On The Edge

Just what is a Green Job?

2009-06-30T18:23:58Z

The president has promised to produce 5 million of them. Congress passed an act about them. States are lining up for funding to support them. Educators are creating classes about them. What is this new phenomenon? It is Green Jobs! But what is a green job, and is it really anything new?

]]> My favorite source for definitions of emerging ideas is Wikipedia. It says that a green job is "...any job in an organization that provides a product or service that allows consumers to either consume less .... or produce more due to the utilization of this product or service, both of which actions reduce total energy use and environmental impact on the planet". Sounds simple enough, but maybe that is the problem.

I sat in a 90 minute presentation this month by two university professors who are tasked with counting green job creation for government. At the conclusion of the presentation, which attempted to define green jobs, the audience responded with; "you can't leave it there! We still don't know what a green job is!"

Is a wind turbine mechanic a green job? Probably. Is it a job that didn't exist before? Maybe. Is it really significantly different from a packaging mechatronics technician? I'm not so sure.

I'm told that it takes the same amount of steel to build the tower for a new wind turbine as it takes to build 235 automobiles. Is steelmaking a green job? How about coal mining to make the steel? Most probably wouldn't call that green, but without it, we can't build the wind turbine.

Haven't packagers, engineers and business managers ALWAYS tried to reduce total use of material and energy? Haven't these always been green jobs? Everything that we pay for is either matter, energy, knowledge or some combination or derivative of these. Left alone, business will evolve to the lowest cost, and therefore the lowest consumption solutions that are consistent with the goals that are established for a product or service. Solutions that cost more generally use more matter, energy or knowledge to create.

When we artificially incent solutions that aren't cost competitive on their own merits, aren't we actually consuming more than necessary? Maybe that is the definition of a green job. If it is a job that wouldn't otherwise be done by the free market, but will only be done if government throws greenbacks at it - maybe that is the definition of a green job.

Higher wages: one solution to cheap labor

2009-06-29T17:17:01Z

We often hear about cheap overseas labor destroying the US manufacturing base. The response of threatened manufacturers is often to pull in, cut spending and try to beat the foreign competition at their own game by squeezing labor costs. But, you can't save your way to prosperity. A better solution might be to reinvest in people and advanced technology.

]]> Lights-out manufacturing is a reality in a number of industries. In a lights-out environment, variable labor costs are not what makes your operation more expensive than those in the lowest wage countries. Depreciation and fixed labor costs will be significant, but more easily managed.

Operations with the highest level of productivity will be found somewhere between where most packaging operations are today and lights out. What is preventing packagers and other manufacturers from moving to this point is largely lack of skills; and the availability of skills is related to compensation, working conditions and quality of life for a given employer.

The machine tool industry is a good example of an industry constrained by inadequate investment in technology and skills. Highly flexible, highly automated tools are readily available. Robotic, software-driven work cells can turn out high-quality precision parts with little to no manual intervention. CAM software and rapid prototyping streamline the supply chain. But, too many shops fail to use these tools, don't employ skilled programmers, and operate as they did 10 or 20 years ago. Managers and supervisors are not trained in the latest CNC technology and manage from their old paradigms. Operators are often little more than button-pushers who are paid comparably to convenience store clerks.

There are at least three legs to any stable stool. New technology is but one leg of a stool. The other legs, people and processes, often require, but rarely receive, a comparable level of investment to what is spent on equipment. Perhaps a higher level of investment, including pay, would go a long way toward enabling operations with higher productivity that could compete with operations in the lowest wage areas of the world.

Don't get me wrong, higher pay must be accompanied by higher expectations. But why should we expect a CNC programmer to make less than any other software professional? And why is it acceptable to have an IT software specialist on staff of your business, yet not have a CNC, HMI, packaging machine or robot programmer? Shouldn't IT be more universal and easier to outsource than manufacturing support? Why shouldn't maintenance people and skilled operators possess education at least comparable to an associates degree, and be paid and managed accordingly?

As a packager, you may find it easy to agree with what is described as an impediment to the machine tool industry. But what about your industry? Do the same or similar conditions apply? If so, what are you going to do about it?

