Product Lifecycle Management (Volume 5): What Happens Across the Product Lifecycle? (Decision Engineering) 3031468864, 9783031468865

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Decision Engineering

John Stark

Product Lifecycle Management (Volume 5) What Happens Across the Product Lifecycle?

Decision Engineering Series Editor Rajkumar Roy, Dean of the School of Mathematics, Computer Science and Engineering, City University, London, UK

The Decision Engineering series focuses on the foundations and applications of tools and techniques related to decision engineering, and identifies their role in making decisions. The series provides an aid to practising professionals and applied researchers in the development of tools for informed operational and business decision making, within industry, by utilising distributed organisational knowledge. Series topics include: . . . .

Cost Engineering and Estimating, Soft Computing Techniques, Classical Optimization and Simulation Techniques, Micro Knowledge Management (including knowledge capture and reuse, knowledge engineering and business intelligence), . Collaborative Technology and Concurrent Engineering, and . Risk Analysis. Springer welcomes new book ideas from potential authors. If you are interested in writing for the Decision Engineering series please contact: Anthony Doyle (Senior Editor—Engineering, Springer) and Professor Rajkumar Roy (Series Editor) at: [email protected] or [email protected]

John Stark

Product Lifecycle Management (Volume 5) What Happens Across the Product Lifecycle?

John Stark John Stark Associates Geneva, Switzerland

ISSN 1619-5736 ISSN 2197-6589 (electronic) Decision Engineering ISBN 978-3-031-46886-5 ISBN 978-3-031-46887-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46887-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

Preface

This book describes a project to find out, for a newly appointed CEO of a manufacturing company, what happened with the company’s products from their beginning of life to their end of life. The project ran over several months. More than 100 executives, managers, and subject matter experts (SMEs) from more than 40 departments, groups, and sections were interviewed to understand the flow of product-related activities and information, and the applications supporting them. Business processes and operating procedures were examined. Interviewees outlined the issues they faced in their product-related activities and made suggestions for improvement. The book narrates what happened in the project on a day-to-day basis. This storytelling approach differs from the approach of most technical books. For example, the chapter titles in the book are dates on the project timeline; they’re not the names of the product-related topics that are addressed in the book. Another example, the first chapter of most technical books summarises the main subject and message of the book. These are then detailed in the following chapters. In this book, however, the first chapter isn’t a summary of the book. It’s a description of how the project was started. The book aims to increase the reader’s understanding of the activities that take place in a company as products progress from their start of life through to their end of life. Most people in a company are very knowledgeable about what happens in their particular department. But very few people in a company have a good view over all the product-related activities. This is problematic for a company’s cross-functional, enterprise-wide improvement projects. Reading this book will help people get up to speed quickly to lead activities in areas such as product management, product innovation, new product development, and product lifecycle management. It will help readers participate more effectively in company initiatives such as Industry 4.0, digital transformation, digital thread, digital twin, and circular economy. Geneva, Switzerland

John Stark

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Contents

1

Thursday 25 April . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Friday 26 April . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Tuesday 30 April . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Wednesday 1 May . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 Thursday 2 May . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5 Sunday 2 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 2 3 3 3 4

2

Monday 3 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

7

3

Tuesday 4 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

23

4

Wednesday 5 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

43

5

Thursday 6 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

59

6

Friday 7 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

71

7

Monday 10 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1 Tuesday 11 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 Wednesday 12 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

81 85 94

8

Thursday 13 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 8.1 Friday 14 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

9

Saturday 15 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

10 Monday 17 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 10.1 Tuesday 18 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 10.2 Wednesday 19 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 11 Sunday 23 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.1 Monday 24 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2 Tuesday 25 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.3 Wednesday 26 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.4 Thursday 27 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

133 133 144 152 159

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Contents

12 Wednesday 3 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 12.1 Thursday 4 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 12.2 Friday 5 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 13 Saturday 6 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 14 Monday 8 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.1 Tuesday 9 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.2 Wednesday 10 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.3 Thursday 11 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

189 197 204 209

15 Friday 12 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 16 Saturday 13 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223 16.1 Sunday 14 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 17 Monday 15 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 17.1 Tuesday 16 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233 17.2 Wednesday 17 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236 18 Saturday 20 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18.1 Sunday 21 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18.2 Monday 22 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18.3 Tuesday 23 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18.4 Wednesday 24 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18.5 Thursday 25 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18.6 Friday 26 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

239 241 242 252 260 268 276

19 Saturday 27 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287 19.1 Sunday 28 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288 19.2 Monday 29 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288 20 Tuesday 30 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295 20.1 Wednesday 31 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296 21 Thursday 1 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.1 Friday 2 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.2 Saturday 3 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.3 Sunday 4 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

299 304 305 305

22 Monday 5 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22.1 Tuesday 6 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22.2 Wednesday 7 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22.3 Thursday 8 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22.4 Friday 9 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22.5 Monday 12 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22.6 Tuesday 13 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22.7 Wednesday 14 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22.8 Friday 16 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

307 308 311 313 316 318 321 325 329

Contents

23 Monday 19 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23.1 Tuesday 20 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23.2 Wednesday 21 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23.3 Thursday 22 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23.4 Friday 23 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23.5 Saturday 24 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23.6 Friday 30 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

ix

333 335 336 339 341 342 342

Appendix A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345 Appendix B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351

Chapter 1

Thursday 25 April

Jane was waiting for the planned 9 am call with Frau Mueller. She had her notes ready. She’d revised German words likely to come up in the conversation. She’d worked in Germany before, and could speak German reasonably well, but it was best to be sure. Over Easter, Jane had written to Frau Mueller at the suggestion of her friend Sally Hilton. Sally had told her about a research project she’d done for her degree at Josef Mayer Maschinenfabrik the previous year. This year, Jane had to do a similar project for her MBA. She’d hoped that her tutor would find a suitable company. However, he hadn’t, so she’d decided to take things into her own hands and write to Frau Mueller. She clicked on the green icon, “Hello, this is Jane. Is that you, Frau Mueller?” “Yes. Good Morning, Jane.” “Frau Mueller, first of all, thank you very much for responding so quickly to my message. As I mentioned, I’m at the same university as Sally, and need to do a research project for my MBA. There are five hundred hours assigned for the project. And I have to write a report of about twenty thousand words. Most of our lectures and exams are held between October and May, so I’m hoping to do the research between June and September.” “Yes, that sounds similar to Sally’s project. Jane, you wrote that you speak good German and good French. How good is your French? As good as your German?” “My French is better than my German. I started learning it a few years earlier.” “Your German is very good. From memory, Sally didn’t speak German so well. One important thing, but you may know this from Sally. We can’t offer you a full salary. We can just pay you something similar to what we pay our apprentices. Would that be acceptable?” “Yes, Frau Mueller. That would be fine.” “Very good. The next step is for you to talk to our CEO, Dr. Bender. Would you be available tomorrow for an online discussion at 11:45 am, our time? That’s 10:45 for you.” “Yes.”

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. Stark, Product Lifecycle Management (Volume 5), Decision Engineering, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46887-2_1

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1 Thursday 25 April

“Good, I’ll send you an invitation in a few minutes with the details. Please accept the invitation today, and tomorrow click on the link to join the meeting.”

1.1 Friday 26 April Jane was waiting for the 10:45 call with Dr. Bender. She had her notes ready in case he asked about her education, her work experience, her other activities, or her plans for the future. She’d researched the company to understand what it did and had listed all the areas where she had relevant experience. Jane clicked on the green icon, “Hello, this is Jane. Is that you, Dr. Bender?” “Yes. Good Morning, Jane. As you know, I’m the CEO of Josef Mayer Maschinenfabrik. Frau Mueller is my personal assistant. She showed me your letter about doing the research project for your MBA here. It caught my eye as I want to start a project that needs an external participant. Someone who can see things here with fresh eyes. I’m fairly new in Mayer. I want to find out what happens with our products. Starting from wherever they start. All the way through to wherever they end. Could that be a subject for your research?” “I’ll have to confirm with my tutor, but I expect it could be. And it sounds very interesting.” “I just wanted to talk to you about it a little. It will be hard work. We have many different products, and different things happen with different products. You’ll have to meet many people in many different areas of the company and hear about many different topics. All the time focusing on what’s happening with the products. Do you think you could handle that?” “I expect so, Dr. Bender. I’ve worked with various products in different areas in different companies with many different people. I have lots of work experience. I’ve worked in industry several times, for example, before and during my bachelor’s degree. I did a four-year bachelor, we call it a thick sandwich course, and I worked in industry in the third year. Then, after my degree, I worked for two years in a software company. I’ve worked in all sorts of areas such as mechanical engineering, electronic engineering, electrical engineering, and software engineering. I’ve worked in testing, quality control, packaging, board stuffing and cabling. I’ve done various things such as making spreadsheets and word processing templates, note-taking in meetings, complaint handling, help desk, market surveys, and customer surveys.” “That all sounds good relevant experience. I suggest you talk to Frau Mueller again. She can send you a Non-Disclosure Agreement form. We’ll need you to sign that as you’ll get to know a lot about our products, and much of it will be confidential. And she can send you an invitation letter outlining the project for your tutor. I’ll ask her to send them today. Do you have any other questions, Jane?” “No, Dr. Bender. Thank you. Goodbye. I look forward to meeting you soon.”

1.4 Thursday 2 May

3

1.2 Tuesday 30 April After the Easter break, Jane went into university for one of her remaining classes. She took the invitation letter with her, hoping her tutor would have returned from his Easter holidays. Fortunately, he was there. Jane asked about the possibility of doing her research project with a company in Germany. “That would be a possibility,” he replied. “But what about the language, do you speak German?” “Yes, so that’s not a problem. But I was wondering if the University could offer financial support.” “I’m sorry, Jane. It’s terrible, but we don’t have any money available right now. You’d have to cover your own costs.” “In that case, I’ll ask the bank for another loan. But first, I’ve an invitation letter here from the company where they agree to me doing my project there. But they say I’m not to publish anything confidential in my research report. Is that OK? If so, could you counter-sign it please?” “Yes, I’ll do that now. I’m really pleased you’ve found a company for your project.”

1.3 Wednesday 1 May Jane scanned the signed NDA form and the counter-signed invitation letter. Then sent them to Frau Mueller along with some possible times for a call the next day.

1.4 Thursday 2 May Frau Mueller suggested a call at 16:30, her time. When she called, she thanked Jane for the forms, then told her about the progress she’d made on her side. She’d checked and could now suggest that Jane should stay at Gasthaus Adler. It was in walking distance of the factory, about ten minutes away. Frau Mueller said it was basic, but clean and comfortable, and many of their people stayed there. It offered bed, breakfast, and a hot evening meal on weekdays. Frau Mueller said the company would pay for Jane to stay there. “Next, Jane, we can pay you an apprentice salary. It’s about e1000 per month. And Dr. Bender would like you to start on Monday June 3. Is that possible for you?” “Yes. Thank you, Frau Mueller.” “Good. So, please send me the usual paperwork, copies of your degree certificate, your student card, and your passport. And a passport-sized photo. Then I’ll send you your contract. You can sign that and send it back. I’ll reserve Gasthaus Adler for you. When will you arrive? The day before, Sunday June 2?”

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1 Thursday 25 April

1.5 Sunday 2 June Jane arrived at Gasthaus Adler at about 3 pm. When she rang the bell, a lady came to the door and introduced herself as Frau Adler. She asked Jane if she’d like to start by having something to eat or drink. Or if she’d like to see her room first. Jane said she’d like to put her things in her room and then have a drink. Her room was on the second floor. As Frau Mueller had said, the room was basic but clean and comfortable. There was a bed, a bedside table, a radiator, two windows, a desk, a chair, a rug, and a wardrobe. That was it. There was also a door, which led to the bathroom. Jane washed her hands, then went downstairs. * Frau Adler asked Jane what she’d like. Coffee, tea, fruit juice, mineral water, or beer? Jane replied that after her long journey, she’d like an apple juice. The travel had gone according to plan, everything had been fine, the Tube, the flight, the S-Bahn, the train, and the taxi. But she’d started out more than six hours ago and needed something refreshing. Frau Adler explained about the Gasthaus rules. Towels were changed every two days, and beds twice a week. Breakfast was in the dining room. It started at 6:30 during the week, and at 7:00 at the weekend. It was only a ten-minute walk to the factory, so Jane didn’t need to get up early. Sonja, a girl from a local village, helped her in the evening. The evening meal was in the dining room. It started at 18:00 and ended at 21:30. She cooked every weekday evening, but not at the weekend. However, at the weekend, she could always make some sandwiches for Jane, and there were usually some cakes and fruit in the house. Alternatively, at the weekend, Jane could go down to the village, and eat at the restaurant which was open on Saturdays and Sundays. There was a television in the room next to the dining room. * At about 6 pm, Jane decided she needed a walk after her travel, so went down to the village. After looking round for a while, she found the restaurant. As it was sunny, she decided to sit outside in the beer garden. She wondered about tomorrow, and the coming weeks. She had a contract for seven weeks, which would take her up to Friday July 19. She was looking forward to the weekends. And she’d seen there were two public holidays coming up, Whit Monday on June 10, and then Corpus Christi on June 20. But, she reminded herself, she wasn’t here on holiday, she was here on business. But what business? Most importantly, she had to do her research project and write her research report. She’d researched Josef Mayer Maschinenfabrik, but the result wasn’t clear. There seemed to be big changes from year to year. Apparently, it was a family-owned company but partly owned by an investment company. Depending on the year, there were between four thousand and six thousand employees. Annual revenues were between eight hundred million euros and twelve hundred million euros. The company seemed to make machines, many different types of machine. Some were big, some were small. Many were green, but some were white, and others were black. Some were for the car industry, some for other industries. Jane could

1.5 Sunday 2 June

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feel that it wouldn’t be easy to manage all that, but she wasn’t sure what Dr. Bender expected her to do. He’d mentioned interviews, so she’d prepared an outline for an interview. But she had no idea if it would be appropriate. Surely, he couldn’t expect her to interview five thousand people. Jane couldn’t think of anything else to prepare for the next day, so decided to review the menu. Leberknödelsuppe, no thank you, too heavy for me. Schweinshaxe, no thank you, too heavy for me. Schweinsbraten, no thank you. Rollbraten, no thank you. Kartoffelsalat, no thank you. Ah, this looked more reasonable. A mixed salad with fried chicken and roasted mushrooms. And then Fruchtig-frischer Obstsalat. And a Weissbier. Jane felt that would get her in shape for interviewing.

Chapter 2

Monday 3 June

Jane went down to breakfast at about 7 am. Only one table had been laid in the dining room, so she guessed she was the only guest that morning. Nevertheless, the buffet table had a choice of orange juice, tea, coffee, milk, fruit, cereal, bread, cheese, meat and sausage. Frau Adler came in and asked if everything was in order. Had she slept well? Was there anything else she’d like? “Good Morning, Frau Adler. Everything’s fine. Thank you.” By 7:40, Jane had finished breakfast, gone to her room, checked everything was ready, and left. * Jane arrived at the factory gatehouse window at about 7:50. “Good Morning. I have a meeting with Frau Mueller at 8:00.” The security guard stood up. She saw from his badge that his name was Schwanemann. He asked for her identity card, then looked through a sheaf of papers in a box by the window. He found what he was looking for, looked up, and looked at her passport. “Very good. Here’s your badge. Please sign it now. And here’s your visitor sheet for today. Please sign and date it before you leave. And get Frau Mueller to sign it as well. Now, here’s a map of the site. Look, we’re here at the gatehouse. Frau Mueller is in this building. You go to this entrance door. I’ll call her now, and she’ll come down to collect you. Is that clear?” “Yes,” replied Jane. “Thank you very much.” Jane walked over to Frau Mueller’s building. Before she got there, she saw the entrance door open and someone come out. * “Hello, Frau Mueller.” “Good Morning, Jane. I’m happy to see you. The travel was good? And how did you find Gasthaus Adler? Is it suitable for you? There’s a big modern hotel in town that we often send customers to, but most of the people in the company prefer Adler.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. Stark, Product Lifecycle Management (Volume 5), Decision Engineering, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46887-2_2

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They always say it’s clean, comfortable, quiet, and Frau Adler is genuinely nice. Dr. Bender said you’d need a lot of space, so I’ve booked the Container for you. It’s over there.” She pointed to a portable cabin about twenty metres away. “Here’s the key. You have to close the windows and the blinds every evening. It’s in the insurance.” By this time, they had reached her office. “Would you like a coffee now? You should meet Dr. Bender at 8:30. Do you have any questions? Do you have any forms you want us to fill in or sign?” Jane shook her head as a collective no to all the questions. There was a knock at the door, and a tall young man in a suit came in. “Jane, this is Fritz Marquardt. He’s Dr. Bender’s business assistant this year. He’s also studying. He’s on a special scheme financed by the company. He goes to nearly all of Dr. Bender’s meetings, so you’ll probably see him a lot. Fritz, Jane isn’t due to see Dr. Bender until 8:30, so why don’t you show her the Container until then. She has the key.” “Hello Jane, I’m Fritz Marquardt.” They shook hands. “Let’s go and take a quick look at your home for the next few weeks. We’ll be back by 8:30, Frau Mueller.” They went downstairs and across to the Container. Jane looked round. There wasn’t much to see, just a table and a chair. “It’s nothing special,” said Fritz. “But you’ll have more room here than if we squeezed you into an office.” Fritz looked at his watch. “8:25. Time to go back and see Dr. Bender.” They went upstairs and along the corridor. The door next to Frau Mueller’s office was open. Fritz stopped, looked in, knocked on the door, and said, “Hello Dr. Bender, here’s Jane.” * Jane was surprised to see Dr. Bender was so young. She’d been expecting someone at least in their fifties, but Dr. Bender looked as if he wasn’t even in his forties. “Hello, Jane. Hello, Fritz. Please come in. Close the door. Sit down. Would you like a coffee? No? Later perhaps? Just let me know. Now Jane, it seems you’ve arrived safely. No problems? And all’s well with Gasthaus Adler?” Jane replied that, so far, all was well. “I hope it continues like that, Jane,” said Dr. Bender. “We have a lot to do. You have an important job here. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but I’m very new here and don’t know in detail what happens throughout the company. I want to find out what happens with our products. To succeed in coming years, we’re going to need to understand that in detail. Starting from wherever the products start life. And going all the way through to wherever they end their lives. It would be extremely useful for me to know that. But I don’t know how to find out. You’ll have to work it out for yourself. I’m aware of some high-level concepts and some low-level approaches. There’s a high-level concept of the product life cycle. It dates back to a 1965 article by Theodore Levitt according to which the life story of products goes through four stages: Market Development, Market Growth, Market Maturity, and Market Decline. And companies need to manage products throughout the whole lifetime, but with different Sales and Marketing strategies in different stages. But that doesn’t say what

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happens to the product in each stage. I expect you’ve come across that approach in your studies?” “Yes, Dr. Bender. I remember reading about that.” “At the other extreme, there’s another, much more detailed approach. This dates back to 1776 and Adam Smith’s ‘The Wealth of Nations’. He described the system in a pin factory, ‘One man draws out the wire; another straights it; a third cuts it; a fourth points it; a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on is a peculiar business; to whiten the pin is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a pin is in this measure divided into about 18 distinct operations’. Have you come across that approach in your studies?” “No.” “This is more what I’m looking for, showing in detail what’s happening with the product at each step. Adam Smith was only looking at Production there, but I want you to show the whole sequence, from the beginning of the product to its end. I thought that could be an interesting research project for your MBA. It should be useful for you to see how a company works in practice, and not just know what professors write in books with hundreds of pages. Mayer Maschinenfabrik has several sites, and several types of products. It could be that different things happen with different types of products on different sites. I don’t have time to look into exactly what’s happening, but when Frau Mueller mentioned your application, I thought you could do it. We won’t know how long it takes until you’ve done it, but I thought you could start with three weeks here. And then two weeks on our site near Hanover. And then one week on our site in France. And then back here for a week, seven weeks, thirty-five days. You’ll see a lot in those seven weeks.” “Well,” said Jane. “My contract ends on Friday July 19, which gives me seven weeks here. But there are two public holidays coming up, so I think its thirty-three days not thirty-five.” “Right. And do you intend going back to England at the weekend? With low-cost airlines it’s not expensive.” “No, I might go back once or twice, but I plan to stay here for most weekends.” “Good. Now let’s see if we can plan your interview schedule. Once we’ve done that, we can do a site visit. Then have lunch together so I can answer any questions you have. Hopefully, you can start your interviews after lunch. How many interviews shall we plan per day? Remember, you’re looking for an overview of what’s happening with the products. You don’t want to get drowned in detail that may not be important in the overall picture.” “Maybe eight one-hour interviews per day?” suggested Jane. “No, that’s too much. In my experience, you really need to write up every interview immediately after you do it. Otherwise, you’ll forget things, and it will all get mixed up. Let’s assume you start at 8:00 am. You could interview between 8:00 and 8:40, then write the interview up between 8:40 and 9:10. Then you could start the next interview at 9:20 and finish the write-up by 10:30. And start the next at 10:40 and finish the write-up by 11:50. Then you could take a lunch break. Start the first afternoon interview at 13:00 and finish the write-up by 14:10. The second afternoon

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interview would take from 14:20 to 15:30. The third would run from 15:40 to 16:50. That’s six per day. If you can do that it would be enough. That isn’t meant to be inflexible. Perhaps you’ll see that you’ll need less time with some people and more with others. If it turns out that six interviews in a day is too tough, you can always reduce to five or four. Or the opposite. Maybe after a few days, you’ll find that you can do more in a day. Does that sound reasonable?” “Yes, Dr. Bender. I’ll start with six interviews a day, and we’ll see how it goes.” “Fritz can help organise the interviews. And he can help with managing the results. The more experience he gets the better for him. Right, Fritz?” “Yes, Dr. Bender.” “But Jane, I want you to do all the interviews alone. Just you and the interviewee. I want to know what’s really happening with the products. You should see that clearer than someone from within the company. They wouldn’t see it so clearly. Unintentionally, they’d defend the way they work. They’d see things through their experience, and their way of thinking. They get used to seeing things as they’re said to be, and not as they are. Whereas you come from outside and will see them as they really are. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?” “Yes, Dr. Bender. I’m a neutral outsider, so it will be easier for me to see what’s really happening.” “Good. Now let’s see who you should interview to get a good picture. Fritz, have you got the Org Chart? Thank you.” “Jane, the overall idea for the company organisation is quite simple and traditional. You’ve probably seen it in your classes. First, the Marketing Department identifies the products the customers want, and then is responsible for Sales. The Engineering Department develops the products, and the Production Department makes them. And then the After-Sales Department maintains the products. The Finance Department looks after the money. The Quality Department makes sure we’re high-quality. And so on. Does that sound familiar?” “Yes, Dr. Bender. That’s what they tell us in class.” * Dr. Bender spread out the Org Chart. “Look, Jane, this is also fairly standard. The boss is at the top. That’s me. At the next level down are the people who report directly to me. So, starting in the top-left, there’s the Marketing Department which is led by Dr. Stefanie Wimmer. Then moving one box to the right, there’s the Engineering Department under Dr. Fischer. Then moving right again, there’s Oliver Pfeiffer’s Production Department. Then comes the After-Sales Department with Wilfried Sauer. Then we’ve got the Finance Department with Frau Klumpf, and the Quality Department with Lianne Jansen. That’s six departments so far. Then, to the right of the Quality Department is the IS Department and Dr. Walther, the CIO. Then the HR Department and Ulla Rosen. And finally, the Corporate Group, for all the sites, which is run by Klaus Becker. There you have it. That’s our top-level organisation. Me at the top. Nine departments reporting to me. Marketing, Engineering, Production, After-Sales, Finance, Quality, IS, HR and Corporate. You should meet with all those Department

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Leaders. If you can do six interviews in a day, you’ll have seen them all in a day and a half.” Jane looked at the chart. She was expected to understand all that? She hoped she could. “Dr. Bender, did you say we could let you know when we’d like a coffee?” “Yes, of course. Come over here and see the choice. What would you like?” “I think I’m going to need something strong.” “Have this one then. But don’t worry. All this must seem confusing when you see and hear it for the first time. But you’ll get to know it all in a few days. Won’t she, Fritz?” “Yes, Dr. Bender. I expect so. That’s how it was for me.” “Jane, you’ve seen there are nine departments reporting to me. Now, as a next step, we’ll look inside each of them. Fritz, let’s start with Marketing. Do you have the Marketing Org Chart? Look, Jane, you can see the Head of Marketing, Dr. Wimmer there at the top. And Marketing is split into seven Groups. And you can see that the seven Group Leaders report to Dr. Wimmer. And as you saw previously, Stefanie reports to me. This is a kind of command structure, like in the army.” “Are those seven Marketing Groups all relevant for products, Dr. Bender? Will I need to interview all the Group Leaders?” “Let’s see. Product Management Area 1; Product Management Area 2; New Markets; Sales; Marketing Communications; Proposals; Pricing. That all looks product-relevant. Yes, you’ll need to interview them all. Let’s look at Engineering next, Fritz. I expect you’ll need to interview all of these, too. Mechanical; Electrical; Electronic; Software; Common Services. That’s five. They’re all product-related. Production next please, Fritz. Four groups, Jane. Plant; Planning; Preparation; Supply Chain. I think you should see all those.” “After-Sales next, Dr. Bender?” “Yes, Fritz. Only three groups here, Jane. Installation, Maintenance, Returns. All product-related, so you should meet all those Group Leaders. Finance, Fritz? Ah, look Jane, I’m not sure you need to see all these. Maybe just two. We’ll talk to Frau Klumpf and see who’d be best. Who’s next, Fritz?” “Quality, Dr. Bender.” “These three on the left would be good for Jane to start with. How many more, Fritz?” “Three, Dr. Bender, starting with IS.” “Oh, there are many here. We’ll have to discuss this with Dr. Walther, but probably at least the Operations Director, the ERP Manager, the Business Analysis Manager, the Software Architect Leader, the Head of Programming and the Help Desk. That’s six. Who’s next, Fritz?” “I’ve just got Human Resources and Corporate left, Dr. Bender. Shall we look at Human Resources first?” “Yes, Fritz. Jane, I think there are only these two here, but let’s discuss later with Ulla Rosen. Now, Fritz, what do you have for Corporate? Quite a lot again. Let’s take Legal, IP, Patent, Portfolio Management, Purchasing, CFO, CIO. Another seven. So how many do we have in total, Fritz?” “Forty-eight, Dr. Bender.”

