Achieving Consistent and Right Results in an Agile World

As Sunday draws to a close, I sit out looking over to pacific the waves crash, and birds fly, it is my time of reflection.

Last week I talked about some of the observations from the last month on the road. But this week I debated with a number of thought leaders and we all aligned on the challenge of a dynamic workforce, and dynamic operational/ business environment, means that chance of “Lights out Manufacturing “ are slim.

One company I was engaged with last week their thought pattern was still about replacing the personal on the plant, going to total automation. While I agree with automation, it is required for consistently and velocity of production. But I struggle with agility.

Two days latter I was at another company and they were all about empowerment of people, they wanted to automate process, and operations to free up people to add complimentary agility and “out of the box” thinking.  As one C level said to me, our market is changing as fast as we ever seen, and

Stepping back and looking at both these companies the second company was more automated than the first and the second was investing in automation more than the first. But their attitude was to gain consistently and free up people from repeatable tasks, and increase the responsibility of people, and empower people to make decisions fast.  

The diagram below really depicts what I started to introduce last week, and what this second company believed in.

That they needed to design their systems and people to play “natively in the dynamic world”, and they have realized that “embedded Intelligence and knowledge” will be key and must grow proportionally with increasing data. They also realized that with agility comes the changing operational environment and situations which will require “augmented intelligence” with the human brain can work out. The key thinkers in the industry are not looking to dependency on 1 to 2 people, they are leveraging the concept of “crowd sourcing” thru a active community of people. As we look at the operational/ automation world of the future the key pillars will be:

•     Ability to capture knowledge and intelligence into the system to automate process, and operations. Key is this is not just traditional automation in PLCs/ DCS etc, it is capturing repeatable knowledge and decisions. So the system must bread a culture of contribution and use natively.
•    Ability to have a community of workers who can share collaborated “naturally” with ease, no matter the location of the users and state. Foundational to this is  the ability trust the information, the measures so a common understanding of the situation, and basis for decision can be made.

Leading to natural decisions, and action paradigm across the team as seen below. I will expand on this more next week.

Can we achieve the last mile of operational Excellence without IOT?

This question was posed to me last week, and it is a good one. The critical items is to understand what is operational excellence is trying to achieve to realized that it is journey and moving goal of effectiveness pushed by the market and technology. Like when you are riding a wave, you staying in front, and leveraging the wave to excel, otherwise it swallows you up.

Operational excellence is about:

• Agility to deliver products/ services to Customer/ market at the correct price, time and location
• The ability to rapidly introduce new innovation value to lead the market and open new markets
• The ability to enable sustainable innovation and value through effectively leveraging people, and technology.

The diagram below illustrates this, and I am sure some people will have different angles, but it is about leading the competitive edge.

But can you achieve this with the traditional approaches? I believe you can get to 60/ 70 % of the way with traditional approaches and current technologies, but that last mile needs a paradigm shift in “actionable decisions”. Agility requires timely decisions across a team, and consistency and timely actions associated with the decision across teams, roles etc.

A core concept of Internet of Things (IoT) is teams of things (devices, and people) interacting in an orchestrated manner to achieve an operational timely result. With devices being more “self-aware”, empowered to take actions, interacting with workers or other devices to move “work “to the next step.

This foundation of IoT and the orchestration of devices /people, timely knowledge, provides that much needed paradigm shift to enable that last mile on the above operational excellence journey. The constant discovery of new capabilities, and knowledge through big data techniques, the ever increasing lake of embedded knowledge lends it as the basis for companies to go on this Operational excellence journey, but with this is the required cultural evolution to continuous improvement and knowledge/ wisdom.

                                       Source ARC

The above IOT maturity model matches to Operational Excellence journey, especially on the stages of “smart, and autonomous” linking to the Operational Excellence stages of “Driving Business and Driving the Market”). Foundational to Operational Excellence is timely knowledge and procedures being delivered so actionable decisions can be taken in a consistent manner across plants, assets and people. The IoT principles provides the opportunity to deliver this knowledge, while abstracting the variability in plant, assets and experience levels of people.

To me the desire and programs being enabled at companies to take them down the operational excellence journey provides the cultural evolution needed combined with IoT to succeed and make IoT effective not just from technology but most of all business side

How will we work in 2025?

