by Gary Mintchell | Dec 30, 2016 | Productivity
“Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.” — Albert Einstein
A good salesperson runs through the entire interview with her client in her mind while she’s still in the car.
A great college football running back viewed video of his best plays and then ran the back in his mind.
A speaker visualizes his performance while off stage before anything begins.
People make lists of New Year’s Resolutions and then file them away–undone. Years ago I gained a shred of wisdom when I realized I was just copying last year’s resolutions and reprinting them in the front of my planning diary (before it was all electronic). Why go through the exercise only to feel guilt at the end of the year? Or the first of February?
Albert Einstein made his mark in physics not through his knowledge of math but through his imagination. He imagined gravitational pull on planets and stars, and light traveling through time. That told him which equations to work out and how to work them.
Instead of lists (which I love for remembering things to do or for brainstorming) why not try imagination? Imagine what your year could be like and what sort of person you will be.
- Imagine joining a group that promotes a cause you admire. See yourself there. Then call someone next month.
- See yourself reading two books a month for personal growth. Then download several books for your tablet app. Or visit a bookstore and buy a few books. Put them in a visible place. Read for an hour every morning or evening. You’ll be amazed.
- Visualize time with the family.
- See yourself at the gym every morning or evening. See the entire process of getting there, your workout, the sauna, the shower, feeling refreshed.
- What can you imagine for yourself? There are no limits in imagination. Let it loose and follow it where it goes.
Who sees the irony of my making a list of suggestions? 😉
Happy New Year.
PS: I have mostly taken the week off for thinking and imagining. So my December stats will suck. I’ll be back at it next week with more connected manufacturing coverage, leadership thoughts, and occasional marketing tips.
by Gary Mintchell | Dec 22, 2016 | Leadership
Let’s make 2017 the year of leadership in manufacturing. Lean leaderhip.
When we started the magazine I ran editorial for ten years, one of the founders talked about how Lean and Six Sigma were so old that she hoped I wouldn’t write about it. That was in 2003. The topic of Lean thinking is as fresh and useful today as it was then.The good thing is that these are skills that can be learned.
Perhaps for the new year, we all evaluate our leadership and look for ways to elevate our effectiveness in 2017.
A few years ago, a publicist sent me a copy of “Anatomy of a Lean Leader”, by Jerry Bussell with Emily Adams. The book is organized around ten traits of a Lean Leader.
If you are not familiar with Lean, it is a proven effective way of thinking and leading manufacturing organizations. It’s core elements are continuous improvement and respect for people. I’ve included a brief description of the ten traits. Perhaps you can pick up some ideas for self-improvement this year.
Purposeful—this trait relates to having a strong, but brief, mission statement. An example from a medical organization: “Alleviate pain; restore health; extend life.” As Peter Drucker said, your mission statement should fit on the front of a T-shirt.
Respectful—a respectful leader is in service to the people.
Transparently honest—Bussell says, “I found that morals and principles were a source of strength in everyday behaviour.”
Influencer—to affect real, lasting change requires more subtlety and time—it needs influence. Influence means guiding people to finding the right answer on their own, so that the right path becomes their natural inclination.
Continuous Learner—the continuous learner asks questions and relies on observations to hone his or her understanding of the issues. A problem well-defined, I have learned, is a problem half-solved.
Persistence—persistence means showing up every day, ready to tackle problems afresh—even when your entire company seems outmoded.
Holistic Thinker—to think holistically is to think broadly about the implications of an action on the entire complex, interconnected organization. When Paul O’Neil was CEO of Alcoa, he made workplace safety a priority. Seems strange, but thinking holistically, he said, “If we bring our injury rates down, it will be because individuals at this company have agreed to become part of something important. They’ve devoted themselves to creating a habit of excellence.”
Problem Solver—take a methodical approach to problem solving. Define the problem clearly; investigate the current situation; list all the options, including the ideal; plan and implement a solution; and, check results.
Results-Driven—the modern CEO interested in changing her ways to become more results-driven must first look at the organization’s processes. The CEO must have confidence that the organization’s approach to problem solving and analysis is sound. Only then will she have confidence that her results will be reliable and foreseeable. The results-driven leader is also a holistic thinker, working through the process with care and consideration of the whole organization.
Courageous—courage is embracing change that is substantial, unafraid of failure, inclusive, respectful, honest, and persistent.