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“There you are, Jane, forty-eight. At six interviews each day, that would take about eight days. And you’ll be here three weeks, so you’ll have enough time.” “But Dr. Bender,” said Jane. “Will I get the right detail from these Department Leaders and Group Leaders? Shouldn’t I also see some people further down the organisation chart?” “Yes, you’ll probably need to see some Section Leaders, and some other people. But you probably won’t know which ones until you’ve seen the Department Leaders and the Group Leaders. That means you’ll need to update the interview schedule as you go along. Now, before we go for a site visit, let’s start getting the interviewing activity organised. We’ve two things to look at. First, we need to tell people that you’re going to interview them. And we should tell them the background to what you’re doing. Second, we need to prepare an interview script, so you ask the right questions each time, and don’t forget anything.” * “Dr. Bender,” said Jane. “I prepared this approach for my fact-finding interviews.” She handed him a sheet of paper. “What do you think of this? I had six steps in total. My first step was Set-up, which we’re doing now. Step 2 is the interviews themselves. Step 3 is post-interview review and analysis of the interview results to see if I’ve understood everything and if there are any missing bits. Step 4 is feedback sessions with the interviewees to make sure I didn’t misunderstand them. Step 5 is to make lists of all the activities and documents and systems that I find. Step 6 was a final presentation to you.” “That looks good. Now, what do you propose in Step 2.” “I start by explaining the reason why I’m here, reminding the interviewee that I’m working on this for you. Then I tell them my objective is to understand what’s happening with the company’s products. That’s starting from wherever the products start. And going all the way through to wherever they end. Then, I ask the interviewee to tell me about their activities that are related to the company’s products. Then, for each activity, I ask what triggers the activity and what the incoming artefacts are. Things like parts, data and documents. Then I ask about what they do in the activity, and which IS systems they use. And then, the output artefacts from the activity. And finally, I ask for a copy of any documents they use such as work procedures or product drawings. I also thought about asking about any issues they have in the activity, and any improvement suggestions.” Dr. Bender thought about it for a while. “That sounds good. A good start. Maybe you’ll want to adapt it with practice. One important thing though. Don’t start by asking about the Standard Operating Procedures and other working procedures they have that describe their existing activities. We don’t want the theory. We want to know what’s really happening. And another thing, you need to make it clear that it’s not just the physical product that interests you. It’s also, like you said, any drawings of the product. And also, names and numbers of products, and other representations and descriptions of the product. You’re looking at what happens to the product, both the physical product and the product’s representations and descriptions.”

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Dr. Bender looked at his watch. “Let’s look at our Hanover site’s Org Chart next and then go for lunch. The Hanover site is different in several ways. They work with the automotive industry in North Germany, but they also work a lot in healthcare, and a little in aerospace. And they make a lot of special machines. Whereas this plant here has always worked mainly with the automotive industry in South Germany and made mainly standard machines. The machines from both plants do the same kind of thing for our customers, they make parts by cutting or forming materials such as metals and plastics. More than 90% of our business is making machines that will make parts for our customers. We also have a small business on this site that can make parts for our customers if they have special needs. Fritz, let’s look at the organisation for Hanover.” * Jane looked at the chart that Fritz was showing, “Oh, that’s really different!” “Right,” said Dr. Bender. “You can see there are seven departments in Hanover, not nine like here. They report to Dr. Ralf Koch, the Site Executive who, in turn, reports to me through the Corporate Department we saw earlier. The Hanover departments have different names compared to those here, but they probably do something similar. Martin Graf runs the Proposals Department, Felix Portmann leads the Program Management Department, Andreas Vogt for Engineering, Claudia Schuler runs Operations, Patrik Meyer for Service, Tanja Dietrich for Sales, Jan Schmidt in Finance. You’ll need to see those seven Department Leaders and Ralf.” “That’s eight interviews,” said Jane. “And at the next level down?” “From the Proposal Department, maybe three groups. Bids and Proposals, BI, and Coordination. Then from the Program Management Department, probably just two, the Program Management Office and the Director of Project Management. From the Service Department, another three groups. Customer Support, Training Centre and Product Support. These three groups from the Sales Department. And these three from the Finance Department. From Operations, you probably need to see Manufacturing, Material and Logistics, Planning, QA, Process Improvement, and EHS. That’s another six. And now, the Engineering Department. They have a lot of Groups. How many Groups do they have, Fritz?” “Seventeen, Dr. Bender.” “So, Fritz, what’s the total for Hanover with the Site Executive, the seven Department Managers and all the Group Leaders? And how many days at six interviews per day?” “Forty-five interviews. Eight days.” “But Dr. Bender,” said Jane. “We have forty-eight interviews here, and Hanover has forty-five. I don’t understand. Isn’t the Hanover site much smaller than this site? So why should it have a similar number of interviews.” “You’re right, Jane. This site has about 50% more people than Hanover. But Hanover is organised differently. They have seventeen Engineering Groups. We only have five here. But let’s leave it like that for the moment. It may turn out that you’ll need far fewer interviews lower down the organisation in Hanover.”

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“Because they’re all higher up? As if some of those Engineering Groups would be Engineering Sections here?” “Yes.” Frau Mueller knocked on the door connecting her office with Dr. Bender’s. She came in, “Could I speak to you for a moment, please, Dr. Bender?” “Yes, Frau Mueller. Excuse me Jane, you go ahead with Fritz and organise the interviews for the French site.” * “Right, Fritz,” said Jane. “Let’s look at the site in France, but first can I have another coffee please? Not so strong, if possible.” “I recommend this one,” said Fritz. “It’s medium strength and I like the taste.” “Thanks, Fritz. Now, what do we have in France?” “The Site Executive, Christophe Laurent, has five people reporting to him. Didier Fournier is Engineering Director. Then, Thierry Giraud is Operations Director. And Philippe Dubois is F&A Director. Roger de Brouckere and Edouard de Neuve-Eglise are Business Unit Managers.” “It’s a different structure again! And they have different department names again.” “From what I’ve heard, there have been a lot of changes in Mayer, and the sites have been very independent. As long as they made money, they could do what they liked.” “I think I should interview those five people reporting to Christophe Laurent. What do we have next, Fritz?” Fritz showed her the Engineering organisation. “Oh, no, the Engineering Director has eleven Groups! Project Manager; Documentation Manager; Mechanical Engineering Manager; Electrical Engineering Manager; Electronics Engineering Manager; Software Engineering Manager; Systems Engineering Manager; Analysis Leader; Test Leader; CAD Specialist; Lean Project Manager. They all look product-related, so I’ll have to interview them all. Why are there so many?” “I don’t know in detail what they do in France,” said Fritz. “But I know they’re only about half the size of the Hanover site.” “What about Operations? This looks better. Thierry Giraud just has four groups reporting to him. Planning Management; Manufacturing Management; Service Management; Quality Management. I’ll have to interview all those people. But again, this is quite different from the other sites. And finally, F&A. The F&A Director only has two reports. Nicole Martin, the IT Manager. And the HR Manager, Louise Tatin. How many does that make, Fritz?” “Twenty-two interviews. You’ll be there five days, so that should work.” Fritz looked at his watch, and said it was time for lunch. He opened Frau Mueller’s door gently, and saw she wasn’t there. “We’ll go and have lunch. We may meet up with Dr. Bender in the canteen. Or back here afterwards. But first, it’s best to wash your hands before going over there. It’s just down the corridor.” *

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When they got to the canteen, Jane was surprised by its size and the number of people there. Hundreds of people were eating or queuing or standing drinking coffee. Fritz explained the system and stressed that it was canteen food intended for people working in Production. “It looks a bit like the canteen food when I started at university,” replied Jane. “I’m not sure if I can eat that now. Is there a vegan queue, or a salad queue?” “There’s a salad counter. Over there by the window. I’ll have that today as well. You can also have some fruit if you like. There’s a tap over there if you want to wash it. And there’s a drinks counter over there. I’ll have a mineral water, what would you like?” “Apple juice, please.” When they got to the cashier, Fritz showed his badge and asked for the bill to be put on Dr. Bender’s account. “Very good, Mr. Marquardt. Shall I add two coffees?” Jane shook her head. “Just one, please,” replied Fritz. They found two places to sit down and eat. Jane said she was amazed by the size of the canteen, the number of people, the noise. “Does everyone on the site eat here?” “Most people do. It’s subsidised by the company, so the prices are low. And eating here avoids wasting time going off-site to a restaurant. I eat here most days, it’s not as bad as it may look at first sight. It’s actually better than many company canteens in Germany. Have you been to any others?” “No, we used to go outside at lunchtime when I worked in Germany before. That was near Bremen.” “You seem to have worked a lot outside England. I’ve only been abroad for holidays. I went to England once, to Cornwall.” “I hope it didn’t rain all the time. I’m from Somerset, which is not far from Cornwall. Somerset is much better than Cornwall. You should go there. Apart from me, it’s also home to Cheddar cheese, King Arthur’s Castle, the Glastonbury Festival, and cider.” “One day, perhaps. This year, I’m going to China.” “By the way, Fritz, what do you actually do as Dr. Bender’s business assistant? What does that mean?” “In the morning, I start by giving him his plan for the day, and we review it together to see if he wants to change anything. Then I go to his meetings with him. I take full notes and save them in his folder. It’s not easy. He’s a hard worker and extremely focused. He has a thirty-minute break for lunch, that’s all.” “And what does Frau Mueller do, because she’s also his assistant?” “She’s his personal assistant. She does more much more than I do. I’m mainly just reminding him about the next meeting and taking notes of what’s said in the meetings. Frau Mueller does everything confidential, and things that need a lot of experience. For example, she did everything related to you coming here. I couldn’t have done that.” *

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After they’d finished their salads, and Fritz had drunk his coffee, they went back to Dr. Bender’s office. He was talking to Frau Mueller, but broke off when he saw them, “I’m sorry about this morning. Urgent business I had to attend to. Jane, have you had your lunch?” “Yes, thank you. We went to lunch after we finished organising the interviews for the French site.” “Great! How does it look?” “Twenty-two interviews. And I’ll be there five days, so it should work.” “So Fritz, how many is that in total for the six weeks?” “About 115, Dr. Bender.” “And Jane has how many days with us?” “Thirty-two excluding today, Dr. Bender.” “Jane, it seems a lot, but let’s see how it goes. But don’t forget, you don’t only have to interview people. You also have to piece together the story of what happens with our products from start to finish. Now, let’s look again at your interview structure and questions. After that we can show you round the site. But first, I’ll ask Frau Mueller to organise tomorrow’s interviews. Who’s on the list for tomorrow, Fritz?” “The first six are Dr. Wimmer, Dr. Fischer, Mr. Pfeiffer from Production, Mr. Sauer, Frau Klumpf, and Lianne Jansen.” “Fritz, please draft a note to them saying that Jane will be coming to interview them tomorrow as part of this project. Jane, what shall we call the project?” “It’s about what’s happening with products across the lifecycle, so how about MPL, Mayer Product Lifecycle?” * “Very good! MPL it will be. Now Jane, we need to look at your interview script again. Remember, I’ll have sent the interviewee a mail beforehand saying you’re going to interview them for the MPL project. Now Jane, go ahead. Let’s run through it again.” “I’ll introduce myself and explain briefly what MPL is about. I’ll say that we’re trying to find out what happens with our products. Starting from wherever they start. Going all the way through to wherever they end. I’ll say that I’m focused on what’s related to products, but as it’s not always clear where the border is, it’s best if they start by telling me about their different roles, different activities. And then we’ll go deeper on those that are product-related. And when I say product, I mean both the physical product and the product’s representations and descriptions.” “Good, that sets the scene. What next?” “Then, for the first activity, I’ll ask what the output, the deliverable is. Then I’ll ask what activity comes before and what activity comes after. I’ll ask about the input data and documents and any other input objects. I’ll ask about the data and documents and any other objects they create. And the data and documents and objects that are output to following activities.” “Good, so then you’ll know all about their activities, their data and their documents.”

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“Then I’ll ask about any databases for the data and documents. And I’ll ask about the applications, the software, they’re using.” “Good, so that covers the software they use.” “Then I’ll ask if they use any special techniques. And if they have any frequent problems. And after that I’ll ask if they have any improvement suggestions.” “That sounds great, Jane. I think you’ve got it covered well. But why don’t we send them a description of that before the interview? With a diagram to explain. And we ask them to prepare a few thoughts about their main activities. That should help. We can call it the MPL Backgrounder.” “That would be good. And finally, after they’ve told me about their activities and everything else, I’ll ask for copies of the documents they’ve mentioned. And a copy of any procedures, or work instructions, that they’re following. And a job description if they have one.” “That sounds perfect, Jane, but you’re covering a lot of ground there! Perhaps you should split the interview time up to be sure each subject is covered. Fritz, how much time did we decide for each interview?” “Forty minutes, Dr. Bender.” “How could we divide that up? But wait, Jane, you haven’t asked anything specific about products. Perhaps you should make it clear that by product you mean not only the final product that goes to the customer, but also sub-assemblies, and individual mechanical, electrical, electronic and software parts and components.” “Yes, I will. And we could also put that in the Backgrounder. And send it with the introductory mail announcing the interview. As for dividing the time up, Dr. Bender, what about this? Introduction: five minutes. Activities, data and documents: fifteen minutes. Software: five minutes; Issues and Improvement suggestions. Five minutes; Wrap-up: five minutes. Their questions: five minutes. That’s exactly forty minutes!” “Very good, but there’s a lot there. You may find it difficult to keep to time. Now Fritz, please work with Frau Mueller on the interview announcement letter, and the MPL Backgrounder, and the list of interviews. Make sure the mail goes to everybody to be interviewed this week. But wait before sending it to the others. After the first few interviews, we may want to change something in the message. While you do that, I’ll show Jane around the site. Jane, three of your first interviewees are on this corridor. Dr. Wimmer, Frau Klumpf, and Lianne Jansen. Dr. Fischer is one level down. So is Mr. Pfeiffer. Fritz can show you later where Mr. Sauer is on the site map. Let’s start with a quick look at your Container. Do you have the key?” “Yes. Frau Mueller gave it to me this morning.” * Jane opened the Container door and they went in. “This doesn’t look right to me,” said Dr. Bender. “You’re going to collect a mass of documents from all the people you interview. You’ll need to lay them out in a wellorganised way. Just on this site, you’ll have nearly fifty interviews. You’d better have a separate table for this site’s documents. It can go in the far-right corner. Hanover’s table can go in the far left. France over there. And you should have a whiteboard, a couple of flip charts, and some pens that work. And some more chairs. And a speaker

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phone. And you’ll need a PC, and a printer. Let’s go back to Fritz’s office and we’ll get him to organise that. After that, we’ll do the site visit.” They got back to Fritz’s office, and Dr. Bender explained to Fritz what he wanted for the Container. Then he picked up a site map from his office and said, “Let’s go!” Once outside, Dr. Bender oriented the map in the right direction. “Look Jane, you can see the site layout is almost like a triangle. This is where we are. That’s the site entrance, where you came in. That side of the triangle is fairly straight. It’s about 1.5 km long. This straight road down this side is about 2.5 km. This third side of the site goes in and out. It’s over three km long. Down towards the site entrance, where you came in, are the main stores and the Production buildings. Then there’s the canteen here, with the Sports and Social Building behind it. This building over here has an exhibition and demonstration area where we show potential customers our machines. It also has offices for Marketing and Sales people. Then there’s this building, where my office is, which is mainly offices for management, Human Resources and Finance. Then there’s the Engineering Block, which is mainly office space but has some workshops and laboratories. Finally, in the corner of the triangle, there’s the new IT building. Let’s walk down to the site entrance, and then come back along the straight road to the IT building, and then back along here to my building. That way you’ll see where everything is. And while we’re walking, I’ll tell you something about the history of the company.” “Good. But, Dr. Bender, what about Corporate, Quality and After-Sales?” “Sorry, I forgot them. Klaus Becker and Corporate are in my building. Quality people are in many of the main buildings. After-Sales has several small buildings of its own. We’ll see some of them around the site. This building in front of us is now the canteen. You were here at lunchtime with Fritz. It’s the original building where the company started more than a hundred years ago. The company is still 80% owned by the founding family. They like to keep that building as a kind of souvenir and a reminder that we’re all one family here. They organise a Christmas party each year for all the employees and their families. Until the 1980s, the company was 100% family-owned, it was very much Mittelstand, but then one of the family decided to diversify into IT. That didn’t work out and they lost a lot of money. Then they decided to get some outside investment, so they sold 20% to an investment company. That didn’t work out, and the 20% passed to another investment company. That didn’t work out either. The 20% is currently owned by another investment company. They have a longer-term focus, and that seems to fit better with the family. The changes didn’t affect the German sites all that much, because in Germany the market for our products was growing steadily. Also, the family was here, and many people here believe in the need for manufacturing industry, investing in the workforce, and being socially responsible and part of the community. But in North America and Asia the company had tough times. The owners now feel they’ve overcome the problems of the last decade and put everything back on a good basis. About three months ago I was hired to lead the company into this new era. You’ve probably heard about that, it’s called Industry 4.0, or digitalisation, or Digital Transformation.” “Oh yes, many of our professors talk about that.”

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“We’ll apply it here, but first I want to understand what’s really happening with our products. They’re at the heart of our company. If we don’t understand what’s happening with them, we could digitise the wrong things or transform the wrong way. And you’re here to find out what’s happening. MPL, as it’s now known!” “I’m looking forward to it, Dr. Bender. But coming back to the site visit, what’s this building in front of us?” “It’s one of the Production buildings. Let’s take a quick look inside. But before we do, there’s something else that you can find out about during the interviews, but it’s not top priority. It’s related to what I was saying about digitalisation. I’ve read that Digital Twin and Digital Thread will be important, so it would be helpful if you could find out what people are doing and planning for them.” * Dr. Bender showed Jane round the site, explaining what happened in each building. Eventually, they arrived back at the Management building. “Thank you for the site visit, Dr. Bender. Now I know where everything is. Next, I should check with Fritz to be sure that everything is ready for 8:00 tomorrow morning.” “Right Jane, you do that. But I have a long meeting coming up now and will need Fritz. I suggest you check with Frau Mueller. She’ll know the status. I’ll see you tomorrow, it should be an interesting day.” * “Hello, Frau Mueller, may I disturb you for a few minutes?” “Yes, come in. What is it?” “I just wanted to check on the interview schedule, and the Backgrounder, and the outline of the interview contents.” “I’ve mailed everything to you, and also have paper copies here. Here’s the schedule. And the Backgrounder. And here’s the mail we sent to this week’s interviewees. And here’s your interview contents outline. Is there anything else you need?” “No, that’s everything. Except, Frau Mueller, I also have to thank you for everything you’ve done. Without you, I don’t know where I’d be.” “I’m sure you’d be fine without me. But from what I’ve seen, you’ll have a lot to do in the next few weeks. As you’ve no interviews planned now, and Dr. Bender will be in his meeting until 5 pm, why don’t you leave now and relax a bit. It looks as if you’ll be busy tomorrow.” “That sounds like a good idea. Would you sign my visitor sheet for me please? Otherwise I’ll be in trouble at the gate.” * Jane walked slowly back to Gasthaus Adler. She hadn’t noticed it before, but it was a lovely day, blue sky, and warm. Her head was swimming, she’d heard so much during the day. She couldn’t even remember how the day had started. Or all the names of the people she should meet tomorrow. A walk round the village should help. What

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had Frau Adler said about evening eating? Perhaps she should eat early then take another walk. She needed to clear her head for tomorrow. * After a weissbier in the village, Jane felt refreshed. If she went back now, she’d be in time to eat at 6 pm. When she arrived, she saw a girl setting the tables in the dining room. “Hello, I’m Jane, are you Sonja?” “Yes. Hello. Frau Adler said I should reserve that table in the corner for you, but we’re not quite ready.” “That’s OK. I’ll go up to my room. I’ll be back in ten minutes.” When she got to her room, Jane remembered she’d promised to keep her Mum informed of progress, so sent her a brief summary of the day, ending with ‘All OK, but exhausted.’ When she went back to the dining room, Sonja wasn’t there, but six of the eight tables had been set. There were two young Germans already eating at the table next to hers. She wondered who else would be eating in the dining room. Sonja came back in and brought her a menu. “We have this daily menu but, if you prefer, you can also have any of these on the other side. And here are the desserts and the drinks.” “Thank you, I’d like to look at it and then decide.” Sonja went off to greet some other guests. Jane looked at the menu. White asparagus soup looked good. But not pork medallions with mushrooms. She’d have a salad instead. And a mineral water. She continued studying the menu as she listened to the other guests coming in. First there was someone from East Europe. And then someone from Asia. Then a Spanish-speaker. Then an American. It seemed as if Sonja knew them all. Presumably, they were all with Mayer. Nearest to her, the two young Germans seemed to be here for a training course on a new machine. Sonja disappeared for a while, then came back and asked Jane if she’d decided. “Yes, I’d like white asparagus soup, a salad and mineral water without gas, please.” “What kind of salad?” asked Sonja. “Green, mixed, small, large?” “Mixed, medium, if that’s possible.” “Yes, of course.” * Jane looked out the window. It was peaceful out there. But, before long, the guys at the next table were on their third beers and talking about some of the problems they had installing machines. Were they making this up, surely that hadn’t really happened? Or perhaps they weren’t from Mayer, but another company? Whichever company they were from, it certainly had problems. Jane thought about getting her notebook out, and writing down the details, but then Sonja returned with her soup. And the two young Germans went off to watch a football game in the TV room. * After her soup and salad, Jane ran through the timing for tomorrow. Dr. Wimmer at 8:00, so she’d better be at the factory by 7:45, which meant leaving here at about 7:30. So breakfast at 7:10, and wake-up at 6:30. Until then she could relax and sleep.