OEE - Still a blur on the radar screen

2009-05-29T23:13:31Z

Among the key performance indicators (KPI's) that grocery manufacturing executives think are most important, overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is number four on the list after quality, cost and safety. Yet compared to the first three, there is little understanding of how to implement the OEE measurement. I believe this is yet another indication of the suits and the geeks failing to communicate.

]]> Dave Donnan is the facilitator of the Grocery Manufacturers Association Manufacturing Excellence Share Group. As such, he gets to listen in on what top executives belonging to this powerhouse group of packagers have to say on contemporary topics. At the PMMI MarketTrends Roundtable held this month in Chicago, Dave reported on what key performance indicators mean to machine builders' customers and equipment.

Having spent many years working with a balanced scorecard of KPI's, I wasn't surprised to hear that the leading companies who took part in this share group were doing the same. On a scale of 1 to 5, this group scored 4.2 on linking KPI's to their corporate objectives and 3.8 on using them to drive business action.

What did surprise me was that OEE ranked so high on the executives' scorecard. Although OEE has been on the engineers' list of valued measurements for many years, it never made the executives' list when I was working in manufacturing. The gap between the measurement that the suits liked (percent of standard) and the measurement that the geeks liked (OEE) was huge. So huge, that even discussion of the topic was difficult and fraught with nuance about the meaning of terms. This is probably why there is still so much confusion about how to apply OEE.

The executives reported interest in creating standards for the application of OEE. No doubt they are unaware of the standards already developed by the OMAC Packaging Workgroup to facilitate the application of OEE . Suits and their business consultants rarely participate with such engineering groups and are unlikely to seek out geek advice on how to implement their number-4-ranked KPI.

It's great that OEE is on the radar screen. If we get the suits and the geeks working together, perhaps we can turn it from a blur into a clearly defined point that may be used to help navigate through troubled waters.

Can education pass the common sense test?

2009-05-26T13:56:43Z

There's lots of discussion about testing in education. Tests are required to be fair, legally defensible, and unbiased. Debate rages about No Child Left Behind and its testing requirements. Legislatures debate the use of statewide testing for graduation from high school. Packagers debate if they dare to test their workforce at all. PMMI is struggling with the psychometric requirements for their certificate program in mechatronics. Companies question why they should train at all if they can't evaluate the results. Education and training is bogged down, and the one test that can't be passed is the Common Sense Test.

]]> As I write this piece, regular TV programming was interrupted for President Obama's press conference to appoint Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. As soon as the announcement concluded, the top issue identified for debate in the nomination process is Judge Sotomayor's role in a ruling involving a test used by the New Haven Fire Department. Does it make common sense that the wording on a fire department test should be discussed by the Supreme Court? Don't they have more impactful issues to consider?

Two weeks ago, the governor of Pennsylvania announced the awarding of a $210 million contract to develop tests to determine if students were ready to graduate from high school. Are we the first nation in the world to establish such requirements? Haven't any of the other 49 states in the USA developed such questions? My grandmother taught in a one room school. She could have developed that test. This doesn't pass my common sense test.

I'm no historian of education, but my experience tells me that this all began in the late 60's and early 70's as folks began to understand the role of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). As the result of fear of possible non-common-sense EEOC enforcement actions, many companies closed down established training programs. The word "validation" entered our vocabulary and every training exercise focused not on what needed to be taught but on whether the need for teaching it could be validated and whether any testing that might be used could be defended in court. If companies chose to teach anything at all, it was the least common denominator of the knowledge used.

Over the next 35 years, the skills gap in industry grew wider. This gap has been recognized as one of the principal reasons that companies move operations overseas. Voluntary training programs have become more popular as both labor and management have come to understand that this is an issue of survival. But voluntary programs can take us only so far. Companies need and deserve a means of identifying and promoting people with skills. Enter the New Haven controversy and the Obama administration's announcement that they are increasing EEOC enforcement funding by 34%.

