Configurator as a Controller

Product Configurator stands at a confluence of Sales, Design engineering and Manufacturing. With this vantage position, it becomes a powerful tool for the management to exercise control over these core/strategic operations while at the same time benefiting all the recipient functions. A real win-win if you can pull it off!

The Fuzzy Engineer

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less travelled by and that has made all the difference” is the favourite quote that inspired me always. Many years back, when we took a software oriented career, we perhaps thought we were taking the road less travelled. Soon we found that the road was getting crowded. All people around us (and we too) were speeding in a hurry, overtaking each other, changing lane, jumping signals and many times causing accidents! One confusion prevailed among our software community though- if they are an absolute engineer or just a shade of an engineer.

Lean or Mass Customization

Today almost entire manufacturing industry is struggling with growing number of product variants or SKUs in their portfolio. Henry Ford’s mass production appears a Stone Age technique. At the same time expectations to deliver the customized products quickly at competitive prices are increasing. Traditional way of managing and selling products i.e. unique numbering at end-item level can no more deliver desired efficiencies.
Hence, Lean customization is way forward.

Contributing towards improving a customers Business Process

Organizations are always in the mode of fine tuning their processes to cut the last bit of dead time or even to improve the quality by just a small percent. It can be called the Kaizen syndrome. Increasingly, BA/Consultants are expected to come up with new processes or workarounds to improve their business processes.  After addressing the problems faced by analysts in various organizations my observations on process improvement haven’t really changed but are still very fundamental.

Get the most out of your application investments

Past years have seen a tremendous development in product-based or tailor made software applications. As these applications started improving operational effectiveness to the organizations, it started getting much more complex. The time and resources required to manage these applications are becoming a significant burden, to the point where they divert critical resources away from other initiatives and have a negative effect on growth and profitability.