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She thought about looking at her notes, but decided she didn’t need to. The mail from Frau Mueller was a perfect summary and an excellent introduction to the interviews.

Chapter 3

Tuesday 4 June

Jane woke up at 6:30 am and went down to breakfast at about 7:10. All the tables apart from hers were occupied. She said, “Good Morning” to the room in general. Everyone turned to her, and said, “Good Morning.” And then turned back to their breakfast. Frau Adler came in and asked her if everything was in order. Had she slept well? “Yes, thank you, Frau Adler. All’s well and I slept very well. It’s very peaceful here at night.” She poured a coffee and an orange juice, chose two pieces of bread and some cheese, and went to her table. By 7:40, she’d finished breakfast, gone to her room, checked everything was ready, and left. * Jane arrived at the factory gatehouse window at about 7:50. “Good Morning. It’s me again, Jane. Today I have a meeting with Dr. Wimmer at 8:00.” It was the same guard as the day before. He asked for her badge, then looked through his sheaf of papers in the box by the window. “Yes, that’s right. Here’s your visitor sheet for today. Please sign and date it before you leave. And get Frau Jansen or Frau Mueller to sign it as well. You know the way to Dr. Wimmer’s office I think?” “Yes, thank you.” “Good. I’ll call and let her know you’re coming.” * Dr. Wimmer’s door was open, so Jane knocked and looked in. She was surprised to see a youngish woman in a bright red top inside. “Hello, I’ve come to see Dr. Wimmer.” “Come in, that’s me. You must be Jane. Do sit down, please help yourself to coffee. I got the mail from Frau Mueller. I think this is a brilliant idea from Dr. Bender. I’m excited about seeing your results. I have to be at the Exhibition Centre at 8:45, so shall we start? The mail said you wanted me to tell you about my productrelated activities. Well, there are seven of them. The first, and it’s probably the most

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. Stark, Product Lifecycle Management (Volume 5), Decision Engineering, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46887-2_3

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important, is to lead Marketing for Mayer world-wide, and also be Head of the Marketing Department here. Among other things that means setting the Marketing strategy and budget. The budget depends on the year, but usually our cost of sales is in the range of 12–15% of sales. That includes costs such as personnel expenses for our sales and marketing people, distributor commissions, showrooms, participation in trade fairs, publications and advertising. I allocate resources, set goals for people in the Department, hire people, coach the team, report KPIs monthly to the CEO. OK?” “Is any of that product-related?” asked Jane. “Yes, much of it. We have products in our showrooms and at trade fairs. We have them in publications such as our product brochures and our catalogues. And we also have them in our advertising, which is in my second activity, Market Communication. That’s all our media, marketing campaigns, advertising, online marketing, direct mail, PR, Web presence, social media, company brochures, product flyers, product catalogues, paper and online, industry events, channel, and community.” “It sounded as if some of that was product-related,” said Jane. “Yes, in Marketing we have a strong focus on products. We try to identify the products the customers want, and then sell customers the products. Most of what we do is product-related. Like the third activity, Market Research and Analysis. We research, collect, analyse and interpret market data. We analyse the market to identify challenges and our opportunities for growth. Growth basically means more sales of our products and services. We aim to understand buyer behaviour, the behaviour of buyers of our products. And we track competitors to understand their strategies, positioning and messaging, and their current and future products.” “That’s clear,” said Jane. “And next?” “Next is Product Marketing. In Mayer, this depends a lot on the particular product, because we have some very different products. Sometimes we respond to a RFP, a Request for Proposal, from a customer for a very specific product. For that kind of order-specific product, the customer usually gives us detailed specifications. And usually, in that case, the customer won’t allow us to offer that product to other companies, so it’s not part of our standard product offer. In other cases, we specify a product that will be part of our future standard range. This type of product isn’t order-specific, and we’re aiming to develop a great new product that will fit into our future product portfolio. For that, we work on understanding customer needs and generating product requirements. We define the required product, with the right mix of functions and features, in the right position compared to our other products, at the right price level, to get to market at the right time. We develop collateral, such as educational and sales materials. We’re responsible for the product’s master data.” “OK,” said Jane. “And the fifth activity?” She was taking notes but could feel they weren’t great. However, she didn’t want to stop Dr. Wimmer talking as it sounded useful information. But she hoped the other interviewees wouldn’t talk so much and so fast. “Fifth is Sales. I work closely with Stan, our Sales Force Manager. We need to be closely aligned. He’s in direct contact with the salespeople who are out there selling

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to our customers. We need to ensure strong lead generation from the Sales Team that leads to closed revenue.” “OK,” said Jane. “And next?” “Sixth is Brand Development. We need to define, build, enhance, maintain, and protect our brand. Our Market Research, which I’ve mentioned before, shows that many potential customers and even some of our actual customers don’t recognise our brand. In a way, that’s not surprising, because until recently we were five companies with five different names, five logos, five style guides, and five corporate colours. We’re now aiming for a common cohesive global brand identity, which means brand standards. And then application and compliance across all channels.” “OK,” said Jane. “And the seventh activity?” “Seventh is Creative Services. That’s the actual creation of all the collateral, the material that’s related to the product. It’s done by our graphics designers and web masters. That includes website design, packaging design, sales materials sheets, folders, trade show graphics, corporate graphics and so on. Those people have lots of tools like Photoshop, QuarkXPress, Adobe Illustrator, Dreamweaver.” Dr. Wimmer paused. Jane looked at her watch. 8:25. She was running late, and had missed a lot, but didn’t have time to go back. “What other product-related software do you use?” “As for the software we use, there’s a lot. I understood from Dr. Bender that you’d like to talk to other people in Marketing. You’ll probably find other applications when you talk to them, but I noted Web site, web analytics, CRM software, that’s Customer Relationship Management software. Then there’s spreadsheet, presentation, e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, ERP software. That’s Enterprise Resource Planning. All the products are in the ERP system with sales figures. We also have a requirements management system. Here’s my list.” “Thank you. Yes, I’d also like to interview your seven Group Leaders. I have them listed here. Product Management Area 1; Product Management Area 2; New Markets; Sales; Marketing Communications; Proposals; Pricing. When I ask them about their activities, I’ll also ask them about their documents and the systems they use. I have seven minutes left. Please tell me about some of the issues you’ve faced and some improvement suggestions. That should take us up to 8:40. Would it be possible for me to walk over to the Exhibition Centre with you? I could answer any questions about MPL you have on the way. And I’d like to see what’s inside the Exhibition Centre. I only saw it from the outside yesterday with Dr. Bender, but it looked very interesting.” “That’s fine with me. I have a customer meeting there at 9:00, but until then can show you some of our machines. The interview mail also asked for copies of documents, so you should take these,” she said, pointing to a pile of paper. “All sorts of lists of reference sites, success stories, documents, procedures, work instructions, drawings, sketches, screen shots, brochures, catalogues. I’m not sure I have time to tell you about all the issues. I’d rather leave that to the Group Leaders. I’ll concentrate on the improvement suggestions, OK?” “Yes, fine.”

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“The first improvement suggestion is about our Marketing approach. We really have to change from the old approach we used to have. Mr. Kubler, my predecessor, was very traditional. He’d been here more than 20 years and knew people in many companies. In one way, that was obviously important. But it also meant he never had to go out and find new companies to work with. So now, although we’re still strong in our traditional markets, we’re weak in many others, and we have to move into those new markets. And related to that, we have to develop our brand. Market research shows we’re almost unknown in many of our potential markets. Also, Mr. Kubler was very much oriented to Machine Construction, and not to electronics and software, so we’re not in a strong position for Industry 4.0. And, Mr. Kubler was focused on standard machines, but today’s market research shows we should be offering customised products and services. Putting all that together, the first improvement suggestion is a culture change in Marketing, a change of direction. I did change the organisational structure of the Marketing Department when I was appointed, but now we also need to change the culture. Next, the second improvement suggestion. This isn’t so much about Marketing. The second improvement suggestion is for the Engineering Department. Maybe I shouldn’t say it as it’s not my area? They don’t seem to be able to cope with the market demand today. Most of their projects finish late, they overrun. The products don’t correspond to the requirements from the customers. There are a lot of problems with the products. I’m not an engineer, so I don’t know why it’s like that, I just see the result. It seems to me we need improvement there as well.” “Thank you, you’ve been very helpful. Do you have any questions for me about my work, about the MPL project?” “No, I think it’s a great project. I just wonder how you’re going to do it all so quickly!” “Sometimes I wonder that too,” replied Jane. “But we’ll see. I’ll know better by the end of this week.” “I’m sure it will work out,” said Dr. Wimmer. By now they had reached the Exhibition Centre. Dr. Wimmer looked inside and said, “I don’t see any sign of the customer, so come on in.” All was quiet inside the Exhibition Centre. Apart from the machines, there were just two people there, in green overalls, with MAYER SERVICE on their backs. They seemed to be removing any specks of dust from the machines. “Morning, everybody. All in order?” “Good Morning, Dr. Wimmer. Yes, all in order.” “Wow!” said Jane. “This is impressive. Is it new?” “It opened about three months ago.” “It’s so light, and airy, it doesn’t look anything like a factory!” “It’s not meant to look like a factory! It’s a communications centre for high-tech industry. Why don’t you put those papers down over there? It will make it easier to walk round. We probably have five or ten minutes before the customer arrives. Those machines on the left are from our families of metal-working machines. The first is from the 1000 Series, then there’s one each from the 2000 Series, the 3000, the 4000

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and the 5000. Then the next two are for plastic molding. The one on the left is from the AX family. The one on the right is from the FX family.” “This may sound stupid, but they look good together. They look modern and seem to fit with each other.” “That’s not a stupid remark. That’s how they’re meant to look. These days, our customers don’t want to buy old-looking machines that look as if they belong in a museum. That would give the wrong impression to their employees and their customers. Obviously, the machine’s performance is paramount, but you can’t ignore the look and feel.” “And what about the other two machines, are they from earlier families?” “No, the first one is from Hanover and the other is from our French company. But you see what I mean about brand. Technically they’re great, but first impressions are all-important, and at first glance you can see they just don’t look right. They don’t project the same image. They look as if they’re last-generation. But coming back to the 1000 Series machine, it’s actually a 1000-100, that’s an entry-level machine. It’s basic. It’s for making small to medium parts, has an average throughput rate, and is usually operated without any other equipment. But other machines, such as the FX-400, have options such as automated pickers, robots, Artificial Intelligence assistance, machine vision units, and preventive maintenance units. Oh, I see the customer is coming. I hope I’ve been helpful. Goodbye, I must leave you now.” Jane looked at her watch. 8:53. She wasn’t due to start the interview with Dr. Fischer until 9:20. So she had time to go to the Container and update her notes. Fortunately, she had a good overall structure for the meeting report, so was able to update it with details she hadn’t had time to write down. * Jane could hear Dr. Fischer talking on the phone. She waited until he’d finished his conversation. Then she knocked. After a while he said, “Come in.” Jane went in. He looked up from his screen, surprised. She told him her name, and said she was there for the interview. About the MPL project. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Who are you? What are you talking about? What’s MPL? Did you see my secretary? I don’t have time. I’ve got meetings all day today. I have to prepare for the 387 meeting. There’s a customer coming in soon. And then I have to see HR about some new candidates. A leading Engineering journal voted us as their Innovation Leader, and I need to accept the award at their event this afternoon. I’m booked solid all the week. Tomorrow I’ve got project reviews all day. Then Thursday, I meet the group leaders and then there’s the management meeting. And then I have to give a course. And then on Friday, I’m due at a conference. Who are you? What do you want?” “I’m working on the MPL project for Dr. Bender. I’m documenting what happens to the company’s products, starting from wherever they start. All the way through to wherever they end. And, as explained in yesterday’s mail, I’m starting by asking about people’s main activities.” “Yesterday’s mail? I don’t remember seeing that. When did he send it?” “It was sent yesterday afternoon. I expect Frau Mueller sent it.”

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“Oh. Yes, here it is, MPL.” Jane waited while Dr. Fischer read it. “Oh yes, now I understand. But I don’t have time. You know we have many people in my department, and we’re all very busy. Could we rearrange the meeting?” “That would be difficult, Dr. Fischer. I have more than a hundred people to see, and I don’t have a lot of time.” “I’m sorry, but I don’t have time,” he said, reaching for his phone. “Karl, do you have half an hour? No, stay in your office. I’m sending someone over to you. And I’ll forward you Bender’s mail. I have to prepare for the 387 meeting.” Dr. Fischer turned back to Jane, “Mr. Ramsberger will answer your questions. He’s my deputy. His office is on the third floor of the Engineering Building. Go in Door A. Can you find that?” “Yes, no problem, Dr. Fischer, thank you.” Jane walked over to the Engineering Building. She thought about informing Dr. Bender about Dr. Fischer’s behaviour, but decided against it. If she wanted to make progress, she’d better aim for Door A and Mr. Ramsberger. She went up to the third floor, walked down the corridor, found Mr. Ramsberger’s office, knocked and went in. Mr. Ramsberger got up from his desk and came over, “I was just reading the message from Frau Mueller. But it’s already 9:35 and we should finish by 10:00. Sit down, please, while I think how to do this best.” Jane sat down and looked around his office. It was full of paintings of golf courses. “It’s my passion,” said Mr. Ramsberger, “but you’re not here to talk about that. You want to hear about our activities. Let me tell you. We have four main activities, the first three are all about products. First, we develop new products. Second, we fix any problems with the products. And the third activity, we improve the products, and make new versions. And the fourth activity is management of the department.” Jane liked the way Mr. Ramsberger explained. He spoke slowly and quietly, but what he said was clear and useful. “I should say that when I talk about a product, sometimes that means the whole machine, but sometimes it means a single part or an assembly of parts. I should also tell you we have four main areas of work, Mechanical, Electrical, Electronics and Software. We have a group of people for each of those areas. Mechanical is mainly about metal parts, but also some hydraulics. Electrical is electrical circuits and cabling. Electronics is electronic components and Printed Circuit Boards. Software is written, then goes in a processor that goes on a PCB with other electronics. OK so far?” Jane nodded. “I said we had projects to improve products. Some of those are projects to improve a single machine. But we also have projects that apply to many machines. For example, we had a modularisation project that looked at all the machines to identify common modules. Before modularisation, all the machines were individual, each one was started from scratch and had all new parts. But the modularisation project led to the Series 1000, 2000, 3000 and 4000 families. For a given family, such as the Series 1000 family, each product in the family has the same basic platform module. And each uses some common modules. That means we don’t have to develop everything

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new for each new machine. We try to reuse several modules, and just develop what is really new. For example, all the Series 1000, 2000, 3000 and 4000 family products have a similar outer housing. Marketing likes that, because it means all the machines look similar, so are recognised as Mayer machines. We like it, because we have less work, because we don’t have to redevelop the housing for each new machine. All clear?” “All clear.” “Good, because there I’ve told you quickly all about our three activities with developing and improving products. That’s our main job, defining our machines, defining everything that goes into them.” “I understand. In the Engineering Department your main activity is to develop the products. And, for example, you don’t produce them as well.” “That’s 99.9% correct. We do produce some parts, but only for prototypes and for tests. The real production department is Mr. Pfeiffer’s department. Coming now to our fourth activity. It’s management. We manage the Engineering Department. For example, we plan and budget. Our budget is about 10% of sales, which is among the highest in our industry. That’s important as new products are the future lifeblood of the company. Then, of course, we manage our people, for example, hiring and training them. Coming back to Frau Mueller’s mail, we write Engineering guidelines explaining the best way to work. The latest versions of our guidelines are online. Later I’ll send you a link to them so you can look at them in detail if you want to. For now, I can show you a paper copy from a few years ago.” He went over to a bookshelf and came back with three ring binders. “Look, this is how it used to be.” He flicked through the pages of one of the binders. “Look, this version had fifty-nine guidelines. But now we have many more. Look at this, here’s our guideline for product structuring, and here’s one on design reviews. What else do we have? Document numbering, model numbering, dimensioning, title blocks, block number assignment, part numbering, documentation types, drawing format requirements, prototype report, Engineering change request, risk management, and so on. Everything is explained. Everyone in Engineering is trained on these guidelines.” “I’ll look out for your mail with the link,” said Jane. “I’d like to take a closer look.” “The mail from Frau Mueller also mentioned product drawings,” said Mr. Ramsberger. “Well, a few years ago, a student did a project here that collected an example of each type of document we had.” He flipped through the pages of the second binder. “Look, isometric drawing, multi-view drawing, assembly drawing, detail drawing, arrangement drawing, structural drawing, tender drawing, schematic drawing, installation drawing, wiring diagram, parts list, project review document, assembly list, design review report, working drawing, and so on. I don’t remember how many more. I’ll send you a copy of this as well, it might be helpful.” “Thank you,” said Jane. “Even if it’s a few years old it could be helpful.” “And this one was our Vademecum,” went on Mr. Ramsberger, picking up the third ring binder. “One of our Group Leaders produced this as a guide to the Engineering Department. I can send you that as well.” “Thank you,” said Jane. “It should help me understand what’s happening here.”

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“Next, the mail from Frau Mueller mentioned our computer systems. I can send you a list of those. I’ll have to look for it. We created it at the end of last year. But perhaps I have a paper copy I can show you now. Yes, here we are. You see it lists the application name, and the vendor. Then what the application does, and then the type and number of licences. You can see we have more than fifty different systems and, for example, this one is for structural analysis and we have five licences. This one is for project management. Here’s one for CAD, Computer Aided Design. The list may be helpful for you. But we’re coming up to 10:00, so we should stop now. I hope I’ve been helpful. If you have any questions, we could meet again. But I saw you have a long list of interviews so may not have time. Are you going to see anyone else from Engineering?” “Yes, from memory I’m going to interview five Engineering Group Leaders. I think there’s Mechanical, Electrical, Electronics and Software. But I don’t remember the other one.” “Probably it’s Common Services. That’s our fifth Group. Well, it was good to meet you. Goodbye.” * After Jane got outside, she looked at her watch. 10:05. Good timing. The next interview was scheduled for 10:40. Mr. Pfeiffer. But before then she’d go back to the Container and write up her Ramsberger meeting notes. * Jane could hear Mr. Pfeiffer talking on the phone. Was that all these people here did? Didn’t he know she was there to interview him? Five minutes later, she heard him put the phone down. She wondered if he was going to be another Dr. Fischer. She knocked. He opened the door and laughed. “Sorry about that, I was just coming to look for you. My fault, but that was an important call, a problem with one of our suppliers. Come in, unless I’m mistaken you must be Jane.” “That’s right, Mr. Pfeiffer. I’m here to interview you for the MPL project. You’ve read about that in the Backgrounder from Frau Mueller.” “Yes, but you speak German. I wasn’t expecting that.” “In English, we say when in Rome do as the Romans.” “It’s unusual. You don’t have much accent. You sound like someone from North Germany, maybe Hanover.” “One summer, I worked in Bremen. So perhaps that’s why. But Mr. Pfeiffer I’m not here to discuss my German. I’m here to interview you.” “Very good. Would you like a coffee?” “No, thank you. First question. Mr. Pfeiffer, please tell me about your main activities here.” “We produce all the products that make all the money for the company.” “And what are the main sub-activities of the Production activity?” “I’m sorry, what should I call you? As you’re English, shall I just call you Jane?” “That’s fine. What are the main sub-activities of the Production activity?”

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“Jane, I’ve printed out a copy for you of all the Production procedures.” He picked up a stack of paper from his desk and handed it to her. “Here you are. Look at this. Everything is here.” “Thank you, Mr. Pfeiffer, but as I’m here, I prefer you to tell me what’s happening. I can read the theory later.” “Jane, this is Production. It’s not the Engineering Department. Here we know what we’re doing, and everything is documented. Come with me and I’ll show you. We’ll take these procedures with us and you’ll see. I’ll show you in the plant. Excuse me. I’ll lead the way.” Mr. Pfeiffer led the way up some stairs, then past some offices, then down some stairs, then out into the fresh air. He looked through the set of Production procedures and showed her part of a map of the factory. “We’re here, L1. And you can see it’s written on the side of the building. This is the incoming goods store. Over there, can you see a bit of a building that sticks out?” he said, pointing. “That’s L3, the Finished Goods store. And now, look on the map. Between L1 and L3 are Hall A, Hall B, Hall C, Hall D, Hall E. You can see them all in front of us. L2 is also on the diagram. You can’t see it. It’s behind Hall A.” “OK, I see. Halls A, B, C, D, and E. And L1 and L3, which I can see. And L2 which I can’t see.” “Next, what do we do in these buildings? In Hall A, the incoming metal is transformed, machined for example, to make metal parts. Hall B is for plastics transformation, to make plastic components. Hall C is for electronics, software and electrical. Hall D is for final assembly. There’s also some testing and packaging there. After which the assembled thing goes to L3, Finished Goods. Hall E is where we do contract production for some of our customers. So, we have a procedure showing the Production Facility layout, and it corresponds to what you see.” “Good. Can we look inside? It would help me understand what’s happening.” “Yes. As we’re here, let’s have a quick look in L1. Nothing special here, just stuff that’s come in, but for which processing hasn’t started yet.” “And do you have a procedure for L1?” “Yes, of course,” said Mr. Pfeiffer. “Here it is. And here’s the procedure for Hall A, our next stop. It should be more interesting than the incoming goods store. We’ll just go in, turn left and go up the steps to the supervisor’s office. That way you won’t need to put a hard hat on. Look, we’re here on the drawing, and you can see the supervisor’s office on the drawing, and in front of you.” Jane looked hard at the drawing. This was a useful interview, she needed to remember all this. “Let’s go up the steps to the office. Now you can see the three desks in the office, just like on the drawing. Everything is documented. We do an internal audit of our procedures every three months, and there’s an external audit every six months. Now, if you look on the drawing you can see all the machines are shown. And if you look down to the shop floor, you see the corresponding machines. All the machines are on the drawing. That big machine in the middle of the drawing is that big machine down there. That’s a machining centre. Can you see on the left side that there are two plastic pockets?”

