Read for yourself about Corexit(r), the oil spill dispersant used in the Gulf spill.

The following was posted today in the LinkedIn GreenUSA discussion board:

I have nothing to do with this and do not benefit from any of this.  I wanted to see for myself what I’m not hearing in the news.  I know that it easy to obtain a Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) for any chemical describing the expected hazards of any product.

Here are some websites to review from Nalco, the company making Corexit(r):
This shows a number of press releases since the spill: http://www.nalco.com/applications/corexit-technology.htm
Yesterday (5/24) EPA Admin Lisa Jackson released this statement about dispersant use in the spill:   See this page on EPA’s site for a more general listing of releases.

It seems as though they are now agreeing that using this product is the best available method to get rid of the spilled oil.  None of this takes away from the bigger issue that the flow needs to stop.

As someone with an engineering background and supportive of industry, I am very disheartened by this accident.  How could the platform and systems be designed to allow this to happen?  Those of us in the industry talk about designing equipment to “fail-safe”, preventing injuries and disasters like this.  I know nothing about this particular incident, but I’d bet that the investigation will find that there were insufficient protections, an insufficient hazards analysis, and insufficient training all contributing to this accident.  I would like to hear what The Responsible Care organization says about all of this.
Unfortunately, I think if the industry cannot protect itself, it must be more highly regulated.  We cannot allow safety and the environment to be compromised by accidents like this.  They must be prevented.

Tom Smith
tom@fsgnj.com
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“know” your connections on LinkedIn

This is in response to a LinkedIn Job Angels Group question about whether it is important to have pictures on profiles, and whether you should connect with people when you do not know what they look like.

I prefer to connect with people I actually know, so I will not accept invites to connect from people I don’t know. This is what LinkedIn recommends, and, not being an “open networker”, I agree with them. I feel that this increases the value of my network to my connections, again as LinkedIn suggests.

But I also realize that 5 “I don’t knows” will get the invitor’s account suspended, so I do as Eric suggests and archive the invite.

Even if I actually meet people at an event, and they send an invite request to me immediately, I politely send them a message saying I only connect with people I know well, that I just met them, and invite them to continue a dialog with me and accept other personal meetings. I keep those invites in my Inbox and this reminds me to decide when I am comfortable accepting the invite.

Notice none of this has to do with pictures of my connections. If I know them I don’t care if they have a picture or not. I do recommend pictures because I think people without pictures are hiding something. And I let my connections know how I feel.

I also don’t like when any of my connections hide their connections from me using their privacy settings. I ask them a few times to change their privacy settings to enable viewing their connection list and point out that their network is of no value unless I know who they are, and that it is not fair for me to show my connections to them if they are not reciprocating. If they do not open their network to me I drop them as a connection. My network is too valuable to me to be used like that!

After scanning my own response, it is obvious to me that your question sparked a flood of thoughts and emotion! Am I right? I am for my network!


Tom Smith
tom@fsgnj.com
http://www.fsgnj.com
Managing Director
Focused Solutions Group
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Business Process Reengineering – not bad if done right

My company helps small businesses grow efficiently and helps companies in trouble figure out how to get out of the soup.  We do help from a financial perspective but that is not the scope of this article.  It’s about Business Process Reengineering.  This has to do greasing or replacing the cogs of the company’s machine so it can produce more efficiently.  Simultaneous improvements in capacity, productivity, quality, lead times, and costs can all be achieved with this approach.  How about tripling sales with a 20% reduction in price and a 25% reduction in lead time, 30% increase in Gross Margins, and a 98% reduction in defects, with no more people than when you started, and everyone is “working smarter, but not harder”?  Interested?  Read on!

As companies grow from the startup level, they go from a multi-disciplined culture to one where the individual tasks are too much for one person to handle.  Policies and procedures need to be created in order for the product’s quality to be sustained.  Those things in that multi-disciplined person’s head need to be documented.  This way, acceptable products can be made if that “expert” is not around.  Maybe they are moving to another area of the company where their expertise will help train the team with another product.  But it’s not enough to train people.  At some point the training feels like “sink or swim” to the new people.  So they prefer written documentation.  Then they can be sure they are doing the job correctly and there is lower stress.  I believe employees want to do the best job they can in order to ensure their own job security.  But they need the right training and tools.