Make 2017 your year of leadership bringing your organization to growth and success.
by Gary Mintchell | Dec 21, 2016 | Leadership, Workforce
Does anyone even know what a good Liberal Arts education is these days? To me, it meant that I could learn almost anything, express myself orally and verbally, appreciate arts and literature along with science.
I was immersed in electronics and other sciences until half-way through university when I just had too many interests. I took courses in German, literature, philosophy, economics, accounting (don’t know why, but it served me well), and international politics.
Somewhere in the 80s an article appeared in a major journal showing Liberal Arts majors outperforming MBAs in business. I was a VP of a small company at the time (marketing and application engineering). I showed the article to the CFO (MBA) just to tweak him.
Then came Steve Jobs. He was definitely not non-technical, but his liberal arts background at Reed College formed his perspective. That view of the world greatly influenced the direction of computing.
Now, here is an article by Jeff Bussgang, a former entrepreneur turned VC at Flybridge Capital, HBS Senior Lecturer, author of Mastering the VC Game, in Medium—Why Liberal Arts Majors Make Great Product Managers.
I suggest visiting his Medium site to read the entire article, but here is the essence of his argument.
An effective product manager is an entrepreneur, strategist, technical visionary, cross-functional team leader, and customer advocate all rolled into one.
They have three primary responsibilities: defining the product, negotiating and securing resources, and managing product development, launch, and ongoing improvement by leading a cross-functional team.
Some of the best product managers are simply great communicators.
They need the skills consistent with a liberal arts education: clear thinkers, strong interpersonal skills, good judgement, a good writer, you learn to make decisions crisply, and you learn to handle ambiguity.
As Fareed Zakaria puts it in his book, In Defense of a Liberal Arts Education:A liberal education teaches you how to write, how to speak your mind, and how to learn — immensely valuable tools no matter your profession. Technology and globalization are actually making these skills even more valuable as routine mechanical and even computing tasks can be done by machines or workers in low-wage countries. More than just a path to a career, a liberal education is an exercise in freedom.
Bussgang concludes: In addition to making sure startups are open to hiring and training the very best, I am drawn to this topic because I think it results in a subtle barrier for women to become entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. The prevailing wisdom is that the best entrepreneurs are former product leaders. And there is a prevailing wisdom that former entrepreneurs make the venture capitalists. Therefore, if you accept the prevailing wisdom to be that only former coders can become great product leaders, you are limiting your entrepreneur and venture capital funnel to a narrow pool of candidates, with 88% of engineers being men. That’s bad policy on many, many dimensions.
Obviously, I agree with Bussgang. It worked for me.
by Gary Mintchell | Dec 19, 2016 | Internet of Things, News, Operations Management, Organizations
Collaboration rules the technical world. A professor who influenced me greatly was ex-CIA (ex?). He would proclaim in our international politics classes during the height of the Cold War that politicians might want to close borders, but scientists would never allow it. “Scientists want to publish their findings,” he would say, “so they will publish and leave out a step in the mathematical proof. It would get past censors, but fellow scientists around the world would figure out the missing steps.”
Our world today is rife with politicians trying to close borders. No, it’s not only Trump in America.
Given the political times, I’m encouraged by all the technology collaboration I see. Last week I posted a year end update by Tom Burke of the OPC Foundation highlighting his work in collaborating with other standards bodies. I have been working with MIMOSA (and recently elected Chief Marketing Officer). This organization has also been working with a variety of organizations.
Last week came news of another collaboration. The Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC), the global, member-supported organization that promotes the accelerated growth of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), announced it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT).Under the agreement, the IIC and CAICT will work together to help ensure interoperability for the industrial Internet in China.
The agreement is one of a number of agreements made by the IIC’s newly formed Liaison Working Group.
Joint activities between the IIC and CAICT will include:
- Identifying and sharing best practices
- Collaborating on testbeds and research and development projects
- Realizing interoperability by harmonizing architecture and other elements
- Collaborating on standardization
“We look forward to working with the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology to help further the development of the industrial Internet throughout China,” said Wael William Diab, Chair, IIC Liaison Working Group and Senior Director, Huawei. “We’re especially excited about joint activity on testbeds and research and development projects that will help advance the adoption of the industrial internet.”
“We highly value the cooperation between CAICT and the IIC,” said Mr. Xiaohui YU, CTO of CAICT. “The collaboration with the IIC will help establish tight relationships between the IIC and Chinese entities and organizations, such as the AII Alliance, and will develop, facilitate and enhance the industrial Internet.”