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“Yes. Well, I can see some plastic things there.” “The upper plastic pocket contains this procedure here. It contains all the information about the machine. Specifications, operating characteristics, required training, assessment, maintenance, cleaning, and so on. Everything about the machine is in this procedure, and we have a document like this for every machine. So, looking at the procedures, you see you can start with the Facility Layout, then go inside a building to see the layout, then see the details of each machine or other piece of equipment.” “Yes,” said Jane. “But can you stop a minute please while I take some notes.” “Sure, I need to talk to Mr. Egli for a minute, then I’ll get back to you.” Mr. Pfeiffer came back, and continued his explanation, “Going back to the machining centre, I told you that on the left side of the machine are two plastic pockets. The upper plastic pocket contains the information about the machine that I told you about. In the lower pocket, there’s another document. And here I have the procedure for that document. This is the router, or the process plan, and it’s the route a part takes through the factory and it shows what happens on each machine. You can see an example of a router in the procedure. OK?” “Yes, fine,” said Jane. “We had something similar in one of the companies I worked with during a summer vacation.” “On our routers, for each machine you see the set-up, the machining time, the unloading. And other information, like which control program is used, and how long everything is taking. The router says everything about how we make that part. But it doesn’t know how many of that part we’ll need to make on a particular day. That information comes from the production plan which Mr. Egli, sitting here, makes and that comes from the ERP system.” Jane turned round to say hello to Mr. Egli and apologise for disturbing him. He smiled back. Mr. Pfeiffer continued, “So you see we know all about the layout of the buildings and the machines. We know how to make a particular part. We know when to make that part. And everything is described in a Production procedure. I’ve only shown you a few procedures, but there are many more. They address everything we do. Tools, software, health, training, exceptions, storage, raw material, safety, vacations, sickness, performance indicators, quality, shift work, waste, environment, fixtures. There’s a procedure for everything. I printed this complete set for you, please check a few procedures against the reality. If you find anything that’s missing, please tell me and we’ll look into it.” “Thank you,” said Jane, taking back the stack of paper. “I’ll look at them later. Can we visit the other Production buildings now? That will be very helpful for me.” “OK, but first I should tell you about some other procedures. I’ve just told you about the procedures for the machines. But there are similar procedures describing our working documents and our computer systems. Everything is documented. And people are trained on the documents that are relevant for them. In a plant like this, it’s the only way to work. Our target is 100% throughput and quality pass rate. Sometimes we make it. Often though we don’t, usually because of the mess we get from the Engineering Department. They don’t believe in defining their flow of work. They say

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that would be a barrier to innovation. Not that they actually do any innovation! Now let me show you quickly Hall B. It’s similar to Hall A, nothing special. But Hall C is more interesting. It’s for electronics, software and electrical.” After a quick look at Hall B, they moved on to Hall C. Again, there was a supervisor office that overlooked the shop floor. “It’s a small world,” said Jane. “We had that SMT placement machine over there in a company I worked at a few years ago.” “It’s still one of the best on the market,” said Mr. Pfeiffer. “Do you know about electronics manufacturing?” “Just a little,” replied Jane. “But one thing I’ve been wondering about, some companies have a special area for new products. Do you?” “New products? What do you mean?” “New products like the Series 1000 and the others.” “New? Who told you they’re new products? They’re just old products with new names. Before Steffi Wimmer came, all machines just had two- or three-digit numbers like 43, 79, 105, 189, 230 and so on. Nobody could remember what was what apart from a few old Engineering guys who had worked on those development projects. Steffi asked a Czech design group for suggestions, and they said world-class companies would group the machines in five families with four or five machines in each family. That’s where Series 1000, 2000 and so on come from. Apparently, the Czechs came up with the idea in a 1-hour brainstorming session. They also started the modularisation project. Dr. Fischer hated it, but everyone else thought it was great.” “But what about the housings? They’re all new, aren’t they?” “The Czechs again. They’ve always been great engineers.” Jane saw she was already running late, so asked if they could move on to the assembly hall. She found it was very useful to see the Production machines and the parts they were making. It would make it easier to understand what her other interviewees were talking about. By the time they’d visited the assembly hall, Hall E and the Finished Goods Store, it was 11:20. “Mr. Pfeiffer, I apologise for overrunning my time, but it’s been really useful. Thank you very much.” “It’s my fault we started late because of that phone call. I’d allowed for a few minutes overrun anyway, so it’s not a problem. Most important is that I was able to answer your questions. If there’s anything else I can help with, just let me know. I saw that you’ll be interviewing some of my Group Leaders. I’m sure they’ll be able to help you as well.” Jane headed back to the Container. She needed to unload the stack of procedures Mr. Pfeiffer had given her. * When Jane opened the Container door, she saw she still didn’t have a computer. She put Mr. Pfeiffer’s stack down next to the stuff from Dr. Wimmer. She really needed a computer to make a list of all these documents, otherwise she’d soon be completely lost. She’d remind Fritz about the computer next time she saw him. And that she still had only one table. She also needed to label the documents she received so she’d know where they came from. As she repositioned the documents that she’d received from

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Stephanie, she remembered seeing something about a 105 in a marketing brochure. Now which one was it? She looked inside a few brochures. Yes, here it is. In the Series 2000 brochure. But it’s not three-digit here, it’s a 6-digit number 105.732, strange. She looked a bit further in the brochure and found a 189.417. Mr. Pfeiffer had mentioned a 189 machine as well. But this one in the brochure was also six digits. It would be good to get an explanation. Who was she going to see next? She looked on the list and saw it was Mr. Sauer. She couldn’t remember where his office was. Next time she saw Fritz, she’d ask him to include the person’s office number on the list of interviews. That would give her the building name and the floor. She looked at her watch, it was way past midday. She’d have to go for lunch before looking for Fritz. * When Jane got to the canteen it was much quieter than the day before. Obviously, she thought, everybody here starts work early and has lunch early. She hesitated, wondering what she should do now. She walked over to see what was on offer today. What on Earth is that? An omelette in military camouflage? What could that be? Something yellow with brown and green and white all over it. “Hello.” Jane looked up and saw the lunchlady looking at her. “Hello,” replied Jane, wondering what to do. “Are you new here?” asked the lunchlady. “Yes.” “Well, let me explain,” said the lunchlady. “Over there, by the door, there’s a menu showing the two main meals of the day. This is Line 1. Today we have schnitzel with potato and cabbage. Over there is Line 2. Today it was lamb with rice and carrots, but there’s none left now, you’re too late. When you come in through that door and have read the menu, there’s a counter with soup. We make it fresh every day. Next to it is a breadbasket. Over there is a salad counter that’s also fresh every day. And down there is a drinks counter and a counter with fresh fruit, cakes, fruit tart, fresh fruit salad and yogurt. We make cakes and tarts every day. So that’s how it works. Now, what are you having today? The schnitzel is particularly good. Would you like one piece or two?” “Just one please,” said Jane, thinking she couldn’t refuse after such a helpful explanation. “And potato and cabbage?” “Yes, please.” “And savoury brown sauce?” “Just a little please. On the side.” “Here you are. Enjoy your lunch!” “Thank you.” The canteen was so empty that Jane had an entire trestle table to herself. She sat down and looked at her watch. She asked herself when she was due to meet Mr. Sauer. She tried to remember. Was it 14:00? Surely not, that way, she wouldn’t be able to do three interviews in the afternoon. It must be 13:00. She could relax for

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half an hour. She tried a piece of schnitzel. It tasted good. Then she tasted the potato and cabbage. They also tasted good. Now she could relax and enjoy her lunch. Oh! Jane realised she hadn’t paid for her lunch. She got up and went to the cashier to apologise and pay. “That’s OK. You’re new here. It will take a few days to get used to the system. But you don’t have a dessert, or a drink, do you want to get something?” “Oh, yes,” replied Jane. “Sorry to be so disorganised.” She went over and picked up a cheesecake and an apple juice. “And I have a Line 1 menu. How do I pay? Here’s my badge.” “That type of badge doesn’t work here in the canteen. Who do you work for? And would you like a coffee as well?” “Dr. Bender, Frau Mueller, Fritz Marquardt. Yes, please.” “I remember, you were with Mr. Marquardt yesterday. I’ll put it on Dr. Bender’s account number. Here’s your jeton for the coffee. Enjoy your lunch!” “Thank you.” Jane went back to her table. She felt she hadn’t done a great job in the morning, but she couldn’t change that. The objective now was to survive the afternoon. Once she got back to the Adler, she could take stock and organise herself better for tomorrow. She still had twenty minutes for her lunch. She should eat her schnitzel slowly and enjoy it. And the cheesecake looked inviting with its pieces of apple and raspberry sauce. * Jane had asked Frau Mueller where she could find Mr. Sauer, so she was all set. She’d also confirmed that her other two afternoon interviewees, Frau Klumpf at 14:20 and Lianne Jansen at 15:40 had offices on Dr. Bender’s corridor. Jane waited until 13:00 precisely. Then, as she couldn’t hear Mr. Sauer talking, she knocked on the door. “Come in.” “Thank you, Mr. Sauer. I’m here to interview you for the MPL project. You know about that from Frau Mueller’s mail. My name’s Jane.” “Yes, sit down please. I was just reading Frau Mueller’s mail again. It’s very clear. If I understand right, you’re trying to find out what happens with our products. Starting from wherever they start. Going all the way through to wherever they end. Well, you’ve come to the right place to find out. In After-Sales, we’re always with the machines, seeing how they work on different customer sites. We have a huge knowledge and experience base about the products. There are still some machines in use that Mayer made sixty years ago, so you see we have years and years of experience. And it’s with working products. It’s not like in Production where they just make some parts but don’t work with the machines. Engineering is just theory, and Marketing is guesses about the future. It’s only in After-Sales that the rubber meets the road, and we make the machine work. Every year that goes by, there are more and more of our machines in use, so Mayer is increasingly becoming a service business. But I’m digressing, didn’t you have a question about our activities?” “Yes, that’s right. And my first question is about your main activities here. Please tell me about them.”

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“OK, but if you don’t mind, let me just give you a one-minute introduction to the Department so you have an overview and the context. After-Sales is the key interface between Mayer Maschinenfabrik and its customers. We aim to ensure customer satisfaction and continuously improve the quality of our services. We establish and manage professional relationships with our customers, receiving and processing their requests and complaints, launching and following up on corresponding action, managing risks and ensuring compliance. I manage our department, prepare and agree the objectives, set and manage the budget, hire and coach people, keep everyone informed and trained, and report on After-Sales service activities. We have many, many activities. They’re all described in our OPs, our Operating Policies. There are more than fifty activities with detailed OPs such as audits, customer training, exchanges, installation, IQ/OQ/PQ validation, loans, pick-ups, problem resolution, product performance evaluations, refurbishment, repairs, retrofits, returns, routine and emergency maintenance, spare parts management, transport, troubleshooting, upgrades, warranties, waste removal, and so on.” “Thank you, Mr. Sauer, indeed that’s helpful. And what do you see as the main product-related activities?” “There are three. First there’s Installation. That’s getting the machine running on the customer site. Then there’s Maintenance. That’s basically to keep the machine running on the customer site. And the third is Returns. That’s when the customer no longer wants the machine on their site.” “Please tell me briefly about the Installation activity.” “It’s very varied. We have a huge variety of machines, so we rarely have exactly the same installation activity. There’s a huge range of scenarios for installation. Sometimes our machines have a lot of parts, thousands of parts. Sometimes they just have a few hundred. Maybe you know some of our machines are big, sometimes more than five meters high. Sometimes the machine is more than five meters long, sometimes it’s several meters wide. But, other times, it’s much smaller. For example, less than one cubic meter. Sometimes we have customers who do a lot of the installation work themselves. But other times, we do nearly all the installation. Sometimes installation takes a few weeks, maybe even months. Other times it’s just an hour’s work. Another difference is where we get the parts for the installation from. They can come from different places. Sometimes we get some parts on the site from the customer. Then we could have some parts from our After-Sales Departmental store and some parts from the Production store. And there could be parts coming from other suppliers. And then sometimes we install with customer people, sometimes without customer people. The one thing that’s common is that we get the machine working on the customer site. I saw in the mail from Frau Mueller that you’re interested in documents, but I’m afraid that if I go into that I won’t have time to tell you about the other activities. I saw you’re going to interview the Installation Group Leader. Perhaps you can go into detail about Installation documents with him?” “Yes, that’s a good idea. So, please tell me about your second main activity, Maintenance.” “OK, second activity, Maintenance. The starting position here is that we’ve successfully installed the machine, we’ve got the machine working on the customer

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site. We’ve done our Installation job and now the customer is using the machine for their production activities. In Maintenance, we again have several scenarios. Perhaps the machine broke down, it stopped working. Or perhaps it’s not working properly. Or perhaps the customer thinks that it will stop working. Or perhaps the customer wants some preventive maintenance. Or perhaps we need to change a part. We may need to change something big, or something small. What’s really important in this activity is that the customer trusts After-Sales. The customer knows we understand the machine because they know we installed it and got it working. So they tell us all about how the machine has been working, what works, what doesn’t. The more they tell us, the more we can help them. That’s great for us, because it builds up our knowledge base, and we keep getting better. That’s an important point, customers trust us. We roll up our sleeves and get dirty helping them run their machines. They don’t have that trust, for example, with people from Sales who are more interested in their commission than performance. I saw you’re going to interview the Maintenance Group Leader, so will leave the details of Maintenance documents to him.” “Agreed, so please tell me about your third main activity, Returns.” “OK, third activity, Returns. Again, we could have several scenarios here. Perhaps the customer no longer needs the machine. Maybe because they’ve finished using it for a particular product, and they don’t want it taking up space. Another option is that they want to replace an old machine with a more modern machine. Whatever the reason, we’ll take it back. You’re going to interview the Returns Group Leader. I’ll leave the details for that. But, Jane, I’m just thinking while I’m talking to you that the best thing for you would be to go and see some of our activities on customer sites. Wouldn’t that be useful?” “Oh, that would be great. I find it’s much easier to understand something I see compared to just hearing about it. Could that be arranged?” “I’ll ask Dr. Bender if it’s possible. If he agrees, perhaps we can find a local customer or two and show you the three activities in one day. Installation, Maintenance, and Returns.” “We don’t have much time left, so I won’t be able to ask you all my questions. But perhaps you could answer this one. Are you faced with any particular problems that you see frequently?” “One of our biggest problems is that initially in many cases we’re just not able to install the machine. Something goes wrong. There are many possible reasons for this. Sometimes it’s because in between order signature and installation time, the customer will have changed something on the site without telling us. For example, power lines, so when we arrive, we can’t connect the machine. It’s also happened with water pipes, and communication cables as well. In another case, the customer had a new building for a new product, and we had to install a machine with a high precision and connect it to other machines. But it turned out that the new building itself wasn’t in exactly the planned place, so we had problems again. Another time, the customer originally had the machine in one location but then changed it without telling us. And then there can be issues with the parts with which we’re trying to build the machine. Sometimes the wrong ones are delivered. Or wrong versions. It

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sometimes feels as if anything that can go wrong will go wrong at installation time. I’ve heard you call that Murphy’s Law.” “Yes. Thank you, that’s useful to know. But now it’s time for me to leave you. I look forward to interviewing your Group Leaders. And I hope you can arrange a customer site visit for me. Is there anything else?” “I also hope we can arrange that visit of a customer site for you. I’ll mention it to Dr. Bender. And yes, there is one more thing. I prepared this copy of our OPs for you. I thought it might be useful.” “Oh, thank you. And thank you for all the information.” * Jane went back to the Container. It was 13:45. The next meeting wasn’t until 14:20. She put Mr. Sauer’s OPs on the table. Still no computer. Should she go and look for Fritz now? No, she could do that after the next interview. The priority now was to write up her notes from the meeting with Mr. Sauer. It really was important to write up the notes immediately after the interview. She was getting so much information in each interview that she couldn’t remember much about the contents of the previous interviews. * Jane heard Fritz talking as she went past Dr. Bender’s office on her way to meet Frau Klumpf. However, she didn’t want to be late for Frau Klumpf, so she didn’t stop. She’d see Fritz after interviewing the head of the Finance Department. She waited until 14:20 precisely, then she knocked on the door. “Come.” “Hello, Frau Klumpf. I’m here to interview you for the MPL project. You know about that from Frau Mueller’s mail. My name’s Jane.” “Come in, sit down please. Yes. I was just reading Frau Mueller’s mail. I see you’re trying to find out what happens with our products. Starting from wherever they start. Going all the way through to wherever they end.” “Yes, that’s right. I usually start by asking people to tell me about their main product-related activities.” “Very well, but let me start by explaining first that Mayer has an ERP system, that’s a computer system. It has several connected modules. Each department has its own modules. For example, Mr. Pfeiffer has modules like Materials Management and Production Planning. Frau Rosen has modules for Recruitment, Training and Payroll. Somebody has modules for Environment, Health and Safety, I don’t remember who. Here in the Finance department, we have modules to help with things like Payables, Billing and Accounts Receivable, and Accounting. Payables are invoices we’ve received, often from Mr. Pfeiffer’s suppliers, for parts and materials for our machines. There, we pay out money. When Dr. Wimmer’s team sell a machine to a customer, the company sends them an invoice, which the customer pays. There, money comes in. Our main activity is managing the money coming in and going out, or staying put. Of course, that’s really simplifying it. There’s much

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more to it than that. For example, different currencies, discounts, split payment dates, cash management, treasury management, and so on. Is that clear so far?” “Yes, please continue.” “Here in the Finance department, we also have an accounting module that brings all the financial movements together. And each year we produce the financial figures for the annual report. The balance sheet, the statement of income, and the cash flow statement. If you look at that, you’ll see some other areas we’re involved in such as depreciation, assets, property, goodwill, associates, debt, loans, taxes, risks, and suchlike. We also have financial planning and analysis functions such as strategic planning, budgeting and forecasting. And financial control and audit. So, in a way, you could say that the Finance department is all about money and other financial resources, and has nothing to do with products. We don’t engineer products, we don’t sell them, we don’t produce them, and we don’t service them. But on the other hand, you could say that most of what we do is related to products. For example, the machine number is on an invoice. I saw that you’re going to interview Martin Reich and Frau Kuhn. They’re more in the details. Martin heads our Product Costing Group so he should be able to tell you a lot. For example, he’s involved with new products, Value Engineering and Value Analysis. Lisa works on major new projects and ventures, preparing financial and action plans. I also saw you were going to ask about our documents, but we have so many I don’t know what would be useful for you. Perhaps you can ask Martin Reich and Frau Kuhn. They’re more into the details than me.” Frau Klumpf paused. Jane thought for a moment, then asked if Frau Klumpf had any questions for her. “I’d love to see a copy of your report. It would be very helpful for me, and others in Finance, to see what happens with our products, from wherever they start to wherever they end. We don’t have that overall picture. Do you think it will be possible to see your report?” “I don’t know,” replied Jane. “I’ll have to ask Dr. Bender. Thank you for taking the time to see me. You’ve been very helpful.” * Jane looked at her watch. The next interview wasn’t until 15:40 so she had plenty of time to go back to the Container, complete her notes and start organising the documents that people had given her. As she had to go past Dr. Bender’s office, she could stop and ask Frau Mueller if Fritz was available. Unfortunately, he wasn’t, he was in a meeting with Dr. Bender, and unlikely to be back before 16:00. Frau Mueller asked if there was there anything she could do. “Thank you for asking,” said Jane. “But it can wait until he gets back.” * Jane went back to the Container. Still no computer. She looked at the stacks of documents on the tables. Then decided her notes of the meeting with Frau Klumpf had priority. At 15:25 the notes were finished. Jane went over to the piles of documents. Now which one is which, she wondered. She realised she should put a department

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name on each heap. And she’d label each document with a site number, a department name, and a running document number. This would be Site 1, Hanover would be Site 2. The first document that Dr. Wimmer had given her would be 1, Mktg, 1. And the next was 1, Mktg, 2. But then she saw it was time to go for the next interview. Lianne Jansen. Fortunately, she was on Dr. Bender’s corridor, only a couple of minutes away. * Jane waited until precisely 15:40, then knocked on Lianne Jansen’s door. She heard someone say, “Hello,” so went in. “Hello, Frau Jansen. I’m here to interview you for the MPL project. You know about that from Frau Mueller’s mail. My name’s Jane.” “Yes, come in, let’s sit at my table. I want to show you something. And my name’s Lianne not Frau Jansen.” “OK, Lianne. I start the interview by asking people to tell me about their main product-related activities.” Lianne laughed, “I don’t know that I can tell you much. I only joined Mayer recently, and I’ve spent most of my time on Induction Courses and Executive Development Courses. When I saw the mail announcing the interview, I asked myself how I could best help you. I decided that I should show you the job description I was sent by a head-hunter. It listed four areas, although there are just three main ones. That’s what I wanted to show you. I think it gives a good summary of the Quality activities here.” “Thank you, that will be helpful.” “Here’s the first one,” said Lianne. “Responsible for development and maintenance of Mayer’s Quality Management System, QMS, including Quality Assurance and Quality Control. Develop and maintain the Quality Manual, standards, guidelines, policies, procedures and forms. Develop and maintain business process descriptions. Develop and maintain the Quality Intranet. Ensure compliance of the Quality system with regulatory requirements and company objectives. Lead continuous improvement initiatives. Promote best practices across Mayer.” Lianne paused. “OK so far?” “I’m not a Quality expert,” said Jane. “But that’s all about the QMS isn’t it? Not specifically about products.” “Right. Now the second one. Promote a culture of Quality within Mayer. Lead the Quality Team. Represent the Quality Department. Report Quality key performance indicators. Chair the Quality Council. Hire top Quality talent. Train site Quality leaders.” “OK,” said Jane. “I can kind of see what that’s about. Again, not specifically about products. What’s the third one?” “Responsible for resolution of Quality complaints related to products, parts, raw materials, and equipment. Establish a common Risk Management approach including applicable applications. Performance of root cause analysis and initiation of CAPA, corrective and preventive actions.” “Ah,” said Jane. “That’s mainly product-related. I’d like to know more about that.” “I saw you’re going to interview Jochen Tempel. He’ll be able to tell you about all that. He’s a world-class expert. And the fourth on the list is that I’m Responsible for Quality audits at suppliers. Again, Jochen could tell you about that.”

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“That’s good,” said Jane. “Is there anything else you want to tell me?” “I can’t think of anything for now. Thank you for coming to see me.” “Thank you for being so helpful.” * Jane was pleased with that interview. It was short, and she was starting to get tired with all these interviews. She doubted she could have handled anything longer. Also, it meant she could talk to Fritz. She knocked at Frau Mueller’s door, and went in. “Hello Jane, still standing?” “Of course, Frau Mueller. After everything you did to organise my work, I can’t give up so easily. Six interviews completed. Only about another hundred left! I was even hoping I could have a meeting with Fritz now.” “He went home. Is it anything I can help with? Or can it wait until tomorrow? He’s usually here at 7:45 am.” “Thanks for offering, but it’s probably best to wait for tomorrow. I’ll go over to the Container now. One thing, though, tomorrow morning I see Dr. Walther, Frau Rosen and Klaus Becker. Where can I find them? And would you sign my visitor sheet please?” “Dr. Walther is on the fifth floor of the IT Building. Frau Rosen and Klaus Becker are in this building, one floor down.” * Back in the Container, Jane thought about her next steps. Still no computer, but she was up-to-date with her notes. She’d already started 1, Mktg, 1 and 1, Mktg, 2, so first she’d finish labelling the Marketing documents. Then she’d do the documents from Mr. Ramsberger, then those from Mr. Pfeiffer, and finally those from Mr. Sauer. Then she’d write down the subjects for tomorrow’s discussion with Fritz: the computer and the printer; After-Sales visits; a report for Frau Klumpf; office locations for the interview list; and a coffee machine. Then she’d add Martin Reich, Lisa Kuhn and Jochen Tempel to the list of interviewees. And then she’d go back to Gasthaus Adler and relax. * When Jane had finished everything, she went back to Gasthaus Adler. She’d been working almost non-stop for nine hours, so she told herself to walk slowly and appreciate the lovely weather. When she got back, she’d take a shower, go for a quick walk round the village, then come back, analyse the day’s interviews, and have something to eat. But as it was so warm, she decided to change the plan. First, go down to the village, and relax a while with an apple juice. Then go back to Gasthaus Adler, shower and eat. * By the time she got to the dining room at Gasthaus Adler, it looked as if most of the guests had finished their meals. The two young Germans at the table next to hers were still there though.

