Activplant Takes Atlanta by Storm

Activate '07 Event Synopsis

Activplant Corporation launched its Activate 2007 Executive Tour at the NEW World of Coca-Cola visitors’ center in Atlanta; executives representing a cross section of the manufacturing sector filled the room to share in this event. Speakers included New York Times best selling author Ted Fishman, Managing Automation Editor in Chief - David Brousell, executives from Activplant Corporation and Synesis International, and Activplant customers TRW Automotive and Coca Cola Amatil.

The day opened with a nice warm breakfast as the sun rose over the Atlanta skyline, David Brousell welcomed guests and gave a good perspective on challenges facing manufacturers in today’s global market space.

Chief Product Strategist Dennis Cocco of Activplant Corporation also delivered a keynote challenging the manufacturers in the room to stop listening to the hundreds of other software companies touting manufacturing information management systems and focus only on the information that can improve your plant’s ability to produce quality product out the door. “All other information is just noise; its about choosing the right data points that focus your improvement efforts on improving the velocity of the entire system, if the data your managing doesn’t result in complete system wide improvement its like pushing a rope”. Cocco’s call to action was clear: identify your top chronic disruptors to product flow and focus your efforts on reducing them or eliminating them completely. “We developed an application - the Activplant Throughput Analyzer - to fill a gap in the industry; it’s the only application of its kind that requires three to five bits of data from your resources to provide an un-biased view of those chronic disruptors.”

Wayne Luxford – Corporate Continuous Improvement Lead – Coca Cola Amatil, presented remotely from Australia. Coke has been an Activplant Customer for about three years and Wayne shared how he led the team in implementing the application reporting a million dollars of savings the first year. “ We really didn’t know what this tool could do for us, in fact we were able to get reports on so many areas in the business that I had almost a full time job just working with the reports to determine where we needed to focus our efforts. If you took Activplant out of my plant today, I would be flying blind; we rely on this 100% to drive efficiencies.”

Coke Amatil is now deploying the Throughput Analyzer and Wayne commented on the contrast of this application verses the mounds of reports he had to generate in the past. “I am like the smartest guy in the plant now” and laughingly stated “perhaps I just worked myself out of a job……not really, what used to require a guy like me is now available real time with Throughput Analyzer. I can now focus on solving the problems verses having to find them. In fact we just had the screen where the asset was red and showed him the power of this tool to deep dive into the asset and poof the light went on with him. I get the point he said, it’s really a simple and intuitive tool.”

Richard Bader – Operations Executive from TRW Automotive Lebanon facility touted: “We deployed Activplant on some of our oldest equipment; in some instances we were only able to acquire a single bit of information. Throughput Analyzer helped us increase our complete plant efficiency by 4% sustained improvement. When you consider a percentage point represents about $30,000 per month that’s an easy business case to sell back to corporate, and we have just started to see the improvements. We are early in our journey with Throughput Analyzer.”

TRW Lebanon deployed TPA using the Throughput Appliance which allows data capture an essential tool for him as an operations manager. He now has the ability to prioritize where he allocates his improvement efforts, “It helps me respond to the corporate mandate of Do More With Less. When we deployed Throughput Analyzer, we decided to initially deploy a limited set of assets to validate that we could truly get the type of returns Activplant was stating, and I had to be had so much success in a short period of time that we have now approved to deploy Throughput Analyzer across my entire plant.”

Ted Fishman – New York Times best selling author of the book China Inc. opened with a comment, “You are hearing all this good stuff about manufactures saving dollars and having some success, I guess my job is to say be afraid!” He spoke about China, a country that GDP is growing at an 11%, plants are on the rise and average hourly rates are at about $0.32 per hour. China is not a coming threat, they’re already here. Companies that have thought that perhaps a strategy is to move to lower cost countries like China have paid a price, not only the relocation and logistics now with fuel prices rising; but a cost in intellectual property. China has little to no protection against copied products; in fact Ted told a story of how a North America supplier went to China to meet with a manufacturer that was building a complete knockoff of their product. The Chinese plant manager felt they would have a strategic offer to put on the table for that company because they were already building their product for them. “North American Manufacturers need to leverage tools like Throughput Analyzer” Fishman said, “Because the stakes are far too high when it comes to intellectual property in a non free market country like China”. He continued “take those savings and reinvest in creating new products that are innovative and separate you from your competitor, the more your product becomes a commodity the more likely it will show up in China.”

The day ended with a presentation from Jim Thomas Director with the event co-sponsor Synesis International. Jim shared the voice from the field describing several implementations of Throughput Analyzer. “We were skeptical at first that an application like throughput analyzer could remain common and deploy as fast as Activplant was communicating it could. Now after many implementations we are big believers in the Throughput Analyzer approach. We are able to get our customers to see value in weeks versus months.” Jim shared implementation anecdotes from a major Automotive OEM, a Lumber mill and automotive supplier.

The day ended strong and attendees rated the event overall as extremely valuable, one attendee was quoted, “I get so many of requests to attend events, after this morning I am glad I came, this was a valuable conference. We have a division in Chicago, and I am recommending that our CI team from that division attend your event next month”.

Be sure to check out our other Activate cities on the Activate website.

To find out more about the event download the speakers' PowerPoint presentations.

See you next time!

Activplant Corporation
activate@activplant.com


	Activplant Takes Atlanta by Storm Activate '07 Event Synopsis Activplant Corporation launched its Activate 2007 Executive Tour at the NEW World of Coca-Cola visitors’ center in Atlanta; executives representing a cross section of the manufacturing sector filled the room to share in this event. Speakers included New York Times best selling author Ted Fishman, Managing Automation Editor in Chief - David Brousell, executives from Activplant Corporation and Synesis International, and Activplant customers TRW Automotive and Coca Cola Amatil. The day opened with a nice warm breakfast as the sun rose over the Atlanta skyline, David Brousell welcomed guests and gave a good perspective on challenges facing manufacturers in today’s global market space. Chief Product Strategist Dennis Cocco of Activplant Corporation also delivered a keynote challenging the manufacturers in the room to stop listening to the hundreds of other software companies touting manufacturing information management systems and focus only on the information that can improve your plant’s ability to produce quality product out the door. “All other information is just noise; its about choosing the right data points that focus your improvement efforts on improving the velocity of the entire system, if the data your managing doesn’t result in complete system wide improvement its like pushing a rope”. Cocco’s call to action was clear: identify your top chronic disruptors to product flow and focus your efforts on reducing them or eliminating them completely. “We developed an application - the Activplant Throughput Analyzer - to fill a gap in the industry; it’s the only application of its kind that requires three to five bits of data from your resources to provide an un-biased view of those chronic disruptors.” Wayne Luxford – Corporate Continuous Improvement Lead – Coca Cola Amatil, presented remotely from Australia. Coke has been an Activplant Customer for about three years and Wayne shared how he led the team in implementing the application reporting a million dollars of savings the first year. “ We really didn’t know what this tool could do for us, in fact we were able to get reports on so many areas in the business that I had almost a full time job just working with the reports to determine where we needed to focus our efforts. If you took Activplant out of my plant today, I would be flying blind; we rely on this 100% to drive efficiencies.” Coke Amatil is now deploying the Throughput Analyzer and Wayne commented on the contrast of this application verses the mounds of reports he had to generate in the past. “I am like the smartest guy in the plant now” and laughingly stated “perhaps I just worked myself out of a job……not really, what used to require a guy like me is now available real time with Throughput Analyzer. I can now focus on solving the problems verses having to find them. In fact we just had the screen where the asset was red and showed him the power of this tool to deep dive into the asset and poof the light went on with him. I get the point he said, it’s really a simple and intuitive tool.” Richard Bader – Operations Executive from TRW Automotive Lebanon facility touted: “We deployed Activplant on some of our oldest equipment; in some instances we were only able to acquire a single bit of information. Throughput Analyzer helped us increase our complete plant efficiency by 4% sustained improvement. When you consider a percentage point represents about $30,000 per month that’s an easy business case to sell back to corporate, and we have just started to see the improvements. We are early in our journey with Throughput Analyzer.” TRW Lebanon deployed TPA using the Throughput Appliance which allows data capture an essential tool for him as an operations manager. He now has the ability to prioritize where he allocates his improvement efforts, “It helps me respond to the corporate mandate of Do More With Less. When we deployed Throughput Analyzer, we decided to initially deploy a limited set of assets to validate that we could truly get the type of returns Activplant was stating, and I had to be had so much success in a short period of time that we have now approved to deploy Throughput Analyzer across my entire plant.” Ted Fishman – New York Times best selling author of the book China Inc. opened with a comment, “You are hearing all this good stuff about manufactures saving dollars and having some success, I guess my job is to say be afraid!” He spoke about China, a country that GDP is growing at an 11%, plants are on the rise and average hourly rates are at about $0.32 per hour. China is not a coming threat, they’re already here. Companies that have thought that perhaps a strategy is to move to lower cost countries like China have paid a price, not only the relocation and logistics now with fuel prices rising; but a cost in intellectual property. China has little to no protection against copied products; in fact Ted told a story of how a North America supplier went to China to meet with a manufacturer that was building a complete knockoff of their product. The Chinese plant manager felt they would have a strategic offer to put on the table for that company because they were already building their product for them. “North American Manufacturers need to leverage tools like Throughput Analyzer” Fishman said, “Because the stakes are far too high when it comes to intellectual property in a non free market country like China”. He continued “take those savings and reinvest in creating new products that are innovative and separate you from your competitor, the more your product becomes a commodity the more likely it will show up in China.” The day ended with a presentation from Jim Thomas Director with the event co-sponsor Synesis International. Jim shared the voice from the field describing several implementations of Throughput Analyzer. “We were skeptical at first that an application like throughput analyzer could remain common and deploy as fast as Activplant was communicating it could. Now after many implementations we are big believers in the Throughput Analyzer approach. We are able to get our customers to see value in weeks versus months.” Jim shared implementation anecdotes from a major Automotive OEM, a Lumber mill and automotive supplier. The day ended strong and attendees rated the event overall as extremely valuable, one attendee was quoted, “I get so many of requests to attend events, after this morning I am glad I came, this was a valuable conference. We have a division in Chicago, and I am recommending that our CI team from that division attend your event next month”. Be sure to check out our other Activate cities on the Activate website. To find out more about the event download the speakers' PowerPoint presentations. See you next time! Activplant Corporation activate@activplant.com