This is a pathetic situation. I'm all for fairness, but let's look at the real situation. Is it really wrong to promote someone who has too much knowledge? Should each state really have to spend $210 million to make sure that we ask the right questions in the right way of high school students? The same standards don't apply to college testing or to employee selection based upon requiring a college degree. Should trade associations and corporations have to jump through hoops and hire psychometric experts to validate basic manufacturing skills that should be taught in middle school? And in the end, are we improving our society as a whole or are we facilitating mediocrity?

We have lots of laws and policies on the books involving testing. Why can't we pass a law that requires our education policies to pass the common sense test?

The importance of geek leadership

2009-04-30T23:08:11Z

Lack of geek leadership is crushing American business. The inability of "suits" to relate to and motivate geeks denies business of needed innovation. The lack of will by geeks to hone skills to exercise leadership stifles careers and further erodes geek influence on business. If you are a packager, packaging machine builder or converter, you need geeks and geek leadership to drive your business into the future. Geeks and suits need to take responsibility for providing the unique sort of leadership I'll call Geek Leadership.

]]> I've spent a long time being a geek, working with geeks and leading geeks. Over the years I've observed and learned a lot on this topic. A colleague of mine recently loaned me a copy of Paul Glen's book Leading Geeks. As I read this book, I found myself wishing that I had written it. Glen organized on paper those principles and strategies that I've used through the years as I have tried to bridge the gaps between people and technology and between technology and business. If you are a geek aspiring to leadership or you are a leader working with geeks, I recommend this book to you.

At various times in my career, packaging colleagues have made comments to me like: "leading geeks is like herding cats"; or "when I'm with a bunch of geeks, I just wish that there was another adult in the room"; or "geeks have no understanding of the real needs of business";or "these geeks never get aligned with the plant's priorities". Geeks, on the other hand, will be heard to say things like; "these guys don't understand anything but a dollar" or "management doesn't understand that all good ideas eventually degenerate into real work"; or "when the suits walk by, their feet don't even touch the ground". If you've ever heard comments like these, you've witnessed the need for improved geek leadership.

While reading Leading Geeks, I was engaged in visiting high schools and colleges to encourage new education programs in packaging-oriented mechatronics. At one of these schools, I spied a brochure that described a course that was obviously referencing Glen's book. However, as I read the description, I realized that like many people and organizations, this course got it backwards. The goal should not be to make geeks better followers. The goals should be to make business leaders better leaders of geeks and to help those geeks with the desire for leadership to become better geek leaders.

It has been reported that HR recruiters will pass over the best and brightest engineers or technicians to find someone who is less geeky -- they might say 'a better fit for the organization'. Geeks, spend their days with ambiguity and who tend to frame everything in terms of problems to be solved, might respond that "suits can only manage what they already understand". In an age where we celebrate diversity of all types, why are we not better leveraging the geeks within our organizations to drive innovation and productivity?

I hope that many of my readers will seek to learn more about geek leadership. Some may even want some outside assistance in bridging the people, technology, business gaps. Either way, let me leave you with some pointers.

* Geeks and geek work are different from the people and work done in most business environments.
* Geek leadership is more than applying some prescriptive principles. It involves a process of building trust and respect where power will not suffice.
* For geeks, ambiguity is the norm and innovation is their work. For suits the norm is to eliminate ambiguity and innovation represents time away from their work.
* Too much has been written and taught about making geeks better followers. This is not about following, it's about leading.
* Don't think that you need to be involved in IT to be concerned about geek leadership. Geeks were pursuing the advancement of knowledge long before IT and will be doing so long after the information age over.
* Innovation occurs at intersections: intersections of technologies, philosophies; personalities, etc. Real problems are solved by people who can see and embrace the opportunities that an intersection provides. Leaders create intersections.

Will improved geek leadership aid your business?

Retailers may have outsmarted themselves

2009-04-22T22:30:45Z

If you attended PMMI's Operations Conference a few weeks ago in Tampa, you heard Dan Mack of Mack Elevation Forum describe Winning in the New Normal. The new normal includes retailers being more strategic and deliberate about what goes on their shelves. That sounds like a worthy cause, but given recent experience in my family, I think that big retail may have outsmarted itself.