If too many procedures are put in place too early, the small business chokes from the bureaucracy, and growth is slowed.  The challenge at this step is to install the right procedures and processes at the right step so as not to choke off the innovative drive from the people that have helped the company grow to this point.  That’s where we come in.

We analyze the company’s current business processes (even ad hoc ones), product designs, specifications, and customer requirements.  This is called business process mapping.  In LEAN design, we are looking for bottlenecks to streamline time from order to shipment.  The quality approach also wants to be sure that product quality is consistent and not compromised by short cuts. Our experience with many different kinds of manufacturing environments, at all sizes of companies from startup to multi-nationals, enables us to deeply understand the potential pitfalls at each step in the process.  By first determining where we are, we can create a plan to go where we want to go.  But the first pass of this overview analysis can only take a short time, like hours or a day or two.  We want the company to realize their existing process flows.  Raise your hand if you think your CEO is out of touch with what you are doing at the plant level!  Okay, maybe most of our readers are not plant level, but you know what we mean, right?  As companies grow, they develop these ad hoc processes, and management (almost) doesn’t care how things get done so long as they do.  They have a lot of things to worry about, and are assuming that their great multi-disciplined folks are taking care of their side of things.

One problem is that management processes scale better than production processes.  Huh?  When sales double, most of the time the products are the same.  There may be more quoting but the load on management is not increased very much.  Not so with production.  In many case a doubling of sales results in a need to double employees if you are doing the same thing the same way.  This is what we mean by scalable.  Think in terms of high growth, like doubling, tripling, increasing 10x, 100x, 1000x (orders of magnitude).  If you think you can use the same processes at 1x, and at 1000x just hire 1000 times the number of people, you are mistaken.  You’ll need to change the processes so that when you get to 1000x, you can do it with much less than 1000 times the number of people.  I’ve seen 90% gains (or more) in this kind of scaling.  A 90% gain in productivity would mean that 100 people are effectively doing 1000x the production that one person was doing.  Talk about growing pains!

If you were really going to get to 1000x, that one person needs to grow to 100 people (in this example).  Those 100 needs to be trained since that one person cannot possibly be expected to supervise all 1000.  In fact, that person can’t even train that many.  They need to train other key people as they are growing who will train others, and so on.  Now you get into a case of telephone, and if things are not written down, something will be “lost in translation”.  Not to mention you may really have language barriers to deal with.  Hopefully those on the fence now realize that you need to document things in order to grow.

The ISO9000 system can easily be summarized as “document what you do, and do what you document”.  Everyone knows many companies that are ISO9000 qualified.  The early adopters in the US did it because they were exporting to Europe so their customers demanded it.  Earlier than that Deming put forth his quality approach.  The six sigma approach is now being implemented.  Some companies are doing all of these.  The point is that no matter what system you wind up using, or developing on your own, it’s better than no system.  It creates some organized structure that enables you to grow.  Even if your customer does not require it, if you want to grow you will have growing pains and you will need to get organized.

Once management realizes that they need to grow and build structure, they have reached the first hurdle.  Acknowledging they have a problem.  At least now they can work on solving it.  But you don’t want to go too far too soon.  That’s why it is often best to bring in some outside help to enable proper planning of the next steps.  Office-side process, production-side processes, Quality, lead times, costs, inventory turnover, profit margins all need to be looked at so none of these will suffer, and ideally improve.  And significantly!  Much like a business plan it becomes a roadmap to 1000x, and beyond!

Contact us if you are in this pinch, on your way to it, or want to know how to prevent it.

Tom Smith tom@fsgnj.com
Focused Solutions Group, www.fsgnj.com
Management and Technical Services for NJ Manufacturers
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Green – Not New, but Real

I have been attending various events where “Green” has the the topic of discussion.  For those of you that don’t know, this term has been used to describe anything that is sustainable.  “Anything” could be methods or products.  Generally, the Environmental Technologies that support sustainability are not new.