During the holiday break I was catching up on reading, validating ideas, and directions, and I found this article on "Why we would work in 2020? from NASA IT Talk.
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/IT-Talk_July2014.pdf

What interested me was you had a big semi government organization often not know for agility, talking agility of missions, of different sizes, and also the workspace transformation technologies and experiences were the same as we are predicting in Industrial/ manufacturing operational space.
The link above takes you to the article and here is an extraction: The targeted outcomes are aligned as well, with agility, collaboration, understanding the future,

"As IT professionals, we are used to rapid changes. But compared to what’s coming, we ain’t seen nothin’yet. Of course, no one actually knows the future, but by predicting it, we can make better decisions today that will help us become more effective tomorrow. The purpose of this article is to start a discussion so we can innovate together to help NASA IT lead the way and prepare for how NASA employees will work effectively in 2025. It has been said that the best way to predict the future is to create it. While we may not be able to create the IT future by ourselves, we can certainly in‑fluence it. A good way to accomplish this is to:

(1) collaboratively predict the future;

(2) test it together now with leading industry innovators by creating meaningful and evocative prototypes that provide high value for our constituents in the NASA environment;

(3) measure the results

(4) communicate the results as visibly and loudly as we can.

So, what will the technology environment look like in 2025, you ask? OK, here’s a prediction at a subset of the new normal in 2025:

• ·         3D printing / scanning / faxing is mainstream.
• ·         Consumer robotics is everywhere and really cheap.
• ·         All data is accessible, searchable and usable from any device.
• ·         We can use unlimited computing and storage through cloud computing.
• ·         Computing is wearable with any data accessible at any time.
• ·         Reality is augmented via modeling by default through our mobile apps and wearable computing.
• ·         Space is partly commercialized and NASA routinely partners with commercial and nontraditional
• ·         entities.
• ·         Over 10% of cars are self-driving.
• ·         More than 50% of  employees are Millennials.
• ·         NASA looks and feels much more like a startup than we did in 2014 and we use
• ·         crowd sourcing routinely.
• ·         Projects are accomplished in months, not years.

How will we work?

·         We will routinely use effective, rapid prototyping with faster, lighter, cheaper, and more effective infusion of the latest technologies into the NASA missions. Agile development will seem cumbersome in comparison.

·         We will evaluate and use the most effective emerging tools as part of our normal work. Visual programming and modeling will be expected and NASA will show visible leadership to industry.

Where will we work?

Simply put, NASA will be the workplace of choice. We will have a balanced, “startup-like” environment with mobile, reconfigurable, ­t-to-purpose workspace that enhances personal productivity and job satisfaction.

Working from anywhere with any data and any device will be the new normal.

Who will perform the work? NASA will be the employer of choice and the

partner of choice for the next generation of startups, industry, partners, and competitors. What about “the crowd” you say? Bring it on! Crowd ideation / development / funding will be commonplace and highly effective.

What will we work on? We will be equally adept at small and large missions, for both wild and feasible ideas. We will use industry for transportation. We will be on our way to 3D printing on Mars in preparation for sending humans to Mars. Asteroids will be within our grasp (literally). Submarining under the ice of Europa will be imminent.

We will monitor and protect our planet with millions of sensors composed of official NASA instruments and crowd-sourced wearable computing and nanosats. And that’s just a start.

Here is a sampling of predicted changes and prime candidates for prototyping that will show us the way to taste test this future now across NASA Centers and with leading industry innovators:

• By taking advantage of Big Data and Analytics, we can easily ­nd, store, share, and update all relevant information when we need it. We will provide self-service analytics to all who need it, so our decisions are based on data, not anecdotes. Robotic devices and scripts will collect valuable data for us 24 hours per day, every day.

• The Internet of Things and Wearable Computing will help us to have instant access to all this information at our fi­ngertips, on our wrists, in our glasses, via hand gestures, and by simply speaking the questions.

• We will use just-in-time training through videos created by current NASA specialists, and through specialized Massive Open Online Courses, all available from anywhere and any device via on-demand video snippets delivered directly to our favorite devices, such as smart glasses.

• 3D Printing/Scanning/Copying/Faxing will be mainstream and will allow us to hold effective

brainstorming sessions where we mix virtual and physical models regardless of where we are located.

Is this too Pollyanna’ish for you? Too conservative? Either way, please participate in the conversation and help us steer this train in the right direction, because it is already moving and speeding up, with or without us. Our destination is exciting indeed. And it’s all enabled by IT. "

We should not be surprised, but it is good to see validation of our thoughts.