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“Hello, here’s today’s menu.” “Thank you, Sonja.” “What would you like to drink?” “A mineral water without gas, please.” “And two beers for us,” said one of the guys at the next table. “Very good,” said Sonja. “Two beers for you.” Jane looked at the menu. She was feeling hungry after the long day. Lentil soup looked good. But she didn’t recognise the main course. Sonja came back and served the two beers. Then she came over to Jane with the mineral water. “Thank you. I’d like the lentil soup please, but I don’t know this word. What is it?” “A stew with different kinds of meat and vegetables.” “Thank you. I’ll try that. It’s always good to eat vegetables.” Jane drank some mineral water and looked out the window. It was a lovely evening. She couldn’t help overhearing the two guys at the next table. It was their last evening here, and they were celebrating it. They seemed to be trying to outdo each other with stories of installation problems. She thought of telling them she was a customer of Mayer and, after hearing such stories would cancel the order. But then she thought it was better to just listen and include the examples in her report. Sonja brought her soup, and one of the guys asked her if the TV room was free. When she replied that it was, they took their beers and went there. Jane smiled at Sonja and raised her eyebrows. “Better they’re happy,” replied Sonja.

Chapter 4

Wednesday 5 June

Jane was woken by the alarm at 6:20 am. She went down for breakfast at 7:00. Just like the previous day, she seemed to be last. She said, “Good Morning” to the room in general. Everyone replied, “Good Morning.” Frau Adler came in and asked her if everything was in order. Had she slept well? “Yes, thank you, Frau Adler. Everything in order.” Jane went over to the buffet and poured an orange juice. There was a new type of cheese this morning. She cut herself a chunk. Yesterday she’d felt a bit hungry when talking to Mr. Pfeiffer, so decided to take three pieces of bread. Back at her table she poured herself a cup of coffee. She needed to keep hydrated and keep her energy levels up. She had another long day ahead of her. By 7:25, she’d finished her breakfast, gone to her room, made sure everything was ready, and left. * Jane arrived at the factory gatehouse window at about 7:35 and showed Mr. Schwanemann her badge. “Good Morning. It’s me again. Today I have a meeting with Dr. Walther at 8:00, but first I’m going to Dr. Bender’s office.” Mr. Schwanemann took her badge and looked through his sheaf of papers in the box by the window. “Yes, that’s right. Here’s your visitor sheet for today. Please sign and date it before you leave. And get Mr. Beck or Frau Mueller to sign it as well. You know the way to Dr. Bender’s office I think?” “Yes, thank you.” * Frau Mueller’s office door was open, so Jane knocked, went in and said, “Good Morning.”

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. Stark, Product Lifecycle Management (Volume 5), Decision Engineering, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46887-2_4

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Dr. Bender was with Frau Mueller, but there was no sign of Fritz. “Hello Jane,” said Dr. Bender. “How are you today? Who are you going to interview now? How did it go yesterday?” “Good Morning, Dr. Bender, all’s well. I was looking for Fritz, but I see he’s not here. I’m on my way to interview Dr. Walther. I’ll see Fritz at lunchtime, perhaps.” * Jane found her way over to the IT Building and went up to the fifth floor. She walked down the corridor, looking at the names on each door. After passing several empty conference rooms she found Dr. Walther’s office and knocked on the door. “Yes?” “Hello, Dr. Walther. I’m here to interview you for the MPL project. You know about that from Frau Mueller’s mail. My name’s Jane. I’m trying to find out what happens with Mayer’s products. Starting from wherever they start. Going all the way through to wherever they end. I usually start by asking people about their main activities.” “Very well. I’ll start with my most important activity. Firstly, within Mayer I’m a strategic business leader, a driver of change and transformation, a trusted partner for other top executives. Secondly, I’m currently formulating a vision and devising a road map towards Industry 4.0-based competitive advantage and the digital future. That’s very important. As you may know, Industry 4.0 is the fourth industrial revolution. It’s the successor to three previous massive industrial revolutions. They were due to mechanisation, electricity and IT. Industry 4.0 results from the convergence of the physical world and the virtual world in the form of cyber-physical systems. It’s disruptive. It leads to numerous innovations such as connected Smart Products. It enables a digital world in which all parts of a company, its suppliers, its customers and its products are connected together over communications networks. Industry 4.0 will bring many new business models and opportunities. For example, ‘pay-peruse’ of products, mass customisation of products with autonomous self-configuring factories producing with batch sizes of one, online sales of products and services, the Internet of Things, and the Internet of Services. The third main activity would be leading the IT team in the technological support of everyone in Mayer worldwide. As you can see, it’s an important role.” Jane realised her mistake and tried again. “Thank you, yes, very important. Next, would you tell me about your main product-related activities please?” The CIO shook his head, “These days our focus isn’t on individual products. We’re oriented to complete platform-based solutions. The whole industry is moving that way.” Again, Jane saw she wasn’t being clear enough. She tried again with machine instead of product. “And could you tell me about your main machine-related activities?” “We do have some machines on site here and in India. The Operations Group manages them. That’s Ravi Kumar. You should talk to him about that. But we’re increasingly Cloud-based.”

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Jane decided to pass on the first question. However, she saw an opportunity to ask about something on her mind. “What about PCs on this site?” “That may be Ravi, he’s responsible for technology acquisition. Or it could be Service, that’s Robert Storm’s area, the Help Desk Group. He’s English. But you’re American I think?” Jane made a note to pass this information on to Fritz. “No, I’m English. I think Ravi and Robert are both on my list of interviewees, so I can follow up with them. Let me check, I’m due to see the Operations Director, the ERP Manager, the Business Analysis Manager, the Software Architect Leader, the Head of Programming and the Help Desk Manager.” “Yes, Ravi runs day-to-day IT operations. He oversees our infrastructure to ensure optimal performance. He makes sure we select, procure and implement appropriate technology. And he builds deep partnerships with our IT providers. Robert’s Group is highly appreciated. They provide in-depth guidance to all end users in the company. The Business Analysis Manager helps streamline and add value for the departments and optimise their strategic benefits. The Software Architect Leader plans and oversees effective IT projects. The Programming Group designs and customises solutions and platforms to improve customer experience.” Jane hesitated. Dr. Walther hadn’t mentioned any product-related activities, so she decided to skip the questions about documents and data. She moved on to software. “You mentioned that you’re formulating a vision and devising a road map, and leading the IT team. What kind of software do you use for that?” “Nothing special, company-standard word processing and presentation software.” “My next questions are about issues and improvement suggestions. Could you tell me about two key issues you face?” Dr. Walther thought for a moment. “It’s a great question. I’d have to say that my main concern is the lack of understanding of IT among top people in this company. Unfortunately, that’s slowing our Industry 4.0 thrust. My second issue is that there’s been an unwillingness here to invest in IT. According to market analysts, however they look at IT spend, whether as a percentage of revenue, or per user, ours is way below average. Yet with this company’s ambitions, it needs to be well above average.” “Thank you, and what would your improvement suggestions be?” Again Dr. Walther thought for a moment. “That’s an important question. My belief is that Dr. Bender has some important decisions to take. They’ll be key to the future of the company.” “Thank you, Dr. Walther, one last question. You mentioned the digital future. Have you implemented Digital Twins and Digital Threads?” “That’s a great question. Not yet, but they will be in our road map towards the digital future.” “Thank you, Dr. Walther,” said Jane. “You’ve been very helpful. Do you have any questions for me?” “When do you think your results will be available? They could be useful for the vision I’m developing.”

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“Next month, I hope, but the exact date depends on Dr. Bender. I’ll ask him and let you know. Once again, thank you.” * Jane didn’t have a good feeling about the interview with Dr. Walther, but didn’t have time to think about it in detail. She needed to get back to the Container and work on her notes. But first, she’d see if Fritz was available. She went to Frau Mueller’s office. Perhaps he’d be there. “No, Jane. I’m sorry but he’s with Dr. Bender. They have many meetings today. Can I help you with something?” Jane explained about the missing PC. “I understand,” said Frau Mueller. “I’ll send Fritz a message, and he can follow up. But how do you manage without it?” Jane waved her pad, “For interviews I prefer the old-fashioned way, but I need the PC to organise all the documents that people give me. Thank you for your help.” * The next interview wasn’t until 9:20, so Jane had time to go back to the Container and work on her notes from the Dr. Walther interview. She corrected a few things and added others. However, it still looked flimsy. But it was a true record of the interview. And, if she left now, hopefully she could have a coffee in Frau Mueller’s office before the interview with the Head of the Human Resources Department. * Jane knocked at Frau Rosen’s door at 9:20. No answer. What did that mean? Was Frau Rosen not there? Or maybe she was with someone? Maybe she was firing someone? Jane wondered what to do. She decided to wait 30 s then knock again. This time she heard “Come in.” “Hello, Frau Rosen. I’m here to interview you for the MPL project. You know about that from Frau Mueller’s mail. My name’s Jane.” “Yes, but before we start, I need to talk to you about your visitor sheet. Do sit down. I see you didn’t date it before leaving yesterday.” Jane looked at her, surprised, and not knowing what to say, didn’t reply. “It’s important. If there’s an emergency we need to know who’s on the site, and we need to know where you are, so it’s important to sign and date your visitor sheet when you leave.” Jane wondered what to say, then thought the quickest way to end this was to agree. “Oh, I’m sorry, it won’t happen again. Of course I understand this is important.” “Good. Now shall we start the interview?” “Yes. The reason for the interview is that Dr. Bender asked me to find out what happens with Mayer’s products. Starting from wherever they start. Going all the way through to wherever they end. I usually start by asking people about their main product-related activities.” “Well, yes, but I don’t have anything to do with Mayer’s products. This is the Human Resources Department.”

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“Could you tell me then about your main activities?” “Yes, of course. At the highest level, there’s the development and implementation of Mayer’s HR strategy. Then there’s the development, coaching, and leadership of the HR department, continuously improving it, and managing HR projects.” Frau Rosen paused, and asked, “Before I get to the other activity, have you heard anything product-related so far?” “Not for the moment. Please continue with the other activity.” “This is to establish, implement, monitor and maintain Human Resources policies and related documents, in line with best practice and employment law that support Mayer’s business goals and strategy in alignment with strategic objectives, standards and philosophy. Here are some examples of the procedures, perhaps you’ll recognise some of them as product-related. Advertising, advice and support for managers, apprentices, attracting high potential talent, avoidance of burn-out, bullying and other unacceptable behaviour, canteen operations, capacity planning, departmental recruitment liaison, diversity and inclusion, EHS Lead, Employee Association, employee lifecycle management, employee relations, employee work-related concerns, family allowances, full-time equivalent FTE, head-hunters, health, HR budget, installation and reinstallation indemnities, insurance, interns, interviews, job descriptions, key competencies, mandatory development programs, maternity leave, merit evaluation, monitoring of learning, organisational development, organisational planning, overtime, pensions, Pensioners’ Association, people performance and development, preretirement programmes, prevention and settlement of internal disputes, prevention of alcoholism, public holidays, recruitment, retaining top talent, retirement preparation, salary and benefits packages, shift working, site buildings and infrastructure, site visitors, skills matrices, social facilities, social security, Sports Centre, stress management, sustainability, talent and succession planning, termination, training, Training Centre, travel allowances, and vacation. That’s not a complete list, but it gives you an idea of our activities. I’ve printed out copies of some of them for you to look at. Was there anything in the list you thought could be product-related?” “You mentioned skills matrices. That could be one. And another could perhaps be sustainability. But I should read the procedures to see exactly what’s there. At this point of the interview, I usually ask about product-related documents and systems, but that doesn’t seem appropriate for HR. Actually, I think I should stop now. But do you have any questions for me?” “Not at the moment. But I look forward to your report. It should be extremely useful for educating new employees.” “Thank you very much for your help.” * The 10:40 interview was in the same building. It was with Klaus Becker. His office was on the same floor as Frau Rosen’s, she remembered. But she needed a break, she’d go back to the Container, label the HR procedures, and put them in their place. But first, she’d check if Fritz was available. Unfortunately, he wasn’t. *

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Klaus Becker’s office was two doors further down the corridor after Frau Rosen’s. It was open, so Jane knocked and introduced herself. “Hello Jane, come in, come in. I’m Klaus Becker. Do sit down, I’ve been waiting for you. I hope I can help you. This project is very important. Where do we start?” “Usually I start by asking people about their main product-related activities, but from the organisation chart it wasn’t clear to me what you do. Sorry, that’s not meant to be rude. It seems you have several Groups. Legal, IP, Patent, Portfolio Management, Purchasing, CFO and CIO. But I’ve already seen Frau Klumpf and Dr. Walther and they didn’t mention you.” “To be honest, my position on the organisation chart is mainly a place-holder. Personally, my function is Portfolio Management. The other people are part of the Corporate Department, but they don’t report to me.” “That’s clearer. I’ll just ask you about your main product-related activities in Portfolio Management. What are they?” “I should start by telling you that my post was only created recently. Just to be clear, it addresses Mayer’s product portfolio, not its financial portfolio. And it addresses Mayer’s product portfolio globally, not just for this site. The scope of the product portfolio is all our existing products and all those in development. Worldwide. Again, it’s for all our sites. The objective is to continuously increase the value of the product portfolio while keeping the products aligned with Mayer’s business strategy. I said that my post was only recently created, so one of my activities is actually to set up the Corporate Product Portfolio Management entity. That includes developing the strategy, defining governance, hiring people, creating procedures and templates, selecting applications, and the rest.” “That sounds challenging.” “It is. There are four lines of focus. First, address any duplication in the portfolio. Duplication would be wasteful. It could be due to similar machines being developed on more than one site. Also, identify any low-performing products, with a view to removing them from the portfolio. Second, address the spare part stock. When you look at all our sites together, we have far too much spare part inventory. Again, that’s wasteful.” “It sounds as if those two activities should save money, or free it up, depending on how you look at it.” “That’s right, but the other two activities have a different focus. The third activity is to identify gaps in the product portfolio. Then we can prioritise and launch development projects to fill those gaps. The fourth activity is Technology and Market Watch. That’s all about keeping an eye on emerging technologies that are important for us and our customers, and bringing those technologies on board at the appropriate time. And watching the competitive landscape to see which technologies our competitors are prioritising. And which new markets we should enter. That may sound easy, but we have limited resources, so we can’t do everything. We have to prioritise our activities.” “You said you’re not looking at the financial portfolio, but presumably the portfolio management approach is similar?”

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“I’m not sure if that’s completely true, perhaps it is up to a point. You could say we’re looking to remove low-value assets and bring in valuable assets with the objective of increasing portfolio value. We’re taking a strategic view to look both for market opportunities and better ways to allocate Mayer’s resources.” “You mentioned procedures, could I have a copy of them?” “Of course. They’re only drafts at the moment, but they’ll give you an idea of what we’ll be doing. We’ll have between ten and twenty. Product performance evaluation, risk identification and management, prioritisation, optimising resource allocation, measuring Return on Investment, and on and on.” “Thank you. You also mentioned templates?” “Yes, they’re also still under development, but I can give you some. These are for bubble chart diagrams. A lot of balls. Very colourful!” “Thank you. Just two more questions. First about any issues you have, and then improvement areas. But I’m not sure how relevant that is as you’re just starting out.” “On issues, from past experience we’re aware of several. For example, the difficulty of comparing several proposed projects, especially when people use different methods to justify them. And the difficulty of identifying the relative priorities and sequence of projects. Another issue is having more projects than available resources. And another is starting projects but cancelling them before commercialisation. Another is having many low-performing products in the portfolio. Is that enough, or would you like some more?” “That’s a good list to start with. And improvement areas?” “We’ve identified several. For example, standardising reports so everyone can get familiar with them and get most value from them. Using standard templates to describe and compare projects and products. Including support for financial justification of projects and products. Applying standard performance indicators for products and projects.” Jane looked at her watch. 11:30. She’d overrun. But she felt this interview had been useful. Oh no, she’d missed the question about computer systems. “I’m sorry I have one last question, which applications do you use?” “We have a mix. The usual systems that everyone in the company has. Then we need access to the ERP system, because all the products are in there, with all the data about sales. And access to the PDM system, as there’s a lot of product data in there. And we’re looking for a Product Portfolio Management application but haven’t decided yet what to acquire.” “Thank you, Mr. Becker. You’ve been very helpful. I’d better go now so that you can have lunch. Just to keep you informed, I’m due to see the Legal, IP, Patent, and Purchasing Group Managers in coming days.” “That’s great. I’m sure they’ll all be very helpful.” * Jane headed upstairs to see if Fritz was there. As usual, no sign of him. Frau Mueller asked if she could do anything to help. “It would be kind if you would pass a few requests to him. First, I still haven’t received my PC. Second, could he update the list of interviews with office numbers

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and locations for each interviewee? And third, please ask him to remove the Corporate Group’s CIO and CFO Group Leaders from the interview list. And finally, could he arrange for me to see the Help Desk Group Leader tomorrow at 9:20 am? Somebody Storm.” “Jane, I’ll ask him to check on the PC, but I’ll update the interview list myself. I can do that now. It will only take me a few minutes.” “Thank you very much. I’m going to drop these procedures off in the Container, then go for lunch. I’ll see you this afternoon probably.” * Jane headed back to the Container. She needed to label the procedures that Mr. Becker had given her. She’d label the first procedure 1, PPM, 1. Then she’d find somewhere for the procedures. And she had to go over the notes that she’d taken of her interview with him, correct anything wrong, and add anything she’d forgotten. When this was done, she headed for the canteen. Arriving, she saw that it was nearly empty. She looked at the menu by the door. Line 2 was crossed out, presumably all gone. Line 1 was pork sausage. She went to the soup counter and saw it was vegetable soup. She took a bowl of that as it was important to stay hydrated. The same lunchlady as before was at Line 1. “Hello, today we have pork sausage, potato and carrots.” “Yes please,” said Jane. “One large sausage, or two small?” “One small please, I have to watch my weight!” Jane picked up a fresh fruit salad and a mineral water. She went over to the cashier and asked for a coffee jeton. “Dr. Bender’s account?” “Yes, Dr. Bender’s account again, please.” “Enjoy your lunch!” Jane went to the same trestle table as the day before. As she started her soup, she thought about reviewing what she’d heard in the morning’s interviews. But who’d been first this morning? She couldn’t remember. In that case, she’d better relax and focus on enjoying her lunch. * By the time Jane got back to the Container it was 12:45. She wasn’t sure where to go for the 13:00 interview. It was with Hans Guenther, Group Leader for Product Management Area 1. After that she was due to meet Angela Kreitz from Product Management Area 2. And then Ulrich Beck. * Frau Mueller wasn’t in her office, but had left a new version of the interview list on her table. The new list showed that Hans Guenther’s office was two floors down. “Great, I’ll be there on time!” *

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Jane knocked at Mr. Guenther’s door. “Come in. Hello, I’m Hans Guenther. I guess you’re here to interview me for the MPL project. Super idea to document what happens to our products, all the way through from wherever they start to wherever they end. How can I help?” “Yes, that’s right, I’m Jane. First, please tell me about your job here.” “I’m the Group Leader for Product Management Area 1. I’m the product owner and the product spokesperson for five of Mayer’s product families. I don’t know if you’re aware of them, but they’re the 1000 Series, the 2000 Series, the 3000, the 4000 and the 5000. There are four or five machines in each family. These are all machines that make metal parts for our customers. The objective I’ve been set is to increase profitability of the existing products, and drive existing product improvements and new product initiatives.” “Thank you. And what are your main product-related activities?” “My first activity is to support our sales face, making sure they’re fully-trained and have the best information, full and up-to-date, when they’re in front of the prospect or customer. For that, we write a monthly report on each family, and distribute it to the sales force. The report is based on our latest understanding of customer needs and of what competitors are doing. That requires us to meet with customers, attend relevant trade shows, run focus groups, roundtables and surveys, read trade publications, and track social media. We also review monthly sales figures, and the product pricing strategy, to optimise prices and discounts. Towards the end of the month, we review and analyse market trends, customer needs, feature requests, complaints and the like. And then we write the report and get it to the sales force, so they’re in the best situation possible in front of the customer or prospect.” “Thank you. And the second product-related activity?” “The second activity is oriented towards market communication, for example web content, our product catalogue, marketing brochures, PowerPoint presentations, support brochures, freebies, video case studies, banner ads and Press Releases. Again, that’s on-going, something we revisit every week. Then, third, we develop and maintain overall product roadmaps for the five families, showing the plan for new functions and features. And finally, our fourth activity is to pass on to Dr. Fischer any new use-cases and requirements we get from customers.” “Thank you. That’s very clear. And what documents and data do you create or use in those activities.” “I thought you might ask that, so I printed out a copy of our procedures for you. I thought you could read them later. There are more than fifty, and reading them is the best way to understand them. I’ve also prepared you copies of templates for some of our other sales and marketing documents.” “Thank you. Yes, I’ll look at them later. But, as I’m here, I prefer you to give me your view. And what other documents do you create or use?” “Have you heard of the company’s ERP system?” “Yes.” “We get various reports from the ERP system, such as weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual sales reports for the products. And have you heard of the company’s CRM system?”

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“Not in detail.” “The Customer Relationship Management system. It’s our main sales and marketing system. It has many functions. You should ask our Super User, Maria Schuster, for the details. But just to give you an idea, there’s contact management, opportunity and lead tracking, account management, proposal management, sales pipeline management, document management, access to customer data, workflow automation, campaign management, routine and special reports, analysis of customer behaviour, forecasting, dashboards. I don’t know how many different types of document it produces. A lot, anyway. Are you going to interview Maria?” “From memory, she’s not on my list, but I’ll check later. Finally, two more questions. First, do you have any frequent product-related issues?” Mr. Guenther thought about it for a moment, “We’re doing well in Product Management Area 1, sales are rising steadily. The only issue is maybe with bringing new products to market. Engineering takes too long. We’re doing well with the current products.” “Thank you. And the final question. Do you have any product-related improvement suggestions?” “Following on from the issue, it would be great to get more new products to market.” “Thank you. That’s all from my side. Is there anything you’d like to ask me about MPL?” “I’d like to see the results. When do you think they’ll be available?” “I don’t know, I expect Dr. Bender will decide that. But I’m only here until Friday July 19. Thank you for meeting me.” * 13:38. Not bad timing, thought Jane, as she headed back to the Container. She could write up the interview notes and do some procedure labelling before the next interview. But, arriving back at the Container, she remembered that Mr. Guenther had given her copies of some templates for other sales and marketing documents. She decided to start by examining them. These weren’t procedures, these were just templates for forms and reports. She didn’t want them to get mixed up with the procedures. She’d have to change the document labelling. The first Marketing procedure from this site would be 1, 1, Mktg, 1. The first Marketing form from this site would be 1, 2, Mktg, 1. She set to work. * 40 min later, Jane was outside Angela Kreitz’s door, ready to knock. But she heard a phone ring, and someone talking. She decided to wait until the call was over. Then she knocked. Angela Kreitz came to the door, “Hello?” “Hello, I’m here to interview you for the MPL project. My name’s Jane. I guess you’ll have heard about the interview in a mail from Frau Mueller.” “Oh, yes, do come in and sit down. What can I help you with?” “I usually start by asking about your product-related activities.”

