-
- News
- Books
Featured Books
- smt007 Magazine
Latest Issues
Current IssueIPC APEX EXPO 2024 Pre-show
This month’s issue devotes its pages to a comprehensive preview of the IPC APEX EXPO 2024 event. Whether your role is technical or business, if you're new-to-the-industry or seasoned veteran, you'll find value throughout this program.
Boost Your Sales
Every part of your business can be evaluated as a process, including your sales funnel. Optimizing your selling process requires a coordinated effort between marketing and sales. In this issue, industry experts in marketing and sales offer their best advice on how to boost your sales efforts.
The Cost of Rework
In this issue, we investigate rework's current state of the art. What are the root causes and how are they resolved? What is the financial impact of rework, and is it possible to eliminate it entirely without sacrificing your yields?
- Articles
- Columns
Search Console
- Links
- Events
||| MENU - smt007 Magazine
Advanced Business Intelligence Systems are Not a Luxury
May 20, 2015 | Bill Moradkhan, Portus Inc.Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
Recently, I saw an innocuous LinkedIn thread that eventually became the inspiration for this article. In the thread, one of my connections mentioned that he had read an article touting the features of a new software tool that allowed users to create interactive Excel spreadsheets and charts with real-time links to their underlying ERP systems data (I am not affiliated in any way with the company or solution that was being described).
My contact had simply said something like "looks good" or "sounds powerful." It was the reply from one of his contacts that struck me. It stated something like, “looks good until you find out it costs $50,000.” On the surface, this statement about the implied exorbitant price tag was a reflection of a cost conscious decision maker. Scratch under the surface and it is the perfect example of a pervasive strategic error that costs manufacturing companies many multiples of $50,000 annually.
The problem is that in those few words (“looks good until you find out it costs $50,000”) the LinkedIn contributor had in effect conducted an ROI analysis on investing in the software tool. Manufacturing companies are experts in conducting ROI analyses when it comes to production equipment, but most of the analysts and executives who prepare and review ROI analyses do not approach the purchase of software solutions with the same rigor. To clarify this point further, not all software tools suffer this bias. If a piece of hardware or software will impact the production or engineering processes within the organization, an ROI is usually conducted. Investments in CAD tools and other DFM, DFT, and DFx enablers come to mind as great examples of software for which ROIs are explicitly or implicitly conducted as part of the purchasing process. However, if the software is a business intelligence or data analytics solution it is basically treated as an expense or luxury product where the decision amounts to “Should we splurge and get this expensive tool?”
The problem with this approach is that it ignores an undisputed fact: Business intelligence solutions bring efficiencies to an organization’s most expensive and most influential functions. The irony here is significant.
In effect, many companies are saying, we will spend countless hours poring over projections to analyze and justify adding a machine that will make our direct labor more efficient, but we will not invest in making our executives, operations analysts, financial analysts and supply chain professionals more efficient. Why is it acceptable to have executives wait for reports that drive key business decisions? Why is it acceptable to continue to drive business analysis and reporting in largely manual ways by downloading information into Excel and spending many hours creating the final report that provides the key business insight, only to repeat the process a week later? What exacerbates the situation is that the information that is being sought is often time-critical and so being inefficient in obtaining the information is a double whammy.
Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the April 2015 issue of SMT Magazine.
Suggested Items
The New Chapter: Attracting ‘Generation Green’
03/28/2024 | Hannah Grace & Paige Fiet -- Column: The New ChapterIn the electronics industry, we talk a lot about sustainability in terms of recruitment and retention of the next generation of engineers. But what if the key to sustaining the industry long into the future is through the more common definition of the word? What if, for just a moment, we think about sustainability in terms of the environment and what we as an industry are doing to care for it? Because, if you weren’t aware, Gen Z cares tremendously about the environment and the actions companies are taking to preserve it. Without Gen Z joining the electronics industry’s workforce, we won’t be able to sustain the industry for much longer.
Bürkle North America and Schmoll Maschinen Separating After 20 Years
03/25/2024 | Burkle North AmericaBürkle North America and Schmoll Maschinen, two leading companies supplying state-of-the-art equipment to Printed Circuit Board manufacturers, have announced an amicable separation, effective April 3.
Intel, Arm Team Up to Power Startups
03/25/2024 | IntelIntel and Arm have signed a memorandum of understanding that finalizes the Emerging Business Initiative, their collaboration to support the startup community.
EV Tech OEM Indigo Technologies Closes Strategic Investment From Foxconn To Accelerate Its Smart EVs Solutions
03/25/2024 | PRNewswireIndigo Technologies, a robotics focused Smart EV OEM with breakthrough road sensing SmartWheels™ invented by team out of MIT, today announced it has received a strategic investment from Hon Hai Technology Group (Foxconn).
Catching Up With Jove PCB’s Cameron Burke
03/20/2024 | Dan Beaulieu, D.B. Management GroupCameron Burke is the North American director of sales at Jove PCB, who despite his young age, has been in the PCB business for many years because his grandfather was a New England PCB sales rep who took Cameron under his wing. It’s a good story.