]]> Soon after hearing Mr. Mack's report on how big retailers across the country are reducing the number of items in their stores, my wife vented to me about her latest shopping experience. I am sure that the retailers' strategy and her frustration are related.

You may be familiar with the facial tissue that comes packaged in box about 5 by 6 by 1 inches: the box that has been designed into the console of your SUV, your car litter box, or somewhere in your motor home. We carry a box in each of our three vehicles and put them in small places in the house, such as in a desk drawer.

The big retailer near us used to stock this package size of facial tissue in multiple parts of the store: in the paper products isle, in the automotive department and at several of the checkouts. A good deal of shelf space was devoted to this one package size of the product, given all of those facings.

When my wife last went to purchase some of this facial tissue, she couldn't locate the product. Clerks ran her all over the store to where it used to be displayed, but in the final analysis, she learned that our big-box store no longer carried the product. Probably some computer program calculated the sales per square foot of shelf space and eliminated the product from the store.

My wife hadn't yet heard the report that retailers are reducing item count in their stores in order to focus on more strategic items, so she ventured off to several more of the national drug and retail chains in town. None of them carried the product. They must all use the same software! Undeterred, and needing this uniquely sized package for the armrest of her Mountaineer, she came home and called the manufacturer.

The manufacturer's customer service representative checked her computer and told my wife of a store in our area that stocked the needed item. Alas, a gallon of gas later, there was none there either. That store was probably sold out picking up the sales that the other retailers gave up. Another call to the manufacturer followed, but this time with a different request; "can you send me some?" "No", replied the manufacturer, "but here is a number where you can order a case to be delivered to your door".

Now we have a case of facial tissue in that specially sized box. This is probably a three year supply. But our vehicles will be stocked with facial tissue when needed.

To me, this whole scenario makes very little sense. If a chain wants to get more strategic, why not go from carrying the product in half a dozen places in the store to just one? Why eliminate it from the store? In the process, big retail upset a customer and lost three year's worth of sales of that product, not to mention a few visits to the store which may have resulted in impulse purchases. The customer was inconvenienced, paid more for the product (although got 3 years of price protection) and developed one more positive experience with mail order shopping. It seems to me that nobody won.

If the new normal means putting strategic ideas ahead of serving customer needs, then that is bad strategy which will hurt consumers, retailers and packagers. Retailers may outsmart themselves, but they won't outsmart the consumer.

Business intelligence from a down economy

2009-03-31T14:14:41Z

Every situation in life presents opportunity. Sometimes it's just hard to figure out what the opportunity is. One of the opportunities of the present downturn in the economy is for packaging machine builders and technology providers to gain some intelligence about future business opportunities and pitfalls.

]]> There is something about extremes. Extremes highlight trends that might otherwise be obfuscated by the clutter of the ordinary.

As I've probably mentioned before, I was educated as a physicist. That education continues to have a great influence on my thinking after 35 years of not practicing physics. One of the techniques that physicists find useful is to test ideas at their boundary conditions. If equations behave in a reasonable way when you plug in the numbers zero and infinity, or some other physical boundary condition, then the ideas represented by the equations gain some credibility and the results are often instructive.

The present economic circumstances certainly qualify as approaching a boundary condition. If we look at how life and business behave at this boundary condition, we can gain some insight into trends for the future.

One trend that I've noted is that packaging machinery companies that are employing advanced technologies are doing rather well. While packagers may have been reluctant to jump into robotic or other mechatronic applications in good times, bad times have forced them to reconsider. I believe the down economy has accelerated movement toward certain technologies and that this accelerated movement is indicative of the future.

I suspect that the contrary is also true. Those products and technologies that were in decline have been accelerated toward extinction by present conditions. This too can be turned into an opportunity, even for those who were dependent upon those dying products. Rather than allowing a long slow death to gradually sap a business of cash, doing business at the boundaries has made the situation more obvious. The right decision may be to kill the losers quickly and move on.

If you are wondering where the business will be when the economy improves, look at yourself and your competitors. Strong backlogs indicate a trend. No backlogs indicate a trend. Test your business at the boundaries and gain insight to guide your future.

