Business Process Development

Note: The following section is academic and exists as a small blueprint for some early impressions made about entrepreneurship and the importance of systems and or the “Franchise Model” to support scalability of knowledge and preserve integrity definitions for product and services. The section is intended as a personal reminder to some creative ideas or interesting “problems” that have yet to be fully explored in my career and anchor my academic interests at-large.

Managerial Problem Solving

Entrepreneurship is a miraculous endeavor requiring an overwhelming sense of energy to follow through on commitments and quickly assure value by effective performance. A place for gladiators, entrepreneurship is a difficult arena famous for its’ casualties as dangers seen and unforeseen often take the best of ideas and their visionaries. Often, the scope of continued growth is enormous for an idea born but organizational structure and leadership are not adequately equipped to continue growth after being exposed to several organizations and witnessing the difficulty of entrepreneurship. I compare organizational structure and management with a fundamental purpose for chemical engineers, upscale and process. No product is created without the careful structural outline, calculated performance, and creativity to recycle byproducts of the principled forward reaction. Entrepreneurial characters are usually great at developing the original product formula, however the executive talent to make decisions, delegate, and support their vision with a competent structure is not a strong point. Each entrepreneurial experience had an inspiring story about their start, but for a multitude of reasons, the status quo was either complacent or their market place was diluting after an innovative streak ended 15 years prior. Entrepreneurship is the birthplace for ideas and requires performance based value, but business is the continual upkeep and maintenance of the innovative cycle to remain relevant 50 years from the start point.

Informal and formal organization within organizations has been a study of constant interest. The human aspect of creating successful organization in itself argues why development of successful business models is one of the most challenging types of engineering available. Through the lens of systems design, business strategy accounts for a broad range of operation variables and then is managed best by those with business acumen. Having an ability to proactively anticipate, navigate external factors, recognize organization performance, and stimulate passion towards associates is the most inspirational experience I have found thus far. While the doors for opportunity are wide in business, sustainability and ever evolving market factors require a choice of strict expertise and consistent managerial problem solving. Considering the amazing feats of man, leadership can find their most effective tools within the hearts and minds of those they work alongside. Business represents on of the most exciting opportunities for creativity, providing an experience to create a culture with quality people doing quality things. Desiring an environment to develop and exercise strategy, each business experience thus far has been a means of managerial problem solving, rethinking process and or philosophies towards driving effective results. Strategy and organizational structure are important to constantly adapt, however the execution of such inspirations is where managerial talent is needed most. Throughout the course of my business experience, the following notes specify my approach to making effective change by performance based means.

• Alignment between strategy and four organizational building blocks - critical tasks and work flows, formal organizational building blocks, people and culture

• Identifying crucial performance and opportunity gaps (KPI Development):

  • Starts with the manager and his/her team defining performance gaps in the organization within control to avoid defining gaps too broadly that cedes responsibility to a higher level manager

  • Gather department heads to reach consensus on critical performance gaps, to help focus efforts, allow independent assessment of department weakness.

  • Resolve lack of agreement and focus among management about problems

• Defining critical tasks and work processes:

  • With clarity about vision and strategy, department heads can define critical tasks necessary to implement strategy

  • Evaluate interdependence or integration in achieving critical tasks

    • Critical determinant of skill level, structure, and culture dynamics required for successful execution

  • Establish “Business Best Practices,” which establish operational expectations for company

• Management execution:

  • Management can follow up on alignment to organizational building blocks required to execute critical tasks driven within the work processes

  • Given critical tasks and processes are established how efficient are formal organization (e.g., structure, systems, rewards), culture (e.g., norms, values, informal communication networks), and people (e.g., individual competencies, motives)? Are we content with performance? What needs to be adjusted?

  • Does the current formal structure facilitate the accomplishment of component tasks and integration steps for executing strategy of the organizational building blocks?

  • Do existing measurement, control, and career systems track the outcomes for execution of the critical tasks and workflows?

  • Are we rewarding the right things and behaviors (e.g., compensation, recognition, promotion)?

  • Rewarding rigid compliance with procedure or risk and boundary spanning activity? Hybrid rewarding system?

  • Evaluation can re-initiate the development process of strategy goals but continual refinement of internal congruence for optimal solutions to process.

• Culture and Human Resources:

  • Ensuring that people have the right skill sets, and motivated to achieve critical tasks.

    • Do people have required competencies to perform critical tasks?

    • Additional Skills or incentives needed to execute? - Define them.

    • Can employees be trained to acquire new skills or do we need to hire?

This is to illustrate basic building blocks of formal organization (structure, systems, rewards), people (competencies and motivation), and the culture (norms, values, informal communication, and power) is associated with establishing sound structure. Organizational learning and managerial problem solving is about finding good enough solutions to important problems or opportunities and making error correcting adjustments to get better and better. It is better to approximate correct solutions quickly than optimal solutions slowly. Taking no action is the only unacceptable behavior. Nothing is worse than procrastination, and its’ better to be right 7 out of 10 times than to achieve perfect solutions. Take action, make a mistake, and learn from those actions.

Communication & directions of procedure

AGT Water Systems was a subsidiary on paper but the manpower derived from the core business Absolute Graphic Technologies (AGT USA) and was an extension to my working experience with Webber Automation and Industrial Drives Design Inc. While the first EAGT3K system was constructed miraculously with an “all hands on deck” approach, the expectation for all future projects was to be more structured to discover real time, labor allocation, and general manufacturing process. Working between procurement, engineering and the production floor I was exposed to the formal and informal communication taking place. We later created a modular BOM assembly and schematic flow for the EAGT10K system. Once the ERP software was prepared for workstations, job orders and general process, I created process control and teams specifying particular functions/phases of production. Having no skeleton structure prior, AGT Water System projects could now be delegated on account of working tasks, sub assembly, and teams which were critical creating competent data on the real time production effort.