Teams vs Collaboration: What are the effect on Capabilities Required from a Operational System?

As discussed on many occasions the ability to harness the operational team in a well aligned, action orientated and decision in the NOW team is key to having an agile operational business. It became aware to me that not everyone was on the same page as to what capabilities are required in the “operational/ automation system” to achieve this effective team.

One person talked about collaboration services, and I asked " what did capabilities did he include in this? " The answer was “Skype like capabilities the ability to speak, chat easily with another member”.

Certainly this is not what I had in mind, and therefore I thought it worth a discussion:

 Key with an aligned team is:

1/ Team awareness:requiring that the state, availability and easily understanding the skills of the team around me at any moment so I can filter to a set of team members whom a have a certain skill and are available, no matter their location. As a local worker feel empowered to engage with experts for advice in making timely decisions.

 

2/Natural communication: It is not hard to communicate, I do not have to look up a number, just click and either chat, email, voice etc. The ability to set up team, multi user meetings to discuss a point and I am on plant, this is quick and natural from within the application.

 

3/ The ability to share links, information with notes etc: to be able to ad hoc analysis, identify a situation of interest, add some notes and share with someone else or a team to discuss all in one to two key strokes is crucial. An example Google Documents provides this collaboration powerfully, but to add to this to snapshot of a current plant screen, trend tool and evolve. Providing views to allow fellow team members to get to the same view quickly, applying their skills in a collaboration of skills in real-time in a virtual world.

 

4/ The ability capture events and notes: so that actions and situation of an event are automatically and manually captured to allow use by other following teams. Eliminating time for searching for materials and waiting for response, the system has the information and in an easily well structured format for consumption.

 

5/ The ability to manage tasks: work items with knowledge between the teams, people and across skill sets with efficiency and drive towards resolution as fast as possible. The work item is set up automatically, or on request from a worker and associated operational practices are associated with it, with the item execution tracked until resolution. Avoiding losing items between teams.  

 

6/ Knowledge sharing and capture: so that teams are able to be fluid across sites and tasks, drawing upon existing knowledge and expertise with ease. As users solve problems or resolve work items, the capture of data and resolution methods easily for later use. Users can add knowledge and information on the fly, capturing notes, situations, photos etc easily, so it is a natural part of a days actions not and exception. The promotion of “crowd sourcing” by a user being able to search and see topics and then contribute and extend easily.

All of these are facets of “team” system capabilities, enabling and effective interaction and transition between and across teams and members within a team. The boundaries of departments and locations are removed enabling timely decisions and actions. All of the capabilities while available in different forms today, but the modern operational/ automation system will naturally accommodate these within the environments in the near future. Key is for companies and engineering houses to bring team collaboration into their design of a system, as well as culture the leading companies are seriously focusing on this area today as the next significant step in operational effectiveness.

Time for Information Driven Manufacturing!

Information Driven Manufacturing concept is starting gain traction in the thought leaders. Information Driven Manufacturing is a manufacturing strategy that combines the concepts of collaboration and value network manufacturing, building on the newer technologies to achieve and sustain a agile competitive multi plant business. A key concept to this strategy is that explicitly recognizes that avoiding change, while comfortable, may represent a bigger risk for the organization that the risk associated with introducing new solutions where appropriate.  There is a different culture not taking technology for the sake of it, but an attitude that understands the need for alignment of people, value asset network (multi-plants) and business and operational processes, to reduce cost, but most of all provide a flexible manufacturing base that can adjust with market providing the necessary agility to absorb market change, acquisitions, and new products rapidly and in a cost effective manner.

 

 

Source ARC Feb 2013

Information Driven manufacturers take a holistic view of manufacturing and the production plant’s role within the extended value network. They apply information technology broadly  to improve or replace business process. With the maturity of internet, workflow, databases, and other technologies there is a host of possibilities that can be applied in a program to improve the dynamic nature of the whole manufacturing from people to assets, and processes, to enable consistency of execution and therefore the opportunity to be dynamic to absorb, evolve to change.

The cornerstone of  information driven company is the empowerment of all people in their roles, to make decisions and act as an aligned team, based upon process and business information, provided in a holistic view (across assets E.g.| unified model despite the underlying sources), contextualized, visualized so that it can be analyzed easily relative to their roles. Key is making sure this information and core data are a “Trusted system” and the leading companies are now applying consistent embedded actions to go with the information decision so that consistency in action, and reduction in skill experience are needed to achieve a consistent, timely result.