The Liaison Working Group is the gateway for formal relationships with standards and open-source organizations, consortia, alliances, certification and testing bodies and government entities/agencies.
China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) is a research academy under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology with over 2,400 employees. A specialized think-tank for the government, and an innovation and development platform for the industry, CAICT holds a service portfolio that covers the areas of information and communication technology, the integration of ICT and industries, such as 5G, Internet IoT and industrial Internet, cloud computing, big data, Intelligent manufacturing etc.
As a leading think-tank and platform in ICT field of China, it contributes to the development and innovation of the country and the ICT industry by providing support and services in terms of national strategies, plans, policies, standards, technology labs, testing and certification etc. CAICT is the national core supporting organization for industrial Internet, intelligent manufacturing and Internet relevant actions to the Chinese government, and is involved in the drafting of the “Internet+ action plan,” “Made in China 2025,”and other national strategies and guidance on IoT, Cloud computing, big data and Broadband China, etc. CAICT is currently the leading organization to promote the development of industrial Internet of China.
The Industrial Internet Consortium is a global, member-supported, organization that promotes the accelerated growth of the Industrial Internet of Things by coordinating ecosystem initiatives to securely connect, control and integrate assets and systems of assets with people, processes and data using common architectures, interoperability and open standards to deliver transformational business and societal outcomes across industries and public infrastructure. The Industrial Internet Consortium is managed by the Object Management Group (OMG).
by Gary Mintchell | Dec 16, 2016 | News, Operations Management, Organizations, Standards
Interoperability, standardization, and collaboration were the key words for OPC Foundation in 2016. Tom Burke, OPC Foundation President, recently recapped a busy 2016 for the Foundation. Adoption of OPC UA has been gaining momentum in the market. Collaboration with other groups is growing. And the technology is finally beginning to show significant use beyond industrial automation.
Burke says, “It has been a very exciting year. We have seen record growth in adoption of the OPC UA technology across multiple domains and vertical markets. The OPC Foundation policy of being truly open has expanded the reach of the OPC technology. The specifications are available to everyone, the technology is open sourced, and now we have opened up our certification labs to non-members.”
The OPC Foundation byline since the beginning has been recognized as the “The Interoperability Standard for Industrial Automation.” With the significant international membership growth and adoption of the OPC UA technology across multiple vertical markets the byline of the OPC Foundation has been ratified as “The Industrial Interoperability Standard.” This byline recognizes the case that OPC is no longer just for automation.
OPC UA specifications and technology are actively being deployed across global boundaries supplying the key infrastructure for everything related to the Internet of Everything (IIoT, Industrie 4.0, China 2025, IIC, M2M…); inclusive of:
- numerous testbeds with the OPC UA technology being standardized in the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC)
- being recognized as the communication and information modeling standard for Industrie 4.0
- OPC UA being finalized as a Chinese National Standard
In May 2016, BSI (German Federal Office for Information Security) conducted a thorough security analysis of OPC UA and found it exceeded the security requirements for Industrie 4.0.
Collaboration with numerous organizations beyond industrial automation is the strategy and path forward to allow information integration from the embedded world to the cloud.
New members and new products are emerging as end users are looking for information solutions for IIoT, and the OPC UA technology is well-positioned to address the needs of the Internet of Everything.
Numerous organizations continue to partner with the OPC Foundation and/or develop companion specifications for their respective information models to seamlessly plug into OPC UA.
Organizations announcing releases of their companion specifications in 2016 for the OPC UA technology included:
• AutomationML
• PLCopen
• AIM
• VDMA: Injection Molding (status: release candidate)
• VDMA: Vision Cameras (status: in foundation)
• VDMA: Robotics, starting with the help of KUKA (status: in preparation)
VDMA is very active standardizing on OPC UA information models and expects to rollout a multitude of additional information models in 2017, leveraging OPC UA information integration communication as it’s strategy for seamless information integration and interoperability.
Board of Directors
Board members are elected as individuals for a two-year term. Elected to new 2-year terms were: Russ Agrusa, (ICONICS), Veronika Schmid-Lutz (SAP), Stefan Hoppe (Beckhoff) (also VP of OPC Foundation), and Matthias Damm (Ascolab). Also on the OPC Foundation Board of Directors are Thomas Burke (OPC Foundation), Thomas Hahn (Siemens) (also VP of OPC Foundation), Matt Vasey (Microsoft), and Ziad Kaakani (Honeywell) (also Treasurer of OPC Foundation), and Shinji Oda (Yokogawa).