ERP System management and business analytics were achievable once process control and delegation were created on how future projects would be handled. When considering the value of this experience, I learned a lot about trying to create a simple solution for organization. Textbooks and case studies serve great for brainstorming, but effective implementation requires common sense and a sense of relevance. From the management seat of the ERP system, project management was becoming more and more a reality as data streams were being organized for better understanding our manufacturing ability.

Directions of Communication:

1. Operation management (VII) releases next month’s units to shop floor (listed in excel)

2. Engineering (IIX) and Procurement (IX) prepare for pulling parts (Master BOM) and verify materials are ready

3. Shipping/Inventory (IV) prepare all materials per package (1-6) in containers for disbursement and inform procurement (IX) of any material issues prior to release to shop floor (Verbal/Sheet)

4. Materials distributed based on team/workstation/part list pairing (boxes of parts + Master BOM)

5. Weekly meetings conducted with all teams throughout duration of production cycle.

   • Each team assigns a “Team Leader” of their own choice to account for recommendations and general status check of each team.

   • Mobile white board used in each meeting to share agenda and updates

   • Weekly meeting to take place on center of shop floor

   • Objective goal for meetings to be within 1 hour time limits

6. Time sheet analysis and fiscal reporting of all units produced (IIX) and (X)

7. Monthly close report to all production with all of the office staff

Part Numbering System - Indexing

EAGT part numbering was done from scratch. We had only conceptual design schematics to start with. While responsible for vendor establishment, payment processing, and quoting, I had to manually create part numbering for all materials requested by the production floor. Processing paperwork was the most time consuming during the EAGT3K project which our data base was being populated as we discovered the purchasing needs of the system.

The flow diagrams represent our original part numbering strategy for AGT Water Systems. We later changed the indexing code on the EAGT10K project but the concept remained the same. Part of the initiation of this project, the experience reflected heavily on production management and inventory controls. A separate team had reconfigured our physical inventory and shipping process where new part numbering was essential during the crossover of physical product.

Strategy in this case was fully outlined ahead of time and then implemented with a 3 month campaign for inventory management, and BOM development on all new prototype systems and schematics.

A collective list of all parts to be pulled by Shipping/Inventory Team

• Master BOM

  • Requires Approval of the following groups before release.

    • Mechanical, Electrical, Procurement, Operations Management

  • Assembly pick list

    • Assigned to team III

  • Fabrication pick list (Multiple Fab Sheets)

    • Assigned to team I

    • Follow B/E format, manufacture sub assemblies and place as stocking orders

  • Refrigeration Level

    • Assigned to team II

    • Advising the consultation of Alfredo for correct BOMs of the refrigeration level components

    • Creating list of materials through discussion with Alfredo

  • Electrical Level

    • Assigned to team III

    • Advising the consultation of Hector Chaidez for correct BOMs of the electrical level components

    • Creating a list of materials through discussion with Hector Chaidez

  • Electrical Panel

    • Assigned to team V

    • Requires approval of Keith prior to being pulled

  • Weldments Pick List

    • Assigned to team III

    • This needs to be pulled from initial start of build

All sections need to be an accumulative sum of all parts needed.

Organizational Evaluation

The firefighting dilemma which existed at AGT was difficult to work through in the initial stages of AGT Water Systems. Process was more of a theory than a functional practice. In the midst of kick starting AGT Water Systems the focus was trying to create a functional product with limited resources under a very aggressive deadline. Counter intuitive, we learned eventually that the organizational process of the ERP software and proper engineering controls could create better work flow and analytics to continue perfecting our process.

The investment of time to establish best practices was slow. The engineering team was responsible for directing all production processes. We were contending with the adjustments to the ERP system and making an effort to implement our first job orders for the production of the EAGT10K system. During the summer of 2018 we eventually made an organizational evaluation and created the following processing commands:

1. Job Order Processing Flow Diagram

2. New Sales Order Processing

3. Shipping Process

4. Receiving Process

These were our most important process controls initially established as a system for managing work between multiple departments. As we worked on these new parameters for structure, there was a resistance from more established employees who had been used to working without any formal chain of command.

The most difficult task in creating these process controls was managing their integrity after implementation. A lot of work had to be done to understand the employee characters and proper motivational tactics to receive cooperation.

Maintenance Assistance Program (MACMMS)

An essential component to technician work was the processing of tickets for all work related to bid jobs, miscellaneous calls, or maintenance.  I had introduced MACMMS as a solution to better transparency with active jobs, records, and asset management.  MACMMS was a platform that needed a lot of work to generate a practical model for first round beta testing in the field.  We had simulated jobs within the Ontario office.  While managing the Texas division, I made an effort to practice in the field with some technicians on the program's practicality. 

A lot of successes derived within our beta testing to prove that a digital means could draw end to carbon copy paper, while unlocking operational benefits.  

Below are images which depict our beta program with simulated data to reflect an active system in use. 

searching for talent

A need to recruit new talent in every branch, SDS had never created a single job description, nor posted jobs online to attract attention. Eager to create a new team from scratch in the northern Texas, I wrote and outlined every job, and prepared a hiring process for SDS to follow.  I overlooked the entire assignment of new hires, wrote job descriptions, recruited, managed interviews, conducted a 3 phase interview process, and settled terms for employment. 

Examples of Job Descriptions: