision and justify positive change.
5 Ways to Improve New Product Development (NPD) Through Engaged Quality
Perhaps surprisingly, there is a strong connection between archery hunting and quality’s role in New Product Development (NPD). In both cases, we’re hunting – for customers and market share or quarry – and on a given day of archery and in NPD, there is a number of difficult-to-quantify unknowns that influence our success.
Top 5 Insights from the LNS Research Roundtable: Quality in NPI
On September 29th, the LNS Global Executive Council met to discuss Quality in NPI (New Product Introduction), hosted at the World of Whirlpool in Chicago. The event had active participation from quality leaders from across industry and included presentations from leaders at Whirlpool, MacDermid Performance Solutions, The Oshkosh Corporation, and ThermoFisher Scientific; as well as yours truly.
Avoid a Top Operational Excellence ROI Trap
We’ve been discussing the “Executive Business Case for Quality” research with a number of Operational Excellence (OpEx) leaders. Many OpEx leaders are attempting to build business cases for technology investments, and one recurring theme of our discussions is that leaders want to justify technology investments by quantifying expected improvements to process and personnel behavior enabled by the technologies.
Making the Business Case for Quality
A few years ago, I was working with a high-tech company that had built market leadership around world-class product quality, then lost it. Several years prior, the company had gone through a cost-cutting exercise. One outcome of the exercise was a decision to outsource engineering on core products, and while this accomplished the objective of increasing margins for a short time, the brand’s differentiated reputation eroded fairly quickly, market share dwindled, and sales discounting pressure grew.
Increase Quality Maturity Through an Executive Business Case for Quality
A few years ago, I was working with a high-tech company that had built market leadership around world-class product quality, then lost it. Several years prior, the company had gone through a cost-cutting exercise. One outcome of the exercise was a decision to outsource engineering on core products, and while this accomplished the objective of increasing margins for a short time, the brand’s differentiated reputation eroded fairly quickly, market share dwindled, and sales discounting pressure grew.
Breaking Into the Boardroom
The way an organization handles quality generally differs from how it manages other business areas. Although no one questions the importance of tangible industrial functions like production or scheduling, too often quality is treated as an add-on. Some companies take an antiquated approach and treat it as an isolated and reactive “policing” department to be placated by other areas of the value chain.
Breaking Out of the Silo: The Executive Commitment and Quality Business Case
The 2016 Quality research agenda includes several key topics, but no topic can be more important than the business case for quality. Why? Because the business case for quality both determines funding and, possibly more importantly, sets the stage for executive engagement/sponsorship. If done right, it can give the boardroom and C-suite the hard reasons they need to champion quality, either for traditional reasons or as a part of a greater Digital Transformation effort.
Empowered Manufacturing: Connect Anyone, Anything, Anytime, Anywhere
Connecting the workforce to the right data at the right time, with the right context, enables manufacturers to unlock a whole new level of operational performance. Unfortunately, the technology landscape for most industrial organizations lacks the functionality consumers have become accustomed to in their daily lives.
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