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“OK, well I’m the Group Leader for Product Management Area 2. We’re like customer representatives for two Mayer product families. The AX family and the FX family. There are multiple machines in each family. They’re all machines that make plastic products or components for our customers. Now, our product-related activities. As Product Managers, we focus on individual products. That could mean an additional machine for one of the families to address a new need. Or it could mean an expansion such as a new module for an existing product, an existing machine. Either way, the objective is to respond to a market opportunity that we’ve identified. There are usually six steps. First, we’re continuously surveying and analysing market, customer, competitor, regulatory and technology trends to identify new opportunities for products. Second, when we think we’ve spotted an opportunity, we review it in the context of the product roadmap, business requirements and the company’s financial guidelines. We also review the opportunity with target customers to see if it will really bring customer satisfaction. In the third step, we clarify the product/service requirements in all areas. Such as pricing structure, margin, features, functionality, packaging, test plans, documentation, communication, demos, launch, training, and quality. Fourthly, we identify possible alternative ways to address the opportunity, taking account of the company’s resources and objectives. Fifth, we create business plan scenarios and make recommendations to executives. We suggest a go-to-market plan and appropriate resources. Sixth, if the executives give the go-ahead for one of the scenarios, we secure support from other stakeholders. And we lead a cross-functional team to enable on-time, on-budget delivery of the new product or module.” “That’s great, but please give me some time to make sure I’ve got all that noted. Then, I’ll move on to the next question.” “By the looks of things, you’re going to finish up with a lot of notes!” “That’s very likely! Now that I understand the activities, the next question is about the product-related documents and data you create or use in those activities.” “First, here’s a copy of our SOPs for you. As for the product-related documents and data we create or use, there must be at least thirty of them. There’s a document for everything, there has to be. If there wasn’t, we couldn’t work. It’s the only way to ensure clear communication. I don’t have a list, but I’ll ask one of my team to make a list and send it to you. Would that be OK?” “That would be great!” “Next question, which systems and databases do you use?” “Wow, what a question! There must be at least thirty of them as well. We have applications for everything. We have everything from big Mayer systems like ERP, CRM and PDM, down to all the usual desktop productivity tools like word processing software, spreadsheet software and presentation software. We have web and mobile apps, and social technology tools. No, we must have more than thirty systems. We’ve probably got more than fifty. Let me get one of the team to get that list for you as well. What’s next?” “Only two more questions, both quite simple. First, do you have any frequent product-related issues?” “I guess it depends what you mean by product-related. And issues.” “I don’t understand,” said Jane. “What do you mean?”

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“Well there are issues with products, such as a particular machine on a customer site breaking down every day. That’s quite an issue! But there are also other product-related issues such as product development projects failing. And there are also product-related issues such as mistakes in product requirements, and errors transferring product data between the Engineering Department and the Production Department.” “OK,” said Jane thoughtfully. “Thanks for pointing that out. I’ll have to rethink that question. And now the final question. Do you have any product-related improvement suggestions?” Frau Kreitz thought for a moment, “I guess I should give you the same answer. It depends what you mean by product-related.” “Yes,” said Jane. “I see, I understand. And that brings the interview to an end. Would you like to ask me anything about the MPL project?” “When will your report be available? It’ll be so helpful. I don’t know what happens to products in other departments.” “I don’t know. Dr. Bender will decide. I’m sorry but I have to leave now, I have one more interview scheduled for today. Thank you for your help. You’ve really got me thinking now.” “It was a pleasure. We’ll get those lists over to you by the end of the week.” * Jane walked slowly back to the Container. She felt bad. Before the interview with Angela Kreitz, she’d felt that things were going well. Suddenly she felt overwhelmed. All these people seemed to have dozens of procedures, dozens of product documents, dozens of applications. No wonder Dr. Bender wanted someone to find out what was happening with Mayer’s products. He was new here, he didn’t know. There was no other way for him to find out. It seemed no-one could tell him. Everyone just knew what happened to products in their own area. She got back to the Container. Still no computer. “Don’t despair!” she said out loud to herself. “Be positive, do something useful.” She decided her notes of the meeting with Frau Kreitz had priority. And then, finding a place for her procedures. And adding Maria Schuster to the list of interviewees. Maybe it wasn’t so bad she didn’t have a PC. At least that meant she wasn’t inundated by mails with ever more documents. She noticed it was time to go for the 15:40 interview, Ulrich Beck. Fortunately, it was the last interview of the day. Was he going to give her another stack of procedures? * Jane knocked on Mr. Beck’s door. “Come on in. I’m Ulrich Beck. I run the New Markets Group.” “Hello, I’m here to interview you for the MPL project. My name’s Jane. You’ll have heard about the interview in a mail from Frau Mueller. First question, what does your Group’s name mean?” “Well, this has been the New Markets Group for the last ten years. It was set up before I joined the company, but I’ve heard the company was thinking of getting into

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composites and Additive Manufacturing, or Rapid Prototyping or 3D Printing as it was called at the time. Anyway, what I can I help you with?” “I usually start by asking about your product-related activities.” “This is a group of Product Managers. Our activity is product management.” “I expect you have some working procedures.” “Yes, here they are. I printed out this set for you.” Jane looked at yet another stack of procedures. She remembered that Dr. Bender had said she shouldn’t start by asking for procedures, but should ask what people actually did. “Thank you. I’ll look at them later. But, as I’m here, perhaps you could tell me very briefly what you do. If I understand right, the input for Product Managers comes from customers and the market, and their output goes to the Engineering Department. Is that how it is for you?” “No. I have to tell you some more background. When the New Markets Group was set up, the Engineering Department was overloaded and unable to cope with all the demand. So it was decided that we, sorry, the New Markets Group, would work with external Engineering services companies. They would do the work normally done by the Engineering Department and, when they’d finished, they’d hand over their designs to the Production Department.” “Oh, OK. A kind of outsourcing?” “Yes,” said Mr. Beck. “It started like that, and it’s continued like that.” “And how does it work today?” “We work with customers. We understand what they want, then we write a Product Requirements Document. That goes to tender. An external Engineering services company is selected to do the work. They do the same work that the Engineering Department would have done, and produce the required deliverables. That could be wiring diagrams, electronic circuit designs, software, 3D CAD models, manuals and the like.” “My next question is usually about the product-related data and documents, but I’m not sure how that applies to you.” “On the input side, coming from the customers, we get various data and documents. We do a lot of analysis, which is documented. We define the requirements in detail, leading to the Product Requirements Document. We review the deliverables from the services company.” “That’s very interesting. Would it be possible for you to send me examples and templates of these documents?” “Yes.” “My next question is about the computer systems you use. Presumably, there are a lot!” “Yes, we have quite a few, but we need them to be able to communicate in many directions. To and from the markets and customers. To and from the Engineering services companies. To and from Mr. Pfeiffer’s Production Department and the other departments here that may be involved, such as the Purchasing Department.” “Would it be possible for you to send me a list of your systems?” “Yes, we have a list somewhere. Anything else?”

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“Just two more questions. First, do you have any frequent product-related issues? And second, do you have any product-related improvement suggestions?” Mr. Beck thought about it for a moment. “One area that’s sometimes an issue is changes to requirements. Requirements are massively important for us, so we do everything to get them right. But some changes are always needed. We don’t have a good system for managing changes to requirements.” “Thank you. And do you have any product-related improvement suggestions?” “I could say we should get a good requirements management system, but you know that already. What else?” He thought about it for a moment. “Another area where the Group could do better is Market Intelligence. We don’t have enough resources. It would be great if we could share Market Intelligence with the other Marketing Groups, but I don’t know if it’s possible.” “Before I go, do you have any questions about the MPL project?” “No. I’m convinced it’s a great project. I’m looking forward to the results. Here we work with the product at its beginning. It would be good to see what happens with it later.” “Great. Thank you for your help, Mr. Beck.” “A pleasure. I’ll get those lists over to you ASAP.” * Jane went back to the Container, exhausted. It had been a long day. What did she have to do now? Update her notes of Mr. Beck’s interview. Unload his procedures and label them. That was enough. Once that was done, she went to Frau Mueller’s office to get her visitor sheet signed and dated. “Another thing, Frau Mueller,” said Jane. “Have you sent out the interview mails for next week?” “No, I was waiting for your agreement.” “I’d like to change it a little.” “Right. What do you want to say?” “I’d like the interviewee to send me a copy of their product-related procedures before the meeting. And a copy of the product-related documents they create or use. That way, I won’t have to carry stacks of paper around with me. And hopefully, by next week I’ll have a printer in the Container. Would you be able to send that out tomorrow for next week’s interviews, so people have time to prepare?” “Yes. No problem. Still no PC?” “No, but I live in hope. Thank you for everything Frau Mueller.” * At last Jane was on her way back to the Adler, dog-tired and unsure if she was making progress. She told herself to breathe deeply for a while, and then focus on her objective. After a few deep breaths, she noticed it was a lovely day. Once again blue sky, sunshine, warm. “Now, what’s your objective?” she asked herself. “I have to write a research report for my MBA,” she replied. “And,” she asked. “Have you found a company to work with, and have you started the research?” “Well, yes.”

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“And is it making progress?” “Well, yes.” “So, what’s your problem?” “Nothing really. I just need to relax and stay calm.” “So why not go to the village and have a wiessbier in the beer garden?” “Good idea!” * Relaxing in the beer garden with her wiessbier, Jane looked at the messages she’d received. Mum was well, and the weather in Somerset was good. She replied that the weather here was good, she was well, but very busy. One of her friends in London still hadn’t found a company for her research project and was panicking. Jane told her to calm down and continue contacting companies. She’d find something before long. Another said she wasn’t making progress with her research as nobody in the company would talk to her. Lucky you, thought Jane, if only you knew what it was like when everyone talked to you. * By the time Jane had finished answering her messages, gone back to Gasthaus Adler and showered, it was 18:45. Evening mealtime was from 18:00 to 21:30, but it seemed as if most people ate early. Today, there was only one other guest still in the dining room. “Hello, here’s today’s menu.” “Thank you, Sonja.” “What would you like to drink?” “A mineral water without gas, please.” Jane looked at the menu. She was hungry after all that listening and writing. Beetroot soup. That would be good. Home-made meatballs. That should be interesting. And fresh fruit salad. Sonja came back with the mineral water. “Thank you. I’ll have the menu please, Sonja.” Jane drank some mineral water and looked out the window. She wondered who kept the garden looking so good. Sonja brought her soup, “Enjoy.”

Chapter 5

Thursday 6 June

Jane woke up at 6:30 am and went down to breakfast at about 7:00. Three other tables were occupied, so she said, “Good Morning” to the room in general. Frau Adler came in and asked her if everything was in order. “Yes, thank you, Frau Adler. All’s well this morning.” She poured an orange juice, cut off a chunk of cheese, chose three slices of bread, and went to her table. By 7:40, she’d finished breakfast, collected her things for the day, and left. * Jane arrived at the factory gatehouse window at about 7:50. “Good Morning, Mr. Schwanemann. It’s me again, Jane. Today I have a meeting with Mr. Drzewiczewski at 8:00.” He asked for her badge, then looked through his sheaf of papers in the box by the window. “Yes, that’s right. Here’s your visitor sheet for today. Please sign and date it before you leave. And get Mr. Steller or Frau Mueller to sign it as well. You know the way to his office?” “Yes, thank you.” “Good. I’ll call and let him know you’re coming.” * According to her updated interview list, Mr. Drzewiczewski’s office was not far from Mr. Beck’s. She was there at 7:59 and knocked on the door. “Come in. Hello. I’m Stan. Please take a chair. You’re here to interview me for the MPL project. Understanding what happens to our products from beginning to end. Very important! What do you want to ask me?” Jane was taken aback, she was meant to say that, not him. But she moved to the first question, “Would you tell me about your main product-related activities please?” “One of my main activities is to manage our team of Sales Executives, and make sure we meet targets for product sales. I’m involved in setting the annual strategy and targets based on market research and sales data. I hire and develop team members, and

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. Stark, Product Lifecycle Management (Volume 5), Decision Engineering, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46887-2_5

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analyse sales execs’ productivity. Each month I create various Sales reports and Sales forecasts. We’re always looking both to increase the scope of business and maximise revenue from existing customers and also to make sales to new customers.” “Thank you. And the second activity?” “Selling our products is my other main activity. Over the years, I’ve built an extensive business network, so I can easily visit existing and potential customers, get in front of the right people, understand their individual needs, give presentations about our machines, propose a Mayer solution, and put together a proposal. After that, there are all sorts of negotiations involving the exact terms before the contract is signed. I should add that I’m talking technical sales here. We need to have deep knowledge of the product. And then excel when face to face with the customer. Technical sales is a contact sport.” “Thank you. My next question is about the data and documents you use in those activities.” Stan hesitated, “We’re swamped by documents. We probably have more documents than anyone else in the company. Product catalogues, marketing brochures, engineering data, special configurations, production schedules, price lists, costing information. I don’t have a list, but I can try to make one if that’s helpful.” “Yes please, that would be really helpful. And my next question is about the systems, the applications, you use in those activities.” Stan appeared startled. “What applications?” he said. Then he seemed annoyed. “I’ve never thought about it before, but the answer is probably the same. I’m sure we use more than anyone else in the company. Don’t forget, we’re talking Sales here. To get a sale, we use every known tool in the book. If we foul up, we can lose the sale in the following five seconds. It’s not like Engineering where they work on a timescale of years and, if they make a mistake, take months to correct it. We work in real time. Again, I don’t have a list, but I can try to make one if that’s helpful. It will include CRM and ERP, email campaign management, time tracking, event networking, call logging, pipeline management, social technology apps, sales prioritisation and acceleration, automated meeting scheduling, sales intelligence, prospecting, expense tracking, tools for demos, tools for calculating costs and profit margins, task management, business contact information, specs and features of products.” He paused, “I’ll send you a list.” “Thank you. Just two more questions. First, do you have any frequent productrelated issues?” Stan smiled, “We have plenty of those, but the most frequent is that we don’t have the information we need to answer the customer’s questions, so we ask Engineering for it, but they don’t reply, so we lose the deal. And another frequent issue is that we often have incorrect technical information, so propose something that doesn’t work. Then the customer signs, and a while later we get sued.” “OK. Second question. Do you have any product-related improvement suggestions?” “Solving those two issues would be a great start.”

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“Yes, I can see that. Thank you for your help, Stan. One more thing, would you be able to send me a copy of your product-related working procedures?” “I’ll do my best. If you need anything else, just call me.” “Thank you.” * “Good,” thought Jane. “Another one done.” She went back to the Container and completed her notes from the Stan interview. The next interview wasn’t until 9:20, so she had time to go over to Frau Mueller’s office and hope she’d be invited for a coffee. And then she’d see the Help Desk Group Leader and Barbara Scholz from Marketing Communications. After which it would be lunchtime. Hopefully, she’d be able to arrive in time to check out Line 2. She was in luck. Frau Mueller apologised for the lack of progress with the PC, but offered her a coffee to make up for it. “I spoke to Fritz this morning, but he still has no answer about your computer.” “That’s OK, Frau Mueller. My next interview is with the Help Desk Manager, the Storm person.” “Mr. Storm? Well, tread lightly, he doesn’t have a friendly reputation.” “Don’t worry, Frau Mueller, with your excellent coffee inside me I’ll be OK. I’ll go over to the IT Building now.” * Jane found Mr. Storm’s office without any problems. It was 9:20, so she knocked on the door. After a while, she heard a mumbled “Yes?” She went in. A hard-faced man looked up from his screen, apparently annoyed by the interruption. “What do you want?” Jane told him her name, “I’m here for the interview. About the MPL project. Frau Mueller sent you a mail with the background. You’re Mr. Storm?” He shook his head, “I don’t have time to read every mail people send. What’s this about? Of course I’m Mr. Storm. My name’s on the door, isn’t it?” “I’m working for Dr. Bender. We’re trying to find out what happens with Mayer’s products. Starting from wherever they start. Going all the way through to wherever they end.” Mr. Storm raised his eyebrows. “Doesn’t he know? I thought he was the boss.” “He’s new here. I have about seven questions to ask you in the interview. OK?” “If you must. But I don’t have much time.” “But there’s another question I’d like to ask you, before we start those seven. Mr. Marquardt asked for a PC for me on Monday, but it hasn’t arrived yet. I really need it and thought you might be able to help.” “What’s the ticket number?” “I don’t know.” Mr. Storm’s phone rang. He ignored it. “So how do you expect me to find it?” “It was on Monday morning.” “Do you know how busy we are on a Monday morning? It’s the worst time of the week!”

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“It was from Mr. Marquardt, Fritz Marquardt.” “Marquardt?” Mr. Storm went to another computer, typed something in and looked at the screen. “We only have a Friedrich Marquardt. I’ll look for him.” He came back to his desk, and typed something in. “Yes, there’s a request here from Marquardt on Monday morning.” He looked intently at the screen. “This guy’s an idiot, he’s not filled in the form correctly. Why don’t these idiots read the procedure? Everything’s explained there.” “What’s the problem?” said Jane. “I really need the PC.” Mr. Storm’s phone stopped ringing. “Marquardt’s requested an Executive Group PC for you, but your name’s not in the Executive Group list. Obviously, the system doesn’t know what to do, so it’s waiting for him to fill in the Exception Field. You need to tell him to do that.” “I don’t know where he is. I haven’t seen him since Monday. It would be very helpful if you could do it for me.” “Me? I’m not the end user.” “But don’t you have administrator privileges?” He looked at her and grimaced. “Give me your badge then.” He took the badge and scanned it, “Now I’ll have to do a screen shot, then merge them, so I can print on one page.” “Thank you, that would be very helpful.” He handed her the sheet, “Please now write a request to me to enter the data on the Exception Field on Marquardt’s request. And then sign and date it.” Jane did as she was told, then handed the sheet back. He examined it carefully, “OK, now I need to check something in the procedure.” He went back to his second computer. After a few minutes he said, “OK,” went back to his desk, and pressed a few keys. “That should work, but tell Marquardt to read the user manual and follow the procedure to the letter next time. Anything else you want?” “Thank you very much. Now, coming to the interview, the first question asks about your main activities here in the Help Desk Group.” “Isn’t that obvious? We do things like replying to idiots bleating that they can’t remember their password, or their cat’s eaten their mouse, or they can’t remember their ticket number. It’s unbelievable. All they have to do is read the user manual.” “Does the Help Desk have many procedures?” “Of course, that’s how we know what to do. We have about fifty.” Mr. Storm’s phone rang again. He ignored it. “Do users ask questions about Mayer’s products?” “I don’t understand the question. Why would they do that? We don’t know anything about Mayer’s products. Even our end users should realise that.” Jane decided to skip the next questions and ask if Mr. Storm was faced with any major issues in his job. “Just a few thousand idiots.” “And do you have any improvement suggestions?”

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“Yes. They should read the user manual. I hope that’s all. I need to answer the phone. Goodbye.” “Goodbye, Mr. Storm. Thank you. You’ve been a great help.” * What had Frau Mueller said? ‘Mr. Storm doesn’t have a friendly reputation.’ The understatement of the year, thought Jane but, being positive, hopefully there’d now be progress with her PC. She went back to the Container via Frau Mueller’s office to show she was still alive, and to tell her about the PC. However, Frau Mueller wasn’t there. Jane continued to the Container, but was surprised to see the door open. Hadn’t she shut it? When Jane got to the Container she looked inside and was surprised to see someone taking a PC out of a box. “Hello,” she said. “That was quick.” “Not quite finished, but it should all be ready in the afternoon.” “Thank you in advance. Is it OK if I sit over here and write my notes?” “No problem at all. I’ll try not to disturb you.” * Jane arrived at Barbara Scholz’s office on time at 10:40 and knocked on the door. “Hello, enter!” “Hello, Frau Scholz, I’m here to interview you for the MPL project. My name’s Jane. You know about the interview from Frau Mueller.” “Yes, of course, I’ve been studying the mail. But please sit down, and nobody calls me Frau Scholz. I’m Barbara. From Frau Mueller’s mail it seemed you’ll be asking me about my activities. I dug out a job description that Mr. Kubler wrote. It’s quite long, but it covers everything I do, so should be helpful. Here we go. Develop and execute an integrated marketing communications strategy to achieve target audience engagement. Manage the MarCom budget. Develop the media plan and calendar for all internal and external communications. Lead the MarCom team. Assess current MarCom materials, update or archive as appropriate. Obtain input from customers as a basis for vibrant new material. Generate compelling content and effective promotional materials to support the MarCom strategy. Identify the appropriate channels to reach target groups and feed these channels captivating content. Develop all marketing collateral, including both traditional and digital, such as materials, print advertising, presentations and other marketing communications for product launches, campaigns, promotions, and other marketing efforts as well as for sales meetings and tradeshows. Develop plans for key tradeshows and events to build on product promotions and generate leads. Attend relevant events. Develop and optimise Mayer’s websites, e-marketing tools, digital advertising and social media channels. Ensure all MarCom material adheres to Mayer branding standards.” “That’s good. Could I have a copy please?” “Of course. Here you are.” “Thank you. My next question is about product-related documents. Do you have any of those?” “Oh, yes, many. Most of what we do here is product-related in some way.”

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“Would it be possible for you to give me an example of all your product-related documents?” “I can try, but to be honest, I wouldn’t know where to start.” “What about procedures? Do you have written procedures?” “Oh, yes, we have lots of those. I can print you a copy of them now.” “Thank you. I’ll look at them later. Perhaps that will give me some ideas about your product-related documents. And my next question is about the computer systems you use. Would you have a list of them?” “Sorry, no. I’m sure we have a lot, but to be honest, I wouldn’t know where to start. Do you think they might be in the procedures?” “I don’t know,” said Jane laughing. “They’re your procedures, not mine. But I can look later.” “You must think I’m badly organised,” said Barbara. “But to be honest, MarCom’s completely overwhelmed by the demand from the business. We’re trying to hire more people, but it’s not easy to find the right fit. In the meantime, we focus more on ensuring that our MarCom approach grabs and holds our targets’ attention, than on listing our documents and systems. But why don’t I show you some of our material? At least that will give you a feeling for what we have. For example, look at this. It’s for a new module for the Series 1000. It’s a poster for our stand at a tradeshow next month. What do you think?” “Wow! That will certainly draw attention.” “Yes, we had to get a new application to do that. But please don’t ask me the name! And look, here’s a video for the same module. You’re young, how do you respond to it? Does it look dated to you?” “No, it looks, I’m not sure of the word, I think it’s contemporary. But I’m not all that young.” “Of course you’re young. Specially compared to our target groups. I’m pleased you like that. But look at this. How’s this?” “That’s very modern. It’s topical. Last year it wouldn’t have existed. But how can you be so creative?” “I don’t know. It’s really difficult. One of our main problems is that so many people in Mayer are so conservative and traditional. Oh, that reminds me. I have to go. I have a meeting with Dr. Fischer now. I hope I’ve been helpful. I’ll send you the lists. And don’t forget to take the procedures. Which way are you going now? Upstairs?” “No,” said Jane. “I’m going back to my Container. It’s outside, not far. Thank you.” * The interview with Barbara Scholz had taken longer than expected. And now Jane needed to go back to the Container, label the MarCom procedures and write up her notes. She was going to miss Line 2 again. At least she could check on the progress of the PC. The Container door was locked. What does that mean she wondered? Everything working? Or nothing working. She went inside. The PC and the printer

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were there, and there was no packaging lying around. Perhaps that was a good sign. She updated her notes, then left for the canteen. * Once again, the canteen was nearly empty. Jane looked at the menu by the door. Once again, Line 2 was crossed out. Line 1 was pork medallions. She went to the soup counter and saw it was mushroom soup today. Good, that would help her stay hydrated. She’d only been here four days, but she felt as if she’d been here for ever. She went over to Line 1, where the same lunchlady greeted her, “Hello, today we have pork medallions, apple, rice and green beans.” “Yes please,” said Jane. “But tell me please, what time do I need to be here for Line 2.” “To be really sure, 11:45 at the latest.” “OK, so tomorrow I’ll aim to be here at 11:45.” Jane picked up a fresh fruit salad and a mineral water. She went over to the cashier and asked for a coffee jeton. “Dr. Bender’s account?” “Yes, Dr. Bender’s account again, please.” “Enjoy your lunch!” Jane went to her trestle table. She’d already lost track of today’s interviews, but provided she was back in the Container by 12:45 she’d be OK. Until then, it was lunchtime. * At 13:00, Marco Schwarzenberg from the Proposals Group was the first interviewee of the afternoon. Jane led off with her usual introduction. “Hello, Mr. Schwarzenberg, I’m here to interview you for the MPL project. My name’s Jane. You know about the interview from Frau Mueller. My first question is about your main product-related activities. What are they?” Mr. Schwarzenberg seemed surprised by the question, and took some time to reflect before replying. “Mayer makes hundreds of proposals of machines to existing customers and prospects each year. Usually they’re required yesterday. My Group makes sure they’re all correctly developed, on-time and compliant. Before this role was created, there were many problems with proposals. There weren’t enough people available to work on them. In the rush to meet tight deadlines, the results were patchy. Sometimes the proposals were great. Sometimes the proposed timeframe was far too short. Sometimes a machine that couldn’t be built was proposed. Our objective is to make sure all proposals are high-quality and delivered on time. Our role is to apply best practice and experience to proposal team management. We provide leadership, guidance, and insight. We own the proposal schedule, and coordinate meetings with Sales, Engineering, Production, Finance and Legal. We help prepare proposals and presentations, write proposal material, review cost estimates, manage proposal revisions, do risk management, and perform rigorous quality assurance scrutiny.”

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“Thank you,” said Jane. “That’s a very good description. Very helpful. Next question, what product-related data and documents do you create and use?” Mr. Schwarzenberg thought about it. “Perhaps I should split the answer into two. First the documents that are really ours, the Group’s documents. Then, there are the documents we work with that belong to other people. For example, Sales, Engineering, Production, Finance and Legal. In the second category, I guess we work with hundreds of documents from other groups. Everything comes together in proposal preparation. All sorts of documents, drawings, models, lists, spreadsheets, forms, standards, ad infinitum. But, in the first category, we don’t have many documents that are our own. We have our working policies. We have a schedule template, but it’s nothing special. And a checklist template. That’s about it.” “Thank you,” said Jane. “It would be helpful if you’d provide me copies of your working policies and templates. Would that be possible?” Mr. Schwarzenberg thought about it. “Of course. I’ll print them out for you now.” “Thanks,” said Jane. “My next question is about the computer systems you use. What are they?” “Again, I’ll answer in two parts. Firstly, our main tools are just those you find on anyone’s PC. Those are our heavy-duty systems. The second part of the answer is that we have access to a huge number of systems, so we can see what other people are proposing as proposal content. We just have viewing rights for those tools.” “Thank you.” This interview is going quickly, thought Jane. “Just two more questions. Firstly, please tell me about any major product-related issues you have in your job.” “We’re doing a lot better than when this Group was created. But we’re still sending out a percentage of proposals that is far from optimum. The issues are time and access to the right information. We don’t always get the right information in the available time.” “Thank you. And finally, do you have any product-related improvement suggestions?” “That’s an easy one. We need dedicated proposal management software, preferably cloud-based, and with integrated AI.” “OK, that’s all. Do you have any questions for me?” “Will your results be published? I’d like a copy if possible. I’m sure your report will be very instructive to read.” “I’m not sure. I expect Dr. Bender will decide about that. Thank you very much for your time. You’ve been very informative.” * The interview with Mr. Schwarzenberg had taken less time than planned. Jane wasn’t due to see Ralf Ragaller until 14:20, so she decided to go back to the Container and see if the PC was working. First though, she’d label and find a place for Mr. Schwarzenberg’s policies and templates. With that done, she went over to the PC. It appeared to be running normally, so she decided to create a spreadsheet with a few entries and print it. Amazingly, the printer printed it!

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* Jane arrived on time at Ralf Ragaller’s office. The door was open, so she knocked and looked inside. “Hello, come in please. My name’s Rolf Ragaller. You must be Jane?” “Yes, I’m Jane. But I thought your name was Ralf?” “No, it’s Rolf. I’m Norwegian. Unfortunately, somebody made a mistake entering my name in one of the computers when I came here, so I’m sometimes Ralf and sometimes Rolf. You’re here to interview me for the MPL project I think?” “That’s right. Dr. Bender launched the project. The objective is to find out what happens with Mayer’s products from wherever they start to wherever they finish.” “I wish you luck. How can I help you?” “I just have a few questions for you. The first question is about your product-related activities. What would they be?” “I’m the Pricing Manager. It’s a relatively new position in Mayer. It didn’t exist as such before we modularised our machines. Now we have several product families, each made up of several machines. The machines in a particular family are built on the same base platform. On the platform, we assemble modules. It’s a great approach, but when we started it, it wasn’t clear how we should price the platforms and the modules. The first attempt went haywire, and we finished up with discrepancies, some machines priced too high and others too low. And some machines had two different prices depending on the calculation. To cut a long story short, that’s when the Pricing Group was set up, and I was chosen to lead the Group. In that role, I’m responsible for developing and implementing Mayer’s pricing strategy and modus operandi. And for hiring and training Group members. OK so far?” “Yes, please continue.” “So, my product-related activities. The first was, and still is, to develop and maintain a coherent, accurate and profitable pricing scheme for all Mayer’s offerings. That includes base price, distributor prices and discounts. To do that, we coordinate with the Finance, Corporate, Production and After-Sales Departments to understand the cost structure. We also coordinate with Product Managers about market conditions, such as customer intention levels and the pricing of competitors’ machines. That all leads to a specific price for a machine. To assess its accuracy and effectiveness we follow up with regular financial evaluations. And another activity is to develop and maintain a pricing history database.” “Thank you,” said Jane. “Next question. I’d like to know about the product-related data and documents you create and use. What would they be?” “We have a lot of documents. For example, pricing documents, pricing workflows, pricing analysis, cost plans, pricing rules, product lists, evaluation reports and product structures. I don’t remember them all. Perhaps I can send them to you later?” “Yes, please,” said Jane. “And I’d like a copy of your modus operandi as well, please. My next question is about the computer systems you use. What are they?” “We use a lot, starting with ERP, CRM and PDM. And many others. Is it OK if I send them to you later as well?”

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“Yes, that would be great. And now, just two more questions. What are the major product-related issues you face?” Mr. Ragaller thought for a while, “The first one is that it’s been difficult to gain trust in the new approach. Many people still prefer to do it their own old way. And second, I don’t know how it will be with Dr. Bender, but the previous boss was unsupportive and didn’t seem to care however chaotic pricing became.” “Thank you. And finally, do you have any product-related improvement suggestions?” “At the moment we don’t have a professional pricing tool. We do our pricing with spreadsheets. A cloud-based pricing system would be a great improvement.” “Thank you. OK, that’s all from my side. Do you have any questions for me?” “No. I’d just like to say that this seems an extremely useful project. I hope the results will benefit pricing operations in the company.” * Jane felt pleased with herself. The interview had run well. She seemed to be getting better at interviewing. And now she’d finished the Marketing Group Leaders. At 15:40, there was the first Engineering Group Leader, but first she’d go back to the Container and make sure she’d noted everything Mr. Rolf had said. * Jane was glad the weather was good. She wouldn’t have wanted to walk around the site in the rain. Particularly to the Engineering Building. She’d already met Dr. Fischer and Mr. Ramsberger, so knew something about the Engineering Department. Now she should find out about the activities of the Mechanical Engineering Group from its leader, Urs Steller. Except that when she knocked on his door there was no answer. She decided to wait. A few minutes later she saw someone running along the corridor in her direction. “I’m so sorry, I was in a meeting with Dr. Fischer. You must be Jane. Please come in. How can I help you? It’s about MPL isn’t it? Where shall we start?” “The project aims to identify what happens with Mayer’s products from wherever they start to wherever they finish. I’ve found that the best way to start the interview is by asking the interviewee about their product-related activities. What would yours be?” “I lead the Mechanical Engineering Group. The overall role there is to oversee and mentor the mechanical design of Mayer’s machines, platforms, modules, assemblies and parts. Unfortunately, I don’t do any design work myself these days. It’s mainly administration. I hire and train engineers and designers, coach and develop them. I assign mechanical engineering staff to projects such as New Product Development, NPD, and Product Improvement. I organise the work and schedules of section leaders. I review staff performance, and conduct performance evaluations. I provide input on the budget and long-term issues such as organisational strategy and roadmaps. I provide monthly, quarterly and annual reports to Dr. Fischer. I’m responsible for Mechanical Engineering Guidelines and policies, in conformity with

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Mayer’s objectives and policies. I’m also responsible for the Engineering Department’s NPD Milestones Methodology. It’s been in use for many years now: M1 Feasibility Study Approval; M2 Project Order Release; M3 Business and Project Plans Complete; M4 Instruction to Proceed; M5 Top-level Design; M6 Business Case/ Investment Release; M7 Detailed Design; M8 Design Freeze; M9 Pilot Production; M10 In-house Testing; M11 Prototype Production; M12 Authorisation to Offer; M13 Field Tests; M14 Ramp-up; and M15 Sales Release/Launch. It was first developed by Dr. Fischer. And then, I lead our monthly New Product Development meeting, and head the Engineering Change Control Board meeting. And one more thing. I’m responsible for engineering tools, and for implementing innovative technologies. However, if you want to know about the engineering tools, I suggest you meet our two Key Users.” “Thank you for being so clear. My next question is about data and documents. Which product-related documents do you create, modify and use? And would it be possible to have copies of them?” “As I said, I don’t do much design work myself these days, so my documents are mainly Engineering strategies, plans, methodologies, guidelines and policies. I can send you copies of them so you can judge for yourself what’s most useful. As you’re interested in product-related documents I suggest you meet some of our Key Users. They know all about that. For example, Farida Qureshi. And you should talk to Frank Hoffmann who runs Document Control. And Otto Maeder, who’s a Configuration Manager.” “My next question is about the computer systems you use, but perhaps I should leave that for Farida Qureshi?” “Yes, that would be best.” “The next question, what are the major product-related issues you face?” “That’s difficult to answer, the scope is so big.” “Well, what came to mind first when I asked the question?” “The increasing complexity of our machines. When I started in Mayer, they just had mechanical and electrical components. Now they also have electronic and software parts. They get more and more complex each year, and I’m concerned about our capability to manage that complexity.” “And another major product-related issue?” “It’s somewhat related. We don’t have the computer systems to handle all that complexity.” “And the final question, what would be your top suggestion for a product-related improvement?” “Improving the product-related skills of our people. We need to hire more skilled engineers and train up those we already have.” “Thank you. That’s very helpful. Do you have any questions for me?” “Not at the moment. But I’d welcome the opportunity to discuss your findings after you’ve finished the report. I wish you much success with the project.” “Thank you very much. That was very instructive.” *

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It was 16:20 when Jane left Mr. Steller’s office. She breathed a sigh of relief. Thursday’s work was nearly over. Eighteen interviews carried out. By this time tomorrow, she’d have completed twenty-four, about half of those planned for this site. She went back to the Container and added Farida Qureshi, Frank Hoffmann and Otto Maeder to the interviewee list. Before she left, she’d check that Frau Mueller had sent out the meeting details for next week’s interviewees. And she’d look to see who she was going to interview tomorrow. She saw that first up would be Matthias Riedi from the Electrical Group, then Karl-Heinz Dietz from the Electronics Group, and Annette Maier from the Software Group. And then in the afternoon, she’d meet with Roman Bachmann from the Common Services Group. And then Sebastian Haerdle from the Production Department’s Plant Group and Anton Egli from the Planning Group. Great! By tomorrow evening she’d have interviewed all the Engineering Department’s Group Leaders. Now she needed to see Frau Mueller, get her visitor sheet signed, and then she could leave. * On her way back to the Adler, Jane decided to walk down to the village, and have an apple juice in the beer garden. She’d sit in the sun for a while and take some time out for family and friends. She felt she deserved an hour off after a hard day’s interviewing. * By the time Jane got to the dining room, it looked as if everyone else had finished. She went to her usual table and sat down. Sonja came in, “Hello, here’s today’s menu.” “Thanks, Sonja, I seem to be last again.” “Yes. No problem. What would you like to drink?” “A mineral water without gas, please.” Jane looked at the menu. What did Frau Adler propose today? Oat vegetable soup. Ravioli filled with meat, onions and spinach. Strawberries. Great! Sonja came back with the mineral water. “Thank you. I’ll have the menu please, Sonja.” Jane drank some mineral water and relaxed.

Chapter 6

Friday 7 June

Jane was down for breakfast at about 7:15 am. Everybody else had finished. Frau Adler came in and asked if everything was in order. “Yes, thank you, Frau Adler. All’s well this morning. But I was thinking about this evening. Do you cook on Friday evenings?” “Yes, I cook every weekday evening.” “That’s good, so I’ll see you this evening.” Jane poured herself an orange juice, cut off two chunks of cheese, chose three slices of bread, and went to her table. By 7:40, she’d finished breakfast, collected her things, and left. * Jane got to the factory gatehouse window at about 7:50. “Good Morning, Mr. Schwanemann. It’s me again, Jane. Today I have a meeting with Mr. Riedi at 8:00.” As usual, he asked for her badge, then looked through his sheaf of papers in the box by the window. “Yes, that’s right. Here’s your visitor sheet for today. Please sign and date it before you leave. And get Mr. Egli or Frau Mueller to sign it as well. You know the way to his office?” “Yes, thank you.” “Good. I’ll call and let him know you’re coming.” * Jane walked quickly over to the Engineering Building as she didn’t want to be late for Mr. Riedi. Fortunately, she arrived spot on time. Mr. Riedi was waiting for her, so she launched straight into her introduction. “I’m here to talk to you about the MPL project. As you know, it aims to find out what happens with Mayer’s products from wherever they start to wherever they finish. The best way to start the interview is for you to tell me about your product-related activities. What would they be?” “I’m responsible for planning and managing technical performance for the Electrical Engineering Group. I assign our electrical engineers to machine projects and

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. Stark, Product Lifecycle Management (Volume 5), Decision Engineering, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46887-2_6

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get involved in key activities such as design reviews, milestone meetings, and Change Board meetings. Sometimes I help establish design concepts for our people. If there are any project issues, I get involved to sort them out. And I have the usual employee recruitment, training and review activities. And activities to maintain our work procedures.” “Thank you. Next question. Which product-related documents do you create, modify and use? And would it be possible to have copies of them?” “For that, I suggest you meet Tillman Schwarz. He’s the Group’s Power User. He’s familiar with all the Group’s data and documents. He can tell you about all our systems as well.” “Thank you, the systems were my next question. I’ll move on. What are the major product-related issues you face?” “Uppermost, I’d say, is the scarcity of skilled electrical engineers, and the lack of electrical engineering knowledge. Then there are many others such as having to deal with a vast range of equipment, and poor wiring practices.” “And my last question, what’s your top suggestion for product-related improvement?” “If I can give two answers, the first would be for computer systems that better integrate electrical engineering into mechanical engineering. The second would be to graduate more electrical engineers.” “Thank you. You’ve been very helpful. Do you have any questions for me?” “No. Good luck with your project.” * Taciturn, thought Jane as she went back to the Container. Not loquacious. But still, she thought, that’s freed up some time to check in with Frau Mueller. Jane heard Fritz talking as she reached Frau Mueller’s office. “Good Morning, Frau Mueller. Good Morning, Fritz.” “Good Morning, Jane.” Frau Mueller went into Dr. Bender’s office, leaving Fritz and Jane together. “So, Jane, we’ve not seen each other much this week. Dr. Bender’s been busy, and that means I’ve been busy.” “No problem, Fritz. By the way, the PC and printer arrived safely in the Container. I’m expecting to hold interviews and discussions there soon. Would it be possible to get a coffee machine for the Container?” “I’ll ask. Anything else?” “Yes. Mr. Sauer suggested I should visit some customers to see the After-Sales activities. And Frau Klumpf asked about access to the report from the MPL project. Could you ask Dr. Bender if that’s all OK, please?” “I’ll ask.” “Thanks, Fritz. I don’t know what I’d do without you! Sorry, but I have to rush now.” *

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Jane went back to the Container. She read through and updated her notes from the Mr. Riedi interview, and added Tillman Schwarz to the interview list. That done, she went back to the Engineering Building for the 9:20 interview with Karl-Heinz Dietz, the Electronics Group Manager. * “Hello, Mr. Dietz. My name’s Jane. I’m here to talk to you about the MPL project. You should have heard about my visit from Frau Mueller. The objective of the MPL project is to find out what happens with Mayer’s products from wherever they start to wherever they finish. I’m interviewing many people to build up an overall picture. I start off by asking the interviewee about their product-related activities. What would yours be?” “Hello, Jane. Well, I have three main activities. One of my activities is to direct, lead, and manage the technical activities of the Electronics Group. Our focus is the electronic components and systems of Mayer’s machines. We’re involved in projects to design new products and modify existing products. A second activity is to lead the Group’s Six Sigma activities to improve business performance and reduce costs. That could involve new production techniques and test procedures. And thirdly, I have general management activities. For example, I forecast the Group’s headcount and costs, and prepare the budget. And I manage personnel activities such as recruitment, training, performance evaluation and career development. Sorry, I almost forgot. We have another activity. We’re working with the Research and Innovation people to bring Industry 4.0 functionality to our controllers.” “Research and Innovation, what’s that?” asked Jane. “They’re in the Common Services Group. They’re proposing an interesting approach to use the machine controller as a gateway to the Internet of Things.” “I’ve only been in Mayer since Monday,” said Jane. “I hadn’t heard of Research and Innovation before. Is that a big Group?” “I don’t know all the details of the organisation chart, but I think they’re more like a Section than a Group.” “Perhaps I should add the Section Leader to my list of interviews. Do you know their name?” “Yes, we often work together. It’s Grigor Kanfer.” “Thank you. The next question is about data and documents. Which productrelated documents do you create, modify and use? And would it be possible to have copies of them?” “We have a lot of documents. Do you want a list and copies now? And do you just want technical documents like board layouts and test results, or our work methods as well?” “Both please. And no, it’s fine if you send them to me. Moving on, the next question is about the computer systems you use. Would you tell me about them please?” “Again, we have a lot. Schematic design, layout, placement, routing, DFM check, simulation, interference checking, fab, testing, you name it, we have it. I’ll send you a list of those too.”

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“Fab? What’s that?” “Sorry, our jargon. It’s to make the boards for the tests.” “You make boards? I thought Mr. Pfeiffer made the boards?” “Yes, but the Production Department makes boards for the machines for our customers. We make boards for our tests.” “That’s interesting, where do you do that? Sorry, I have a professional deformation. I spent a summer stuffing boards, and it still interests me.” “We have a Clean Room at the end of the corridor. Come on, I’ll show you. We can go down and look through the window.” Just before they got to the end of the corridor, Mr. Dietz stopped and pointed, “Look, that’s our pick and place machine on the left. And then we do the functional tests on the right.” “That’s impressive. But aren’t those machines expensive?” “Yes, but it’s a play-off between time and money. Here we can get a new board in a few hours. If we had to wait for Production’s machines, we’d be sitting around for weeks doing nothing!” “I understand. Thank you for showing me your Clean Room. Only two more questions! First, what are the major product-related issues you face?” “Perhaps the biggest is recruitment. It’s getting difficult to find people with the right skills. Another is obsolete technology. A lot of today’s components have really short lives. Just one component reaching End of Life can have a disastrous effect. Related to that is the issue of version control. Technology progresses quickly. Components change quickly. Which means we have to change quickly. That means we have many versions. Managing them is an issue.” “Thank you. And the final question, what product-related improvement would be most important for you?” He hesitated, “That’s a difficult question. It can be answered in different contexts and at different levels. In the context of Mayer, I’d say a better approach managing the NPD projects.” “We have a few minutes left, so that leads me to another question. Do you use the Engineering Department’s NPD Milestones Methodology? Urs Steller mentioned it to me.” “Yes, we use it for all the NPD projects. Everybody does.” “And another question. Mr. Ramsberger mentioned a modularisation project that led to the Series 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000 and 5000 families. Did that have much effect on you?” “Not a lot. It mainly affected the Mechanical Engineering Group.” “Thank you. You’ve been very helpful. Do you have any questions for me?” “Will we see a report of your project? Or is it only for Dr. Bender?” “I don’t know. As far as I know there hasn’t been a decision on that yet.” * Jane went back to the Container. She felt like asking herself a lot of questions about the interviews. But she told herself to forget the questions and focus on the interviews.

