Picking up from our discussion last night, Andy Chatha made an impassione plea for the creation of a common language for all of manufacturing. "Once we start speaking the same language," he said, "we can start to use the information we have."
We have been talking about Next Generation Manufacturing Concept for years, but "the difference is that today we have technology at affordable prices so we can produce an acceptable ROI."
We need, according to Chatha, to broaden our perspective and build bridges to the various archipelagoes of design, operations, management, maintenance etc.
And above all, companies need to abandon cost accounting and formal budget analysis in favor of real time data to achieve real understanding of costs and start calculating costs in realtime. "You don't have to change your accounting system. It works great for Wall Street. But for running our plants we can do better," Chatha said. "First, use real data. Second, do all your cost calculations in real time with real time data, and finally, display the data in real time to all the people in the company in a language they can understand: dollars and cents!"
Walt Boyes
BlackBerry service provided by Nextel