The culture in an information driven manufacturing company, is understood the value and need of change/ evolution in a constructive way, but executing this change on proven technologies but not just used in their business, but looking outside their business and asking “why cannot we apply that for this____”. They have active investigations through internal, and external looking at:

 

More and more I am engaging with leading companies who are looking at open minded people to make a team who can constructively develop a value program. It is important to recognize this is more than one program, it is alignment of programs, technologies and cultural journey which leading companies are on, and potential benefits are significant in agility (market share) and long term cost, through staying 'ever green" and aligned.

 

 

Multiplying Value of Expert Community interacting with the Multiple Operational Team

Last week I talked about harnessing the experienced community for knowledge management, the concept enablement to contribute through "crowd source". This week I would like to expand the concept with the virtual expert team and how critical enabling this community of knowledge and experience to be empowered to work in real time with the plant, operational staff, enabling real-time decisions.

In January we introduced the operational landscape in 2020, where projected tenures in roles or locations to be below 2.4 years, (I believe will be less than this in many areas). The other notable observation was that 1 in 3 of the workforce will be in project work vs. careers, temporarily engaged to supply expertise and skill to a project, or situation. Giving rise to a "vacuum" knowledge effect when they leave, often causing an uncertainty, lack of confidence in making decisions.

Introducing the challenges of enabling decisions, with lack of experience.

Companies talk about their experts either in the company or in partners, who are stretched and how they keep "taking the expert to the problem" and the need to transition to "taking the problem to expert".

During the last two weeks I have been engaged with a couple of large distributed projects, in environments where there is 20% turn over of expertise from trade’s people, operational, maintenance, process experts and staff. The growth in companies investigating or implementing "operational centers" is indicative of the challenge as the experts can be located in a central location, and interact with multiple sites. In theory, this works, in practice the challenge is the expert could be on site, could be traveling, and often in order to retain the expert he must be able to contribute in a location of their choice.

Companies are also looking to multiply the value from these experts requiring they are not restricted to only contributing to their local plant, or teams. As companies look to align and manage the end to end value chain these experts could be in  operations, planning, maintenance, engineering, process, IT, control quality, etc., become critical assets.

The concept of significantly reducing the "time to performance/ expertise" is key built on a number of foundational approaches, all possible today:

1/ Knowledge systems that enable natural contribution with knowledge management to gather value and maintain the value leveraging technologies that harness "crowd sourcing", of the expert community.

2/Embedding of operational processes shifting to "intelligent work" with context information for declines and recommended actions all associated in the work item. Gathering these operational best practices from the experts, at all levels in the company and embedding into the operational system for consistent behavior to situations.

3/ Virtual expert communities that can be notified in real-time, access status and information in consistent and trusted context. Viewing the same information as the plant operational staff, but being able to apply their own analysis, experience and expertise to share with the plant operational workers for decisions. Key is the expert is working from where ever he is, on what ever device, and can collaborate, share and contribute. The expert could be in a company or a supply, but is part of the "virtual trusted expert" community seeing only the information they need, to be easily accessible to the plant user, and no effort to access.

So as a situation develops, a plant worker can focus on that situation, and see all the real virtual experts for that situation who are on line and their skill. They can chat, they can share, by dragging and dropping, and they can talk, all in a couple of key strikes or gestures. This collaboration must be natural, combined with core trust of the expert, and system that the advice from the expert is relevant to the current situation. Also, the ability to call on the knowledge system for like situations and draw information easily.

Now the experts are contributing to multiple sites, and situations without traveling and contributing to knowledge capture at the same time. This whole concept is paradigm shift in knowledge and expertise, but is the foundation for companies to be able accommodate this transitional operational landscape.

“It’s not raining; it’s pouring”, the rate of change social, workforce, market combined with built up industrial effects, will make 2013/14 exciting!!!!

As we all come to end of 2012, we have time to reflect and look towards 2013, (even bigger things if you are on the Mayan calendar who start their new complete calendar). I find the time over the holidays a time to step back and think, absorb, read, reflect and strategise without the daily routine. As I flew back home, low over the northern coast of New South Wales, Australia I read a number of articles and one from Deloittes on “Tracking the Trends 2012”  which lead with “It’s not raining; it’s pouring” was straight to point and not just for mining, but all industries. Combine this with an improved positive outlook from China and fewer significant potential changes in government next year, 2013 provides the opportunity to build momentum with companies starting the journey to take on solid challengers of unified solutions to achieve “Operational Excellence”. The challenge will be the constraint of bridging the gap between “time and urgency of getting to full production, vs the green light to proceed forward, vs the challenge of the existing install base of “islands of industrial systems”’.

So in the final blog of the year I would like review some of the points raised in this paper, and just expand and enabling further reflection.

The Paper “Tracking the Trends 2012, The top 10 trends mining companies may face in the coming year” by Deloitte (www.deloitte.com/mining). Do not get put off by the word “mining” as 80% of the points raised are relevant across most industries. The article starts with an extremely true statement:

“It’s not raining; it’s pouring.”

“It could be argued that the burning issues facing the industry tend to remain largely unchanged over time. While this may be factually correct, it fails to take into account the extent to which shifting social, economic and political trends affect the mining sector. Looked at in isolation, each challenge may seem familiar. Looked at through a macroeconomic and geopolitical lens, however, it becomes clear that the difficulties afflicting the industry are rapidly reaching an unprecedented level of extremity.”

I do not think enough people realise the extremity of these different factors affecting the ability to achieve “operational effectivness” tending to treat them as individual issues vs interactive. In the industrial sector as it has been traditionally an extremely slow moving, conservative and fragmented operational environment, but not anymore. With globalization, the required speed of decisions, agility to market changes, combine these with age of industrial systems, transitioning workforce and social change. Provides a real opportunity for leading companies to “leap frog” by taking a holistic approach to solving these challengers vs a “piece meal” approach.

1. “The cost of doing business What goes up does not always come down”

“With commodity prices surging to all-time highs, but variable (28% change in price of Iron Ore between Sept and October 2012), accelerated production has become the mantra of most mining companies.”

The result is as onerous as it is predictable: costs are going up across the board.

This applies across all industries, but it is not just the costs going up it is also the volititiy in costs, that change at much more frequent rate, and these costs must be absorbed into the manufacturing costs in order to maintain margin. Energy is an excellent example this going up, and changing, effecting all the costs of materials, and transport costs as well as operating costs. Regulation is another hidden cost that is taxing on manufacturing; from regulations to fit markets, government driven regulation and the growing environmental commitment.

2. “Commodity price chaos  No price stability without greater transparency”

Have commodity prices been reset at a higher level or are we at the top of a bubble that’s about to burst? The answer to that question dictates whether or not current mining projects will be profitable. Unfortunately, indisputable indicators are sorely lacking. Project life times are getting shorter and time to full productin is the key metric, so how do you absorb this dynamic climate? The ability to have approved capex spend, and project designs ready to go at a “minutes notice” with teams executing fast is key. Projects need to sub divided into logical value steps that are achievable and build off each other instead of single huge projects, allowing agility to tune, achieve and adjust through the journey to Operational Excellence. This is as much a culutural change in project running to be journey, as much as an execution.  

3. “The battle to keep profits Government taxes target the mining sector”

“Resource sector profits have long been tempting to governments around the world. This is particularly true at a time when so many nations continue to struggle to repay record levels of debt.”

This statement while centered on mining is true across the world. Governments are looking to change GST, VAT, (sales taxes) or profit taxes in order to access the company profits and compensate for increase costs, and solving their long term debt crisis. This will also continue to increase the complexity in a supply chain that extends across the world, with increased need to be in control of the business, track products, materials and taxes in each to manage the tax costs.

4. “Labour pains  Bridging the precarious talent gap”

“Behind all the tonnes of articles, statistics and reports written about the talent and skills shortages facing the mining industry lies one stark fact: there simply are not enough people to power projected mining company growth.”

All through this year I talked about the workforce transition challenge, as the year progressed the reality set in that this is not a transition it is a total workflorce reset. There are fewer skilled people in the engineering and industrial space, they are less inclined to go to remote locations, and people are rotating jobs significantly. In Another article on Operational Practices in 2020 (which I will expand on in January) they predict 42% of the workforce will be made up Gen Y, and the average time in a role, job will be 2.4 years. This requires a different thinking in Operational System Design to absorb this type of change, and maintain continous production. As I interviewed many people in the latter part of the year, realization of this workforce challenge is starting to sink in, it will make the next 5 years an interesting time!

5. “Capital project quandaries  Project risk rises as the supply/demand gap widens”

“As countries around the world continue their push towards massive industrialization and infrastructure renewal, the number of capital projects across the globe is mounting. At the same time, declining assets across the sector and lower ore grades mandate investment in new development and exploration projects, particularly in light of the escalating safety risks associated with aging mines.”

This is not just mining all industries are seeing this in some form, consider food and beverage where they add new plants, or more than often acquire existing plants with existing aging systems, and practices then require for the alignment. The requirement for increased capital investments to gain alignment, but then the enormous costs of sustaining or evolving these aging assets and systems to be effective in the modern world. Both are putting a strain of project investment and financing and also project execution in a timely fashion due to a shortage of engineering, skilled personal.

6. “The big get bigger Risk multiplies as companies diversify”

In order to stay competitive and in control, larger companies are getting bigger through acquisition to increase the vertical supply chain control and reduce risk, or increase responsitivity. With global expansion, new cultures, establish processes need to melded together and aligned. This expansion is key to stay in the market but in turn increases the risk to companies, and the leading companies are looking for ways, processes and technologies that will smooth out, reduce the risk in merging these new companies into the bigger picture. This can only be done through the roll out of standards and the concept of “federation” vs “rip and replace”. This allows plant cultures and system to be sustained, but the plants/companies to be “plugged” into the bigger value chain, and aligned.  

7. “Volatility is the new stability Planning for the unforeseeable”

“While risk planning requires executives to peer into the future, it traditionally does not demand that they plan for highly-unlikely occurrences. Unfortunately, the stepped-up incidence of implausible events is turning conventional scenario planning on its head. From the widespread effects of the global financial crisis and worldwide political instability to the tsunami in Japan and flooding in Australia, Brazil and South Africa, mining companies find themselves facing the unexpected on a frighteningly regular basis.

Although these so-called “black swan events” are by definition, rare, high-impact and hard to predict, they are finding their way onto corporate agendas, fuelled in part by boards of directors that fear ambush by issues that never appeared on their radar screens. Preparing for these unanticipated surprises – whether they are harbingers of risk or opportunity – may require more of a creative licence than mining companies are accustomed to exercising.

On some level, the process must begin by considering the organization’s vulnerability to extremely unlikely, but potentially catastrophic, incidents – those considered worst-case scenarios. The aim is to challenge existing business assumptions by asking questions that consider myriad sources, from geopolitical movements to volatile weather patterns.”

Continuity Risk Planning is becoming a big common concept in companies as they plan forward, this involves now bringing in these external events, and effect on personal safety, environment etc.

8. “Legislative Olympics Countries compete to become the world’s toughest regulators”

In recent years, however, nations around the world have been loading their regulatory firearms, targeting areas such as bribery, safety, environmental, carbon, financial correctness, etc.

These regulations are coming from governments in the form of new laws, good example the new Carbon Tax in Australia, which will immediately affect the bottom line. Drive from customers and community, example is environmental where companies are starting to be judged based on the moral conduct towards the longevity of the planet. Also, food safety is playing a role in buying habits, this especially seen in China after their scares, so brand integrity is at risk relative to food safety, personal safety and operational safety. All of these bring a new level of risk to board and executive members of companies, as well as the bottom line cost. So naturally in the operational systems capability relative to reducing risk, and the cost is becoming natural a natural train of thought.

The final thoughts in the article sum up the change in the attitude and thinking in the industrial space and how companies are thinking. It is this thinking on a more holistic collaboration with real time coupling and alignment which delivers the most promise for the industry combined with the most risk and challenge.

“From competition to collaboration industrywide-wide issues require an industry-wide response.

It is becoming increasingly incumbent upon mining executives to broaden their purview by fostering improved collaboration – across their own organizations, among industry players and with communities and governments around the world. From an internal perspective, it may help to begin by adopting enterprise-wide processes capable of creating a cohesive culture among disparate international locations. These types of processes can run the gamut – from global labour practices, worker safety programs and supply chains through integrated financial reporting, business intelligence systems and regulatory compliance practices. No matter the adopted solution, the end goal is the same: to ensure consistent practices and communication across the entire global enterprise.”

I wish you all a happy holidays and all the best for the New Year, and I hope this blog through last year has prompted thoughts and thinking, and this article some provoking thoughts.

In the up coming year we have a lot of investment and innovations happening across the industry, and I will continue to explore the directions people are taking on the journey to Operational Excellence.