Green bubbles in my beer

2009-03-17T13:11:17Z

St. Patricks Day provides us an opportunity for an important object lesson. As we watch the bubbles rise and disappear in our green beer, we should be reminded that there are opportunities in the rising and inflating bubbles of the green and sustainability movements, but these bubbles too will burst, just as do the ones in our beer. Long term business and personal plans should not be built around green.

]]> Our world has been beset by bursting bubbles: the tech bubble, the housing bubble, the stock market bubble, the tamper-evidence bubble..... Bubbles create opportunities for a time. The mistake that we make is believing that these bubbles will expand forever. If we don't get off soon enough, before the bubble bursts, the fall may be significant.

In the 70's we saw an environmental bubble move through industry. Folks became environmental engineers, companies created management positions to focus on the environment, and special consideration was given to projects that were perceived to have positive environmental consequences. Apparently this movement didn't work. Most of those folks found themselves seeking second careers. And arguably, the impact on the environment wasn't that great.

Similarly, the Tylenol scare led us to aggressively pursue tamper-evident packaging. That brought unexpected consequences and negative consumer reactions. While some good practices resulted from this, much time and money was wasted riding this bubble.

We should have expected the technology companies to create profits just like any other business. We should have purchased housing to live in and enjoy, not to speculate. We should have recognized that business can't improve every quarter for ever.

Similarly, we should be good stewards of the environment, not use the environment as a means to an end. We should conserve resources because it makes sense for our lifestyle and business, not because of edicts or incentives. Green is neither a means nor an end. It is merely one of many considerations to be given adequate account as we pursue our lives and our businesses.

It is good to pursue living green and being sustainable as long as it is done in balance. But don't build your life or business plans on the assumption that these movements will last. These bubbles will burst, probably sooner than later.

Sustainability - Engineering for the rest of us

2009-02-26T12:04:02Z

I've been wrestling for quite some time with the concept of sustainability. Given the comments of many of my colleagues who attended a recent conference on manufacturing and packaging sustainability, I am not alone. But, I think that I've figured out why some of us are finding this so difficult.

]]> Sustainability is about the same things that engineering is about - achieving outcomes in responsible ways. A capital project is about achieving a specified objective in a way that produces maximum return on investment. This requires minimizing the consumption of resources, basically matter and energy, over the lifetime of the product or process. This is what engineers are trained to do, and it is why many of them are having a difficult time warming up to the concept of sustainability- to them, it's nothing new.

As I think about this, there are three key areas where we can focus on sustainable approaches to capital project investments. We must focus on specifying sustainable outcomes, creating financial rules that value sustainability and executing in a sustainable way.

I maintain that engineers are natively trained to execute in a sustainable way. Their education is steeped in an understanding of conservation laws and equations involving matter and energy. Differential calculus is about evaluating and finding minimums. Give engineers a challenge to find solutions that utilize minimum resources, and they will jump right on it. But sometimes they find their efforts thwarted.

Engineering teams aren't always asked to produce the most sustainable outcomes. Some outcomes are inherently wasteful. Maximizing customer facing area on the store shelf for a cereal box or a consumer electronic product is an inherently wasteful outcome, at least from a conservation of resources perspective. Sure, the team can achieve that outcome in the most resource-efficient way, but it would be more "green" if a different outcome were specified. Engineers are frequently frustrated by marketing and other departments that define inefficient outcomes.

Project managers and engineers may also be restricted in the methods they are allowed to use to financially evaluate alternatives. To maximize return on investment, financial analysis must include not just initial costs but also ongoing and terminal costs. Analysis of ongoing operating costs will identify more or less efficient uses of matter and energy and drive decision making toward the most efficient. Analysis of terminal costs, or salvage value, will take into account the cost of recycling and waste. Many project teams have been frustrated by being forced to use a short-term investment analysis to make engineering decisions rather than being allowed to consider total cost of ownership to arrive at a decision that results in a more sustainable outcome.

