What is good about having 30+ years of experience?
I've spent a majority of my career in systems... specifically for hardware manufacturing. I've been defining/implementing/using the software which makes hardware possible. Hopefully this is NOT 1 year of experience replicated 30 times.
Now, taking a step back I've decided to reflect on these experiences:
I've been wondering about these things and what the real gist is of all of the TLAs (three letter acronyms or Top Level Assys) means. So I mapped it out.
Being a 'data guy' I decided to map these TLAs out against the number of years I've been doing this stuff. I was a bit surprised by my results. I've been told that I'm one of the top PLM implementers on the planet... I've been doing this sort of work since my days at the Boeing 777 program (which was the first all digital airplane - which required a lot of data management to manage all two million parts flying in very close formation). What I didn't realize is that we've come full circle in the industry. I was also one of the very first PC AI guys in the 1980s and we built a forward chaining decision tree software called Socrates (at my first startup I founded). One of the reasons I got hired at Boeing is because I could speak AI and Manufacturing with some clarity. (The old joke was how to define "AI" and no one knew how to do it... but the reverse was easy: Artificial Intelligence is the EXACT opposite of Natural Stupidity!)
We built a generative NC programming solution (taken from a CAD model using "AI" for pattern recognition) but after that I got pulled into the PDM/PLM space as we needed a way to manage a very large quantity of CAD files, which would be turned into parts on the factory floor. I found that accelerating the time-to-market was more important than figuring a way to fillet a corner on a CAD system. (It took 17 days to release any drawing at Boeing in that era and PLM was supposed to accelerate that process.)
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Recently, I was working at a startup which 'exploded overnight' in a good way. Their sales went up over 800% during the pandemic - since they had a product everyone wanted then. We had to be clever, agile and effective in our IT decision making since I was the only guy on staff who could "spell IT". I was given a task - onboard a new 3PL (warehouse) asap. We didn't have a lot of budget but had to deliver our products through an east coast warehouse (which would normally take about 6 months and $500K to hire consultants and do it the 'old fashioned way' using ERP and EDI and lots of coding by an bunch of people). I came up with an idea, used a single consultant (my guru friend), and we built a system for Sales Order submission using JIRA (for a fraction of the money and in less than 60 days). It turns out you can track boxes just as well as you can track bugs... and this "band-aid" system is still in play - it has been used to ship over 1M boxes to date. We went on to develop and manage the "Digital Twin" or MES (MFG Execution System)... on a budget (using cloud services we wrote from scratch). These are all maintained by a team of SW Engineers in India for a fraction of the price we'd spend if we hired a team in Silicon Valley. I'd say my main contribution is to find affordable, creative solutions using uncommon methods, and then selling these (e.g., getting users to want to use these solutions).
I guess my 30+ years of experience is like an architect of buildings - we've designed and built a number of systems for manufacturing clients/employers over the years. Some look pretty cool even to this day, made up of "Software Legos". Others have been torn down or not used any longer. Resellers, Vendors and others have the perspective of their proprietary tools (i.e. buildings). I'm interested in providing a different perspective and solving the business problems at hand (on a budget!). DM me if you'd like to find out more. I'd like to become the Frank Lloyd Wright of your enterprise solutions and I think we have the experience to prove it.
PS: no 85+ year old software displays such elegance and beauty as what was done by FLW in a physical building!
Back to basics, sustainability and first principle reasoning
7 个月Jim Doxey this is an excellent thoughtful post, and after my 44+ years I found myself many times asking similar questions. I sincerely hope that enough younger persons out there will immediately see the benefit of employing your services. Even though there are new technologies and fads appearing at such an explosive pace, the fundementals, like the laws of physics, stay the same. What I noticed in myself over the years, was the development of an uncanny ability to be able to walk into a room, like the kick-off of a new endeavour, and in seconds be able to smell whether this is rubbish or brilliant. I guess though, given enough training data (hard to come by), AI could also do this. But till then, us "oldies" is this business remain a valuable, though unfortunately wildly under utilized, resource. All the best.