Publications

Prior to transitioning to a perment job in large corporation IT departments, as a Senior Business Systems Analyst, in 2011, most of my previous professional work was as a consultant in manufacturing and supply chain, and including a 5 year period leading an ERP software company, AIMS Software, Inc., which sold a large-scale ERP system that I designed and managed the development.

My consulting career was previously often focused on turnaround and chrisis resolutions, not all of the projects and work I've done have involved true turnarounds, i.e., real crisis situations where the company's short-term survival is at stake.  Most, however, have involved an urgent situation where major improvements in performance were required in a short time period to avoid a serious problem or leverage an opportunity.

Some crisis resolutions have involved divisions of larger corporations, or where there was a major private investor, so cash flow was not, in those cases, the central focus.  Others have involved failed product introductions, software development project failures and crises from unmanaged, very rapid growth.

Throughout my work I have written white papers, articles for journals and presentations, as well as a text book.  Topics include MRP and how to manage with its many limitations, other scheduling methods, Theory of Constraints, supplier scheduling / collaboration, transportation, sourcing, synchronized production, material pull systems, cost systems, software and many others.  Some of these are available on the Blog page, which I have not updated in a long time.

Prentice-Hall Hard-Back Textbook

Earlier in my career, I wrote a Prentice-Hall (now called Pearson) text, Production & Inventory Management in the Technological Age.  It sold thousands of copies world-wide, and was used for a long time as a introduction to material management / supply chain management course text at colleges and APICS certification courses. 

I have reprinted the book, as I found I have consistently used it as a source of training material for my work, and most of it is still surprisingly current.  It is available for purchase on Amazon.com at this link.

Summary of the book & its contents

Review by an APICS reviewer

White Papers

A common thread to my work has been coming to clearly understand what may be termed Best Practices. 

Often viewed as something "we'll do when we get the time and money to do them" as though they are some kind of expensive luxury, I have found over and over that when you are desperate is the very time to put them into use as they save money and improve performance (i.e., more results for the same expense).

One area often a source of difficulty is software/system projects - either development, implementation or both.  I recommend reading the comments below, and potentially some or all of the papers that detail why I have been consistently successful with these. 

In the context of a turnaround or crisis, I have repeatedly found that a short time-frame (due to the crisis) is actually the best way to implement new software systems.  Most of my turnaround work has involved some major effort involving software - either a new system to be implemented, an existing one that was rapidly re-implemented, or in one case, a failed software development project was threatening the company's survival.

The Path to Best Practices - This paper describes what I term the 4 Essential Factors that comprise the best practice path.  Distilled from my experience and research by many sources performed on consistently top performing companies, these are the source of what become identified later as standard best practices.

Effective Enterprise Systems - One of the 4 Essential Factors is effective enterprise systems.  This paper explains what is meant by this term, and what it takes to achieve them. 

Continuous Improvement Processes - Another of the 4 Essential Factors is continuous improvement processes throughout the organization.  Here, we explain what is involved in creating and sustaining the improvement process over long time periods. 

Improve the Improvement Process - The ultimate leverage is to improve the improvement process itself.  This white paper describes what is involved in creating and sustaining this process, in terms of leadership and culture.

The Essentiality of Leadership - Perhaps the most fundamental of the 4 Essential Factors is true, effective leadership, distinct from management and control.  Best in class companies have articulate, consistent processes to develop and bring out real leadership.  This paper describes what this means, and how effective leadership synergizes other high performance factors.

Engagement Leadership - Earlier in my career, after reflecting on the causes of a particularly large success,  I realized an essential truth - that enthusiasm is the only truly free source of energy.  The sizeable successes that had occurred during my role as VP had been realized because I had, perhaps unwittingly, brought forth this enthusiasm among those I led.  This paper describes this process and shows why it is so critical to sustained success.

Best Practices - China & Elsewhere - After a month-long in-depth operations & supply chain due diligence project in mainland China, I compared what I had learned about common practices in these areas among Chinese companies with a broader, more universal view of best practices that transcends any national culture in this paper. 

Implementation Projects

Implementation projects are among the most challenging organizational changes that can be undertaken.  Fortunately, I have been successful in all such adventures that I have led or had a major role in.  

Most of what is referred to as the terrible risk of an ERP implementation is, in my view, simply not following known, proven best practices.  I have been successful simply because I learned, early on, about these proven best practices and stuck to them closely - even under intense schedule pressure.  These papers describe this proven implementation set of practices:

Implementation Preparation Best Practices - Most successful outcomes, especially for change projects, involves rigorous preparation, like a pilot's pre-take-off checklist.  Make sure everything required for success is in place, and already, the odds improve in your favor.  This paper covers these preparations.