During my career in project engineering, we were encouraged or expected to take courses with titles such as "Marketing for non-Marketers" or "Finance for the non-Financial". I don't ever remember a course on "Engineering for the non-Engineer". Perhaps if such courses were required, sustainability would be easier for many to embrace. Is sustainability really about engineering for all of us? Maybe sustainability gives us all a chance to dabble a bit in engineering principles without looking nerdy.

We should all strive to develop more sustainable solutions. For engineers, I suggest that you print your charts and graphs in green ink and continue to use your education and training to make decisions that produce sustainable outcomes. For marketers, I suggest that your create outcomes for your project teams that are fundamentally efficient and sustainable. And, for the financial types, review your financial analysis and project justification rules and make certain that they are geared toward long-term, cradle to grave thinking.

Together, we can produce sustainable results.

OMAC Packaging Workgroup establishes 2009 goals

2009-02-05T22:27:54Z

A committee of the OMAC Packaging Workgroup met at the conclusion of the Orlando ARC Forum on sustainabie manufacturing to establish goals for 2009.

]]> OMAC members completed several days of meetings intermixed among the ARC sessions and held half a day of sessions on Thursday at which end users and technology providers shared experiences around implementation of PackM/L and PackTags. Watch for more coverage of these success stories in Packaging World and OnTheEdgeBlog.

At the conclusion of the Forum, discussions turned to goals for 2009. Although final wording is still subject to tweaking by Chairperson Rick VanDyke of Frito Lay, the 4 goals focus on the following.

1) Take the OMAC Packaging Workgroup's (OPW) message global, showing both end users and machinery builders that PackML and PackTags are international in scope and application, especially now that they have been approved as ISA Technical Report S88 Part 5.

2) Prepare and communicate application examples, based upon completed implementations, that may be adopted by users or OEM's as templates for the use of PackML and PackTags.

3) Prepare and communicate examples of performance metrics, such as OEE, that may be built upon PackTags at the Manufacturing Execution System (MES) layer.

4) Develop additional end user support for OMAC initiatives and encourage all of the users and OEM's, who are quietly applying TR S88 Part 5, to publicly endorse it.

I think that these are great goals. I would like to see the group take on more objectives, such as establishing an education and training program for end users and OEM's. But the realities are, there are only so many volunteers and only so many hours in those volunteers' weeks that they can devote to OPW activities. If more of my readers would get involved, so much more could be accomplished. Collectively, packagers could drive waste from packaging processes and improve productivity around the world. Give it some thought!

ARC reports packaging a bright spot in a dim economy

2009-02-03T14:16:10Z

The ARC Strategy Forum being held in Orlando has in its first hour pointed out some positive indicators in which the packaging industry can find optimism.

]]> Although subtle, just the fact that 450 people are expected to attend this conference in a time when many conferences are being canceled, is a positive sign for the automation industry. The revised ARC 2009 worldwide automation forecast has process industries flat; power, consumer goods, food and life science industries growing by single digits; and discrete industries including automotive in single digit decline. Packaging is strong in the growing segments.

Packaging was singled out as one of the bright spots in the forecast, along with more obtuse technologies such as product lifecycle management (PLM) and virtual commissioning. Automation has become cheap in a time when energy and raw materials are expensive and skilled labor is limited.

In the current world business environment, the US is looking better. The 2008 / 09 Global Competitive Index published by the World Economic Forum has ranked the US as number 1. This organization defines competitiveness as "the set of institutions, policies, and factors that determine the level of productivity of a country". ARC claims that most companies are no longer planning to move production to China or other low cost countries and that many are planning investment in new plants either in the US or Mexico.

My own anecdotal experience tells me that packagers and packaging automation suppliers are doing better than most in this down period. As the ARC Forum goes on, we will hear much more about packaging. I'll stay tuned and let you know what I learn.

Lack of skills stifles competitiveness, but funding isn't following the need.

2009-01-30T17:15:39Z

Lack of skills ranked second behind high tax rates as the issue that makes US cities uncompetitive, according to a report issued in December by the US Chamber of Commerce. We all want to complain about taxes, and given what I know about European tax rates, I question if American companies are at a global tax disadvantage. This even further highlights the disparity in and importance of skills when we compare ourselves to our European competitors.

