Whether Slow or Fast in 2025

I’m an historical fiction reader. I love novels set in real life historical periods. I learn a little and am entertained at the same time. These days, I’ve been reading a set of novels about President Abraham Lincoln and, at one point, the authors are talking about the end of the Civil War – how to get there, how to do it quickly and the trades that are made in the attempt. Specifically, getting there fast risks many lives but ends it quickly; doing it more methodically may save lives in the weekly tallies, but you risk the war going on so long that it evens out in the end. Neither makes for a true win, and in the re-election campaign, Lincoln was pushed both directions by all parties.

It made me think – it always does – about how that happens in manufacturing. How do you make change? Change too quickly and you can disrupt workflows and create inefficiencies that your team must endure. Change too slowly and you may not ever get there. There seems to be no middle ground.

Production Operations

As your production team makes its way through the day, you need them to be focused on the work at hand. You need them to know you’re there to support them and introducing a new product has its challenges. When you purchase a system to help you in the shop, you need to think about how it will affect these people in their daily work. Some questions to ask yourself:

• Are you buying a system to affect change? What kind of change and for whom?
• What are all the outcomes of that change? We often find that purchasers do not consider all the outcomes here. You will get the change you seek, but you may have other things to contend with, as well. Anticipate those outcomes
• How quickly do you need the change to be implemented? How fast would be too fast for you, and why? What indicators suggest that the implementation is moving either too fast or too slow for you and your team?

These questions are just the beginning of the work we put into assessing this kind of change with our own customers, but it is important for you to start asking yourself the same type of questions. Be honest with yourself about the change you’re seeking and what you’re willing to trade to get there. For instance, if you want to check on the work your team is doing throughout the day – getting visibility into what they’re doing – are you willing to have them contribute by regularly entering information about their activities and progress? Or are you willing to pay for a custom option to capture information automatically to a similar end? Both cost time and money. The first, a little lift from everyone – the latter, a large lift to begin but ultimately requires less ongoing effort from your team.

Paperless Manufacturing

Getting to a point where you reduce the amount of paper on your shop floor – whether paper in a packet or “paper on glass” – is a critical step in becoming more efficient and cost effective at the work you do. Paper-driven processes are longer, more expensive, wrought with errors and are mostly inefficient. Where paper is driving your work, you are spending more time and money everywhere – even in places where you don’t see it.

Going paperless, however, doesn’t need to break the bank or your processes. There is a middle ground here to aim for. We believe that it requires a flexible system and team to get there. The product and process both need to flex to accommodate the work you need to do and the way you need to do it – faster in some areas, slower in others; with data capture at some points and without in others; complete with quality inspections at one step and moving through production with visual inspections in others. No one way works for everyone. No one way works for your team.

Seek a system that flexes with you. Remember that you will be buying something to get increased control over the inconsistencies and changes in your processes and your jobs. That requires rigidity in some areas. Other areas of your shop or members of your team may do processes or work that require more fluid movement of the work, the materials and the information.

Learning from Lincoln, we’re balancing the right amount of speed and control with the required amount of change and flexibility. We don’t want to take too long and risk too many lives (of humans in his case, of lifecycles in ours). We don’t want to go too fast and choke on the outcomes. Partner with a vendor who understands that and can help you where you most need it.

If you find that you need help finding a partner like that, maybe CIMx is the right one for you.  We've been doing this for almost 30 years and we're ready to take on new challenges every day.  Try us.