Implementation Team Best Practices - At the heart of the implementation is the team.  This paper describes how to assemble a success-guaranteed implementation team.

Implementation Conference Room Pilot Prep. - No producer of a play would consider raising the curtain on opening night without extensive dress rehearsals.  This paper describes how to prepare for a rigorous, success-insuring conference room pilot.

Implementation Conference Room Pilot Completion - Once all is prepared, the real works begins, and goes, and goes...  This paper describes how to avoid short-cutting the conference room pilot and thereby voiding its insuring of success on Go Live day.

MRP, Scheduling, and Supply Chain Management

The topic of forward planning, forecasting, material requirements planning, scheduling, Theory of Constraints concepts, pull systems, and other sub-topics have been a central focus throughout my career.  The description of MRP, inventory management concepts, and related topics in my 1983 text book is still current, as there has been little innovation in this area. 

One reason MRP/ ERP implementation projects have trouble is that MRP simply is not very workable for anything close-in - i.e., where all the challenges are.  The two papers below address this challenge and show how Lean concepts and ERP can be meshed for success.

MRP - Guide to Limitations - This paper describes both how MRP works, and how a more appropriate software logic should work to enable a low-overhead, yet effective forward planning system works.  The MRP alternative description is based on the AIMS/ERP system's scheduling function, which I designed.

Synchronized Work Flow - A Case Study - In the mid 19809's years ago I became VP Manufacturing at Raypak, my first line management role, leading a 250 person team, at a company that had never, in its 30 years, made any real profit.  This paper, a summary of several papers and presentations at APICS regional & local conferences, describes how this team learned Lean methods (then called just-in-time), and MRP system functions to create a powerful synchronized production system.  Raypak went on to become the dominant player in its industry - a real success story.

Public Speaking Engagements - Presentations

I have been honored throughout my career as a speaker at many professional occasions - from regional professional society conferences to local after-dinner speeches at a variety of professional groups.  These are several from recent years.

Capacity & MRP - This presentation describes the limitations of MRP software and standard use practices in the critical area of capacity management and what can be done, in practical everyday terms, to operate successfully in spite of these software limitations. 

China & Best Practices - Reality or Myth - This presentation was developed from insights I gained during a month-long operations & supply chain due diligence project in mainland China, and contains substantial information that is not included in the white paper with a similar title.

Understanding & Generating Best Practices - Excellence in global supply chain & operations management is a result of utilizing all of the best known ways to manage and function - systems, people, processes, leadership, etc.  This presentation describes what all of these have in common, and shows how to create and encourage a best practice generating environment in your company.

Financial Impact of Contracting Decisions - Increasingly companies are finding that the sales process involves significant contractual decisions - proposals, negotiation, agreement.  While this presentation was given to a Federal government oriented professional society - the National Contract Management Association (NCMA) - group of about 85 attendees, it is equally applicable to commercial businesses.

Software Design Specifications - Examples

Throughout my career I have been involved in software related projects, typically because those I worked with found that I was able to a) grasp their business quickly and in detail, then b) drive that awareness into how best to utilize software already available, or if needed, design new functions.

The AIMS/ERP system is a full ERP system, developed as a product originally for Alesis Corporation in the 1993-1995 time frame.  I then licensed the intellectual property from the owners of Alesis, and for 5 years, sold it to other companies.  These documents provide a view of this system and its many advanced features, not only for the time, but for today.  For additional details, you can perruse the AIMS sub-web site.

AIMS/ERP - System Functional Overview - This document is a diagram, flow-chart style overview of the modules and functions of the AIMS/ERP system., which has over 1,000 screens, and over 6,000 data fields.  The system contains dozens of uniquely powerful, unusual functions - the scheduling, a unique bill of manufacture data structure that almost eliminates the data bottleneck of routing data management, a multi-channel customer service system, cutting of dimension-able materials, and many others.

AIMS/ERP - Specification List - I wrote all of the detailed design specifications for the AIMS/ERP system, which eventually totaled over 1,600 pages, plus training and other support materials.  This document lists all of these specifications - it is the table of contents of the 1,600 page specification manual.  These were written while concurrently managing development, and what came to be called the module-of-the-month club at Alesis - rollouts;/implementations of new functions every 6-8 weeks for 2 1/2 years.

AIMS/ERP - Specification Example - Scheduler - This specification designed an advanced scheduling function within the AIMS/ERP system that enabled a single person, the Master Scheduler, to keep all dates for in-house and off-shore, outsourced production current and accurate for an $80 mil/yr business in about 4 hours a day of work.  It became known as Beyond MRP - because it eliminates all of the inherent limitations of the MRP model, without imposing the data-intensive cost of almost all other scheduling tools.