]]> In July, I asked the question; "What's a good capitalist to do?" with respect to funding workforce development and education. Although not answering the question of what should be done, this Chamber report does provide some insight into what businesses are doing. Workforce development ranks very low (17.5%) in terms of corporate philanthropy, voluntarism and in-kind giving. Some businesses invest modest amounts in the training of their own workforce, but most do not see it as part of their corporate citizenship responsibility to invest in raising the skill levels of the workforce in general. In my experience, this is short-sighted, leads to sub-optimization, creates competition for and steeling of employees, erodes employee loyalty and ultimately results in higher costs for everyone.

On the other hand, business is investing in education. According to the report, education is seen as the top issue for attracting and retaining talent; is among the top five issues for attracting entrepreneurs and new businesses to a region; and ranked third behind lack of existing skills as an issue blocking competitiveness. Education is an issue that corporate America is supporting with their philanthropy, with more than half of all companies surveyed reporting that they provide financial support to education.

I support and encourage educational philanthropy, but is it solving the problem? The lack of skills in manufacturing needs to be solved now, not in 12 or 16 years when a new batch of young people make it through the system. By then, it may be too late for manufacturing.

Are we throwing too much of the money at bachelors degree programs and forgetting that a majority of jobs need skills that are obtained with more than a conventional high school education but less than 4 years of college? There are lots of folks with bachelors degrees who are currently unemployed or underemployed.

Too many of our programs are directed at the edges: to low achievers and high achievers to the exclusion of the average achiever. Our European competitors seem to do a much better job in preparing those who would comprise our forgotten middle half.

Why isn't business putting more of its money where the need is more immediate? Is it because the philanthropic decision makers in corporations are using their own educational path as the model? Is it because buildings are named in recognition of educational contributions? Workforce development and training isn't so glamorous.

If we are going to improve competitiveness in America, we need more pragmatic solutions to the skills shortage than just sending big contributions to our educational institutions. If you agree with me, lobby those making coporate citizenship decisions to carefully evaluate if their educational giving is supporting the real needs of business and the economy. And, whether you agree with me or not, share your ideas with the readers by posting a reply.

Senator Specter addresses issues of interest to packagers

2009-01-26T18:21:24Z

Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania responded to questions of interest to the packaging industry presented to him by yours truly and others at a town hall meeting held on January 26th at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, PA. The outcome of the Employee Free Choice Act and government support of technology education will be important to many packagers and their suppliers. Senator Specter will have a significant role in the new Congress given his seniority, experience and willingness to take independent positions not supported by his party.

Senator Specter addresses group at Lebanon Valley College

]]> With a 59 to 41 party split in the Senate, readers outside of the US may not appreciate the potential importance of being able to get to 60 votes to cut off debate and move bills forward. Senator Spector has a history of breaking rank and siding with Democrats on important issues, so his opinions on these matters could constitute the deciding vote.

Senator Specter claims to be undecided on the question of the Employee Free Choice Act, also known as Card Check. The most controversial part of this bill is the elimination of the secret ballot in elections where employees are asked to decide whether or not to unionize. One questioner, a proponent of the act, claimed that more unionized employees in the workforce will create an economic stimulus by making available more wages to be spent. An opponent of the act worried about more businesses following in the wake of General Motors and Chrysler if they become unionized.

Of particular note, given Specter's 28 years in the Senate, was his comment that this has become the most heavily lobbied issue that he has seen in his tenure in government. He is hearing from many people and is considering whether or not to support the act. Specter wants to see labor law reform of some type as he is not happy with the politicalization of the National Labor Relations Board which has kept it from performing its responsibilities with impartiality and promptness.

On the matter of technology education, there was an effort by me and another questioner to raise awareness of the need to increase focus in the US on technology education requiring less than a bachelors degree. The dire shortage of skilled labor to support manufacturing, including packaging machine manufacturing and operations, has been written about often on this blog. The Senator's response went directly to 4 year degree programs, not to the needs of the so-called 'forgotten middle half'. Listen to his comments on science, math and student loan forgiveness. The Senator's staff has promised to be in touch with me to continue this discussion.