We started developing most of these “green” technologies many decades and centuries ago.  When did we start recycling in our towns?  Decades ago.  The History of waste production shows dates going back thousands of years with some crude attempts at recycling.  The EPA was established in 1970.  The Silicon-based solar cell was developed in 1941.  Alternative fuels have been discussed since the 19th century where diesel oil was considered along with peanut and vegetable oils for Rudolf Diesel’s new engine design.  Water purification dates back thousands of years.

Okay, I think we’ve established that these “green” technologies are not new.  So what’s all the fuss?  Well, let’s assume that you do not agree with former VP Gore that global warming is coming, and I don’t, but that’s another discussion.  At the same time, most people realize that crude oil will not last forever and we generally need to clean up after ourselves better than we have in the past in order to become better stewards of the planet. People also know that renewable and sustainable sources of energy are better for the overall environment.  But let’s not delude ourselves into thinking that making solar panels or wind turbines does not consume energy or use materials from the earth.  They certainly do.  It’s the overall impact of the construction and operation of these devices that is important.  in a similar way, the refining (cleaning) of various types of alternative fuels such as coal, tar sands, nuclear, ethanol, vegetable oils, sugars, etc all have some level of environmental impact.  None have zero impact.  Materials and energy are needed to plant, harvest, refine and deliver.

The reason these are all “hot” topics today is because the world is awakening to these technologies, and development money is flowing into them at ever increasing rates. Smart business people, scientists, and engineers are dusting off and improving these old methods to more effectively compete with existing “legacy” equipment and processes.  That’s all good.  I’m lucky because the businesses I worked for were early adopters of many of these improving technologies, so Focused Solutions Group can leverage that experience to help support these changes in a cost effective way.

These changes are real and will not go away.  As the price of oil fluctuates the investments may ebb and flow, but they will continue.  For those looking to capitalize on this movement, look for any training opportunity you can get and do your due diligence on potential investments.  Like the Gold Rush days there will be a lot of fly-by-nighters who are looking to take your money and run.  But this sector will become an increasingly active sector and one you should consider, for your career and your investments.

Tom Smith
Focused Solutions Group
www.fsgnj.com

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NJ a Prototyping Market

I have lived in New Jersey all of my life. With the high population density, I’ve always been able to find work. And since I have traveled all over the world, I find it comforting to keep roots in one place. So relationships with family and friends are long term and well developed.

Manufacturing has been the primary focus of my career. Sure there was engineering, design, installation and service, but manufacturing was always the core process. Over the years this background has served me well. For the last 20 years, the management roles have enabled me to mentor and develop others. My depth in the manufacturing details that has enabled me to excel in this area.

Many in New Jersey lament the decline of the manufacturing base. It’s true that about half of the manufacturing jobs have disappeared over the last 20 years. That’s about 270,000 jobs! (source BLS/SAE data www.bls.gov/sae/) At the same time inflation rose 65% and the productivity roughly doubled in current dollars so NJ’s real manufacturing base declined roughly by inflation.

Labor costs and the cost of doing business in NJ are factors, of course. This is the point. We should use NJ’s skilled worker knowledge base to the fullest! Germany has been doing this for years. NJ has over 500 incubator companies, all trying to develop products and ideas. One aspect of my business is helping connect those companies with ideas and no products with the folks that make the products. We also provide other product development services. See www.fsgnj.com. I’ve found many NJ firms often make the prototypes in a short time and at a low cost. Once the product has been developed, and a prototype proven out, it often makes sense to move production to a lower cost labor area. I tell clients: “That’s fine. Move on to make the next prototype!”.

In my opinion, New Jersey is moving toward a “prototyping market” as small companies connect with manufacturers who need to have work that justifies their high costs. For my interim assignments, my targets are larger revenue generating companies, but product development is a passion of mine. And I’m proud to leverage my network to help this effort.

Tom Smith
Focused Solutions Group
www.fsgnj.com

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