Town meetings are a great way to bring attention to issues, and Senator Specter has a history of holding them in all 67 of Pennsylvania's counties. They afford the opportunity of presenting issues publicly and directly to the Senator under the watchful gaze of the TV camera, privately and directly in the hallway before or after the meeting, and to his staff who are present in significant numbers. The disappointing thing is that so few people avail themselves of the opportunity. Not more than 75 people attended this meeting, at least 10% of them from the press. We could easily have had a majority of the audience there representing the concerns of packagers, but we did not. Even more disappointing to me was that, although the meeting was held in the middle of the morning in the middle of a college campus, not more than 10% of the participants were students. What an opportunity missed for students and packagers alike!

Getting beyond irrational exuberance

2009-01-23T17:38:17Z

Over the last few weeks, we've been witness to some significant events of history. The public, buoyed by the press, has been on a binge of irrational exuberance. That energy now needs to be directed to practical solutions that will rebuild real confidence and move the economy forward. Perhaps some engineering thought process will help.

]]> In my years of working with a crack team of automation engineers, we would frequently see irrational exuberance coming from the halls of marketing. Others might remark that the marketers 'walked with their feet never touching the ground'. We engineers had a more obtuse expression for this behavior. We called it 'running open-loop with the gain turned high'.

While both expressions convey the message that one needs to return to a more grounded sense of reality, the open-loop analogy provides some object lessons beyond the vision of being pulled down out of the clouds.

A control system running open loop is unable to adjust to changing conditions. A system running with high gain is subject to wild fluctuations. Often the controlled element will swing violently from one extreme to the other. The slightest perturbation will cause unpredictable behavior. Sound like anything you may have seen lately? Let's explore how an engineer might solve this problem.

Step one is to close the loop. Closing the loop requires several sub-steps. First, one must define the objective and establish some measurable target or goal. This is followed by making a quantitative measurement of the present conditions of the target variable. The measurement is next compared and evaluated to determine the qualitative condition that exists relative to the established goal. The final step is to take some appropriate action aimed at improving the quality of the result. The cycle then begins again with a new measurement and continues indefinitely.

Step two is to adjust the gain. High gain implies that the evaluation step described above is made too harshly. It's like trying to warm your hand by pouring boiling water on it. Let's hope that our economic stimulus package isn't this type of reaction. A more measured response might be appropriate and cause less secondary damage.

For a given set of circumstances, system dynamics can produce an array of results, with the most likely being oscillations like those we've been seeing in financial markets. Getting the gain to the right setting will result in those oscillations eventually subsiding. The level of zeal in our actions must be appropriately gaged to the circumstances if we are to achieve relatively stable outcomes.

Many times in manufacturing, engineers and technicians stop after adjusting the gain. Processes run, albeit less efficiently than they might. The math gets more complicated, but there are many more steps that can be taken to optimize results. In controls, these steps would include tuning, conditioning, multi-variable and advanced control.

In human affairs and government, the number of variables to be considered is staggering. Optimizing any one of them can be a true challenge, given that they all interact. However, we do need to strive to close all the loops and get the gains set to appropriate levels. In recent years, many of our leaders have had their gains set too high.

Define, measure, evaluate, act with appropriate zeal and measure again is the way to convert irrational exuberance to useful action. It works for machines, processes, human interactions and economies. Next time your machine is misbehaving or next time you need to drag yourself, a colleague or family member back to reality, recall and practice these steps.

A Merger of Equals?

2008-12-29T18:57:13Z

Today the London Daily Mail announced that Cadbury has struck a deal with Asahi to purchase the last of Cadbury's berverage businesses. This leaves Cadbury as strictly a chocolate, confectionery and gum company, just like Hershey. Is it now time for the merger of equals?

]]> Like Coors and Molson some time ago, neither Hershey or Cadbury wants to give up control. The Hersehy Trust has repeatedly stated that they intend to maintain control of the company. Bob Reese, now President of the Hershey Trust Company, has been credited with engineering the so-called "merger of equals" with these big brewers. Could he and his board of former state officials and bankers now be ready for a similar marriage with Cadbury?