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Just keep focused for the next four interviews, and then you can ask yourself questions later. And don’t forget to add Grigor Kanfer to the interview list. * As Jane was hoping to get to the canteen by 11:40, she decided to cut short the introduction for the 10:40 interview with Annette Maier, the Software Group Leader. “Hello, I’m Jane, I’m here to interview you for the MPL project. As you know, the project aims to identify what happens with Mayer’s products from wherever they start to wherever they finish. A stupid question to start with, but as you’re a Software Group, why are you in the Engineering Department and not the IT Department?” “That’s a great question. The answer is that we make the software for Mayer’s machines. We don’t make software to support Mayer’s business activities.” “OK, I understand. Next question. What are your main product-related activities?” “I could almost give the same answer. We make the software that runs Mayer’s machines. Our software is very special. We develop it, engineer it if you like. It’s the software for Mayer’s machines. It controls the way the machine works. That’s all it does. It runs our machines. I say that’s all it does, but it does a lot. The most basic function is to step through a program to drive the machine axes and the cutting and forming tools, so that the part that should be machined gets made. Then we develop and maintain lots of other software functions and features. We have a friendly HMI, Human Machine Interface, operator interface for the guys on the shop floor. They can even use it to develop programs for the machine, then simulate and analyse them. We have functions for part inspection, optimisation and compensation. We offer machine troubleshooting functions and on-machine change features. We make network communication software to and from ERP. We develop reporting functions, and energy-saving, performance monitoring, messaging and preventive maintenance services. All that’s possible with the software in the machine controller, which is basically a special computer or processor. Just like in every aspect of life, the manufacturing environment is evolving rapidly. These days, software is ubiquitous. Our systems have massive processing power, perform complex functions, and are highly connected over the Internet or other communication networks.” “OK, I understand. And what are your activities here in the Group?” “Nothing special. Standard software development activities. Develop ideas for new functionality. Coding, analysis, testing, project management. Standard management activities. Hire people, train them, promote a collaborative team environment, mentor people on Agile software development principles and practices. Oh, and then, sometimes one of our guys, Willy, participates in European Union Research projects. They’re always a source of ideas for new products. He’s working on one now that is researching the Digital Twin.” “Thank you for being so clear. My next question is about data and documents. Which product-related documents do you create, modify and use? And would it be possible to have copies of them?” “We keep documents to a minimum, everything changes so fast in software development that everything’s changed in the time you take to document it. Agile puts more value on working software than documentation. We see interaction between

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individuals as a better way to communicate than producing write-only documents. The objective is working software, producing anything else doesn’t add value. And it’s more useful to respond to changes than follow indiscriminately a huge detailed waterfall-style plan made months ago. Likewise, we keep contract negotiation to a minimum and focus on customer collaboration. I’ll get someone to send you a list of what we have, probably our Agile Methodology description, maybe Sprint Planning meeting notes, product vision statement, product roadmap, product backlog, release plan, sprint backlog, burndown chart, sprint retrospective, acceptance tests, unit tests, indicators and the like.” “Thank you. My next question is about the computer systems you use.” “OK, I’ll get them added to the list.” “The next question, what are the major product-related issues you face?” “The NPD Milestones Methodology is a huge issue. It slows everything down. In some cases, it’s held our developments up for more than six months. And the Engineering Change Board is a disaster. Most of those people should have retired years ago. They’re completely out-of-touch. The kind of people who go round saying we should adopt Industry 4.0. We’ve been doing it for years!” “And the final question, please give me a suggestion for a product-related improvement.” “Increase the Software Group’s budget so we can hire more good people. Remuneration in Mayer is based on age and education, not on skills, so we just can’t compete in recruitment.” “Thank you. That’s very helpful. Do you have any questions for me?” “No, I must get back to work. Good luck with your interviews.” * As she was running late, Jane decided to go directly to the canteen. Ah, Line 2 was still available. Lamb curry, rice and peas. That looked good. She’d have that. Today’s soup was leek and cauliflower. That looked good. And fresh fruit salad to finish. That would keep her going for the week’s last three interviews. * After lunch, Jane went back to the Container and worked on her notes from the interview with Annette Maier. She looked at the interview list. That’s good, she thought. Only one more Group Leader from the Engineering Department. Roman Bachmann, Common Services Group Leader. And then two Group Leaders from the Production Department, Sebastian Haerdle and Anton Egli. And then, the weekend. * Jane knocked on Roman Bachmann’s door at 13:00 precisely. “Yes?” She went in. “Hello Mr. Bachmann, I’m here to interview you for the MPL project. You’ve heard about it from Frau Mueller. We’re trying to identify what happens with Mayer’s products from wherever they start to wherever they finish. The best way

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for me to start the interview is by asking about your product-related activities. What would they be?” “I lead the Common Services Group. We’re like a service group to the other groups in the Engineering Department. Have you interviewed them, there’s the Mechanical Group, the Electrical Group, the Electronics Group, and the Software Group?” “Yes, I’ve interviewed their Group Leaders.” “Good. Well, we provide services to those groups. We have several Sections, for example the Document Control Section, the Project Management Section, the Purchasing Section, the Training Section, the Research and Innovation Section. Each one has its own specific activities. For example, Document Control manages data and documents for all four groups. The Project Management Section has several project managers. One of them is assigned to each of our New Product Development projects. So, when you ask me about my product-related activities, the answer is that, personally I don’t have any. Of course, the Group has activities, but it’s the Sections that have product-related activities, and they all have different product-related activities. I think you’d do better to talk to some Section Leaders. I suggest Mattheus Wermuth, who leads the Document Control and Record Management Section. And Jon Trap, the Project Management Section Leader. And Nadine Kramer, who leads Purchasing. I’m sorry I can’t do more to help you.” “That’s OK. I’ll follow up with those three.” * Jane went back to the Container, thinking that her meeting with Mr. Bachmann must have been the shortest interview yet. But now she had to add Mattheus Wermuth, Jon Trap and Nadine Kramer to the interview list. And maybe there would be interviews about skills matrices and sustainability. Presumably, she’d see these additional people the week after next. She hoped she’d have enough time for all the interviews. * The interview list showed that Sebastian Haerdle shared an office with Anton Egli in Hall A. She didn’t remember seeing any offices there, so went in and asked. She followed the instructions and arrived just in time at 14:20. The door was open, and she could see Mr. Haerdle was on the phone. She waited until he put the phone down, then knocked and went in. “Hello, I’m Jane. I’m here to interview you for the MPL project. Frau Mueller sent you a mail. I’m trying to establish what happens with Mayer’s products from wherever they start to wherever they finish. I’ve found it’s best for me to start the interview by asking about product-related activities. What would yours be?” Mr. Haerdle looked at her, “What do you mean by product-related activities?” Jane was taken aback. Everyone else had understood her question. And it was Friday afternoon, the end of the week. It wasn’t the time for long explanations. “I mean what activities do you have related to Mayer’s products. Do you engineer them, do you sell them, do you produce them, what do you do with them?” Mr. Haerdle thought about it. “If I understand correctly, I don’t do any of those.” Jane tried again, “OK, so what do you do?”

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“Our Group maintains existing plant facilities and equipment. When necessary, we make facility improvements, and if necessary, acquire new equipment. I oversee and monitor the Group’s budget, including capital expenditures. You see, it’s all about plant, facilities, equipment. It’s not about products.” Jane thought that the equipment must be related somehow to the components it produced, but it was Friday afternoon, and perhaps another approach would be easier. “I understand. Do you have procedures describing your activities?” “Of course, would you like to see them?” “Not now, but I’d be very grateful if you could send me a copy.” “I’ll do that.” “And,” she added. “Please send me copies of the different types of facility and equipment-related documents you create and use. Like machine drawings and facility layouts.” “I will.” “My next question is about the computer systems you use. Would you be able to send me a list of those, please?” “Yes.” “The next question, what are the major machine-related issues you face?” “That’s a difficult question. The main problem we have is that the machines don’t work the way you expect them to. They all have little weaknesses and moods, and it takes time to understand them. For example, we have some machines that work differently depending on the weather.” Jane thought about asking if the machines were almost human, but didn’t. “And the final question, what would be your top suggestion for a machine-related improvement?” Mr. Haerdle thought for a while, “I don’t know. If I thought there was something to improve, we would already have improved it.” “Thank you. That’s very helpful. Do you have any questions for me?” “No.” “Good, well, thanks for your help. By the way, you may see me later as I have an interview with Mr. Egli at 15:40.” * Jane shook her head as she walked back to the Container. She ranked Mr. Haerdle as even worse than Mr. Riedi. Presumably, the equipment is related to the products, otherwise he wouldn’t know which machines to buy. She’d have to look in the procedures and other documents to be sure. That should be enough. And, on the subject of procedures and other documents, she realised she should check her mailbox to see what she’d been sent. * Back in the Container, Jane logged in and checked her mailbox. Unbelievable! How could she have so much mail? She’d only been here five days. No way she could read all that, she’d be here until midnight. Instead, she just opened the mails with

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documents attached, and printed out what was relevant. And then she had to get back to Production by 15:40 and interview Mr. Egli. * Jane went back to the office where she’d met Mr. Haerdle. The door was open, and Mr. Egli was waiting for her. “Hello, again, Mr. Egli. You know why I’m here. It’s your turn to be interviewed for the MPL project. You’ve probably heard all about it from Mr. Pfeiffer and Mr. Haerdle. But just in case you haven’t, I’m trying to work out what happens with Mayer’s products from wherever they start to wherever they finish. I’ve found it’s best for me to start by asking about product-related activities. What would yours be?” “I’ll start at the top level,” said Mr. Egli. “My target is maximum performance from our Production facility. I draw up a schedule of work for our Production facilities and then make sure it happens.” “OK, so that was the top level,” said Jane. “What are the activities at a lower level?” Mr. Egli took a deep breath, “There are many. I review the various inputs, such as Work In Progress, order status, sales orders, sales forecasts, planned production workload and capacity constraints. I determine the needed personnel, equipment, inventory and raw materials. Maybe I’ll need to include shift working. I plan operations to ensure maximum performance and meet shipping dates. I create the master production schedule, and agree that with Mr. Pfeiffer. I create the production work orders. I follow up on the production work orders, and liaise with Section supervisors. Then I troubleshoot any problems that occur. I adjust schedules in case of equipment failure or material shortage. I also collect and assess performance data. Some of that comes from Section supervisors, some directly from the machines. And finally, if I haven’t forgotten anything, I report performance indicators such as actual output, expected production level compared to actual output, and first pass yield to Mr. Pfeiffer.” “That’s a good start! Thank you. My next question is about data and documents. Which product-related documents do you create, modify and use? And would it be possible to have copies of them?” “A lot of the work is done in the ERP system, so there are many different ERP screens and reports. And ERP-generated documents. But I also need access to process plans, and NC programs, and sometimes to part drawings from the PDM system. All in all, that’s a lot of different documents. And of course, there are also the Departmental Procedures.” “Mr. Egli, I hate to ask you this, but could you send me a copy of your procedures and the product-related documents you use? It would help me a lot.” “Yes, I’ll do that as soon as I can.” “Thank you. My next question is about the computer systems you use. I guess that’s mainly the ERP system?” “Yes.” “The next question, what are the major product-related issues you face?”

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For a few moments, Mr. Egli seemed lost in thought, “Nothing comes to mind. You know, if there’s really an issue in Production we have to fix it quickly. Otherwise we’re in deep trouble. It’s not like in the Engineering Department where they never fix things quickly.” “And the final question. What’s your top suggestion for a product-related improvement?” “It would be great if Engineering would send us clean data for the ERP system. But that doesn’t seem to be possible.” “Thank you. That’s very helpful. Do you have any questions for me?” “No, but I hope you have a great weekend. Are you going back home?” “No, I’m staying here. I have just one more question for you. Would you sign my visitor sheet, please?” * Jane walked back to the Container. She was pleased with herself. She’d completed twenty-four interviews. And before long the weekend would start. But before then, she had to review her notes from the Mr. Egli interview, make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything and tidy everything up. And, of course, label all the procedures and other documents she’d been mailed, and find somewhere to put them. That way, when she came back on Tuesday, she’d be ready to start the next round of interviews. Before she left, she put the interview notes and some procedures in her bag. If she had time, she’d read them over the weekend. * It was 17:50 when Jane left Mayer and started walking back to Gasthaus Adler. She was really pleased with her week’s work. She’d made great progress and was looking forward to the long Whitsun weekend.

Chapter 7

Monday 10 June

Jane had set the alarm for 6:30 am. It was Whit Monday, so a public holiday. Nevertheless, she needed to think about her research report. She was down for breakfast at about 7:15. Only one table had been laid in the dining room. She was the only guest that morning. She poured an orange juice and cut off a chunk of cheese. She wasn’t sure about lunch, so cut off another chunk of cheese, chose four slices of bread and an apple, and went to her table. Frau Adler came in and asked if everything was in order. “Everything’s good, Frau Adler, but is it OK if I work down here this morning?” “Yes, no problem.” “And do you mind if I make a sandwich for later?” “No problem. If you don’t eat the food nobody will. Because of the holiday there are no other guests tonight.” It was another beautiful day, so Jane decided to relax until 8:00 and enjoy her breakfast. * At 8:15, Jane went downstairs with her interview notes and the procedures she’d brought with her from the Container. She read a few interview notes, then looked at some procedures. Then out the window. Perhaps another coffee would help. But she didn’t know where Frau Adler was. She read a few more interview notes and looked at a few more procedures. She thought about starting the day by drawing the organisation chart. With Dr. Bender at the top. And underneath him, the nine departments that reported to him. And underneath each of them, the Groups that reported to them. For example, for Marketing there were seven. And underneath each Group, the Sections that reported to it. She didn’t know how many Groups and Sections there were. She’d ask Fritz tomorrow. No, it would be better to ask Frau Mueller. Frau Adler came in and asked if everything was in order and would she like a coffee.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. Stark, Product Lifecycle Management (Volume 5), Decision Engineering, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46887-2_7

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“Yes please, Frau Adler. That would be perfect.” Frau Adler left, and Jane went back to her drawing. She looked at her organisation chart with all the boxes. Then she asked herself what Dr. Bender wanted to know. An easy question she thought. He wants to know what happens with Mayer’s products, from wherever they start to wherever they end. And the answer was easy as well. Surely it was obvious. They start in Marketing, then go to Engineering, then to Production, then to Service. She could illustrate that as M—E—P—S. But then she realised that wasn’t right. From what she’d heard in the interviews, they start with the customer. And Finance gets involved before Production. And Mr. Becker and Product Portfolio Management also get involved. It wasn’t so easy to draw. * Fortunately, Frau Adler then came in with coffee and biscuits, “Here we are, this should keep you going!” “Thank you, just in time. I’m stuck. But where do you make the coffee? I’ve not seen a kitchen here.” “The kitchen is downstairs. So’s the laundry room. And my rooms. They all look out over the garden. Because of the slope of the land, you don’t see them from the front of the house. They’d be in the basement.” “I see. I didn’t realise there was another floor downstairs.” “I have to go back now and see to the washing. Just call if you need anything else.” Jane went over to the window with her coffee and two biscuits. What a beautiful garden! * The coffee and biscuits helped Jane move forward with her thinking. She could see that the organisation chart wasn’t very helpful for seeing what was happening with Mayer’s products. She reasoned that the organisation chart was just showing a top-down command structure, like in the army. It says that Chief of the General Staff Bender is at the top. And Admiral Wimmer, General Fischer and Air Marshall Pfeiffer are at the next level down. Then there would be all the other officers, and eventually, right down at the bottom, the Privates. The chart wasn’t showing the organisation’s activities, how it operated. She decided to try drawing something that wasn’t top-down, but more horizontal, going from left to right. She’d start with the Market on the far left. Then put an X, for unknown territory, in the middle. And the Returns Group in the Service Department on the far right, as that’s where the products seemed to disappear. She felt that was a step forward and deserved another biscuit. * There was only one biscuit left, a chocolate biscuit. Jane broke it into four so it would last longer. This seemed to be the right moment to drink some more coffee and admire the garden again.

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* Jane went back to her table, took a clean sheet of paper and drew a horizontal line in the middle. Then put an arrowhead at its right end. Now it’s clear, we’re going from left to right. She wrote Market on the left, next to the beginning of the line, then X in the middle, and Returns on the right at the end. And there we are. When Dr. Bender asked what happened with Mayer products, she’d show him this picture. And tell him this is what happens with his products, they start from the Market and finish in Returns. Of course, he might ask what happens in between, where the X was. But she had another few weeks to think about that, to fill in the details. * Jane nibbled on the last piece of biscuit. More inspiration was needed urgently, but there was no coffee left, and no more biscuits. At least there might be something inspiring in the garden. She went over to the window and looked out, but there was nothing new there. * Jane went back to her table and decided to look at the Marketing procedures. She wanted to see how the product moved along the line from Market to the Marketing Department. She looked through the procedures she’d brought back to Gasthaus Adler and found four from Marketing. She’d already looked at them earlier, but what struck her now was that the activities were laid out in a vertical table, not horizontally. There wasn’t anything she could do about that now, so she started reading. There were four columns in the table. In the first column of the table was a running number, starting with 1. The second column listed one step of the activity after another going down the page. She read the steps: ‘Collect market information’; ‘Analyse market information’; ‘Develop and document several scenarios’. The third column was headed ‘Role’. She saw that was either Market or Marketing. The fourth column showed the documents in the step. For ‘Collect market information’, the documents listed included market surveys, customer feedback and competitor analysis. She thought that looked reasonable. In fact, it made sense. If you wanted to train a new hire, it’s probably what you’d explain. But, at the same time, she felt it wasn’t detailed enough for her needs. She wanted to know exactly which documents and data were being used. And which computer systems. Still, this was a start. She could arrange tasks like ‘Collect market information’, ‘Analyse market information’ and ‘Develop and document several scenarios’ on the far left of her sheet of paper. Then she could look through the interview notes, or the product-related documents she’d collected, and make an educated guess about which document went where. If she could make that picture, she could show it to the interviewees and get them to correct it. And ask them to show which system was being used where. Not a bad morning’s work! Time to have a sandwich. But first, she’d ask Frau Adler for a mineral water. *

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“Hello, Frau Adler?” “Yes, Jane?” “I don’t want to disturb you, but would it be possible for me to have a mineral water? I can come down and collect it if that’s easier.” “I’m just about to prepare my lunch, cheese omelette. Would you like some? It’s no bother, I just have to put another egg in the pan.” “That would be lovely. Shall I come down and help?” “No, you just relax after your morning’s work. I’ll bring it up in a few minutes.” * Frau Adler came back ten minutes later with Jane’s omelette and mineral water, “It’s a lovely day outside. You shouldn’t spend all day cooped up inside like this!” “You’re right, Frau Adler. I’ll go out later this afternoon. I’ll go down to the village and work on my tan. As I’m going down to the village, I’ll eat at the restaurant this evening. I’ll see you tomorrow at breakfast.” Jane hadn’t thought about it before but, if she was going to eat at the restaurant this evening, she should eat her cheese sandwich now. Ah, what a life, enjoying a day off in the sun here while her friends were working hard back in England! * With the omelette and the cheese sandwich gone, Jane turned back to her papers. She couldn’t do much to improve her new drawing, so decided to reread the procedures and the interview notes. * After rereading everything, she realised that, in the Role column of a procedure, usually the only participant mentioned was someone from the Department that had written the procedure. She drew a parallel with the Armed Forces again. If the Army wrote itself a procedure, the Role would be taken by a soldier, not a sailor or a pilot. The Army wouldn’t know how the Navy and the Air Force worked. And anyway, the Admiral wouldn’t want to receive instructions from the Army. And another thing she noticed was that some Departments seemed to be heavily involved with Mayer’s products, whereas others had little involvement with the products. At one extreme, with little involvement, were IS, HR and Finance. At the other extreme were After-Sales Service, Engineering and Mr. Becker. Marketing and Production were somewhere in the middle. With those findings, she felt she’d done a good day’s work and deserved a break. * Jane went down to the village at about 5 pm. She made her usual circuit to see how the stream was doing, and the trees and flowers. Everything here was a few weeks ahead of England. Reaching the restaurant, she saw it was busier than usual, but she still found a place in the sun. By now she was getting to know the waitress, who asked if it was to be a weissbier.

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“Yes, please. And the menu as well please.” “Today’s special is potato soup, roast goose with apples, and apple tart. It’s very good. Will you have that?” “Yes, please. It sounds great.” Jane remembered she hadn’t written to anyone for some time, so spent the next ten minutes replying to Mum and friends. After that, the soup came, and she concentrated on that.

7.1 Tuesday 11 June Jane woke up at 6:30 am. She went down to breakfast at about 7:00. She poured herself an orange juice, cut off a chunk of cheese, chose three slices of bread, and went to her table. Frau Adler came in and asked her if everything was in order. And had she enjoyed the evening. “Yes, thank you, Frau Adler. All’s well this morning. And yesterday evening I had goose down in the village. It was very good. I enjoyed the weekend, but now it’s back to work.” By 7:40, she’d finished breakfast, collected her things for the day, and was on her way. * Jane arrived at the factory gatehouse window at about 7:50. “Good Morning. It’s me again, Jane. Today I have a meeting with Mr. Hans Bauer at 8:00.” Mr. Schwanemann asked for her badge, then looked through his sheaf of papers in the box by the window. “Yes, that’s right. Here’s your visitor sheet for today. Please sign and date it before you leave. And get Mr. Reich or Frau Mueller to sign it as well. Do you know the way to Mr. Bauer’s office?” “Yes. He’s in Production. But first I’m going to the Container, and then to Frau Mueller.” “OK. I’ll call and let Frau Mueller know you’re coming. Have a good day.” * “Hello, Jane,” said Frau Mueller. “Did you enjoy the weekend?” “Yes, very much. And you?” “Oh, yes. I love this weather. Now Jane, it’s good that you’re here, because there’ve been many changes to the interview list. Here’s a copy of the new list for you. Mr. Sauer asked Dr. Bender about you visiting some customer sites, and that’s being arranged for tomorrow afternoon. But that meant re-arranging some interviews. So today, you’ll be seeing Hans Bauer and Willy Walker from Production. Then Jochen Tempel and Connie Blum from the Quality Department. And then Lisa Kuhn and Martin Reich from Finance. That looks like a busy day.”

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Jane laughed, “All my days here are busy! And now I must run to my 8:00 interview. Where will I find Mr. Bauer’s office? Is he in the same place as Mr. Egli and Mr. Haerdle?” “That’s right. I see you’re getting to know your way around.” * “Hello, Mr. Bauer. My name’s Jane, I’m here to interview you for the MPL project. You’ll have heard about it from Frau Mueller. We’re trying to see what happens with Mayer’s products from start to finish. First, I’d like to ask you about your product-related activities. What would they be?” “I think you’ve already spoken to Mr. Haerdle and Mr. Egli. I could try to explain what I do compared to them. Would that be helpful?” “Yes, fine.” “Well, you know that Mr. Haerdle is responsible for acquiring and maintaining our machines and other equipment. So, thanks to him, we have working machines. OK, so far?” “Yes.” “And you know that Mr. Egli has to plan, for example, which parts we have to make each day. But parts are made on machines. Therefore he has to know which machines are needed to make each part, and how long each part will be on each machine, and which person is needed for each machine, and for how long. If he didn’t know all that, he couldn’t make a plan, and it would be chaos here. We’d have some machines idle, and long queues of parts waiting on other machines. OK, so far?” “Yes.” “My Group is the Preparation Group. One of our activities is to write the process plans. They’re also called routers or routing sheets sometimes. Each part we make has a router that shows which route it takes through the factory. For example, it’s first worked on by machine 23, and then by machine 75 and then by machine 10. And it shows other information like how long it will be on each machine. Still OK?” “Yes. By the way, Mr. Pfeiffer showed me an example of a router.” “Another activity we have is that for each machine with an NC controller, that’s a Numerical Control, the Group writes a program for each part that’s made on the machine. We call it an NC program. The program tells the controller how to move the machine’s table and the cutting tool so that the part is cut. Still OK?” “Yes. I understand about NC controllers and NC programs. I interviewed Annette Maier. Her Group makes the software for the controllers that run Mayer’s machines.” “That’s right. These days, machines from most manufacturers have NC controllers, and Annette’s Group develops the software for Mayer’s controllers. But, let’s go back to me telling you about our activity. We create a process plan for each part, and we create NC programs for parts. We also design and build special tools and equipment such as gauges, jigs, and fixtures that are used to measure, hold and guide parts. It’s only after we’ve done our work that the part can really exist. Before then, it’s only the Engineering Department’s Ivory Tower theory. But to do our work, we

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need to access documents such as machine drawings, factory layouts, CAD models and drawings of parts. We use and create a huge amount of documents. Still OK?” “Yes. My next question is usually about product-related documents. But you’ve already answered some of that. All that’s left is to ask you to send me a list of the documents that you create, modify and otherwise use. And a copy of each one. I don’t mean every single document, just one of each type.” “Yes. I’ll do that.” “And a copy of your work procedures as well, please. My next question is about the computer systems you use. I guess you have some?” “Yes, we use quite a few. I’ll send you a list later today, with the documents.” “That would be very good. Next question, what are the major product-related issues you face? But before you answer that, I have another question. You mentioned cutting tools. Presumably, that’s for parts for the Mechanical Group. Do you just work for them?” “No, we also work for the Electrical Group and the Electronics Group.” “So, for example, the pick and place machine that Mr. Pfeiffer showed me?” “That’s right. We plan and program that as well. Otherwise Mr. Egli couldn’t plan board production and we’d be sending machines to customers without controllers.” “I forgot to ask Mr. Egli this. Does he plan for the Electrical Group and the Electronics Group as well?” “Yes.” “Thank you for clearing that up. Now, back to my question, what are the major product-related issues you face?” Mr. Bauer gave it some thought, “Communication with the Engineering Department.” “Could you expand on that?” “Well, sometimes we get wrong versions of parts from them. Or they change the format of something without telling us. Or, for example they send us the NC program from their pick and place machine, but it doesn’t work on ours. Sometimes they send us CAD models of parts we can’t make with our machines.” “And the final question, what would be your top suggestion for a product-related improvement?” “I think you’re getting to know us. How many times have you been in the factory now?” “I’ve met Mr. Pfeiffer, Mr. Egli, Mr. Haerdle and now you, so this is the fourth time.” “Think about who you’ve seen in the plant. Apart from the four people you’ve spoken to, and the shop floor guys, who all wear blue overalls, who else have you seen?” Jane thought about it. She couldn’t remember seeing anyone else. Who was he referring to? She thought hard about it, then decided to give up. “Sorry, I don’t remember seeing anyone else.” “That’s OK, that’s my point. You’ve not seen anyone from the Engineering Department. They stay in their Engineering Ivory Tower Building on the other side of the site, and never come here. I can’t understand how they think they can design a part

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without knowing about the machines. The answer to your question is to improve communication between Engineering and Production.” “Ah, I see. Nice explanation! Thank you. You’ve been very helpful. And now, do you have any questions for me?” “Just one, but it’s a difficult question. Do you think anything useful will come out of your work? Or will it just be quietly shelved?” “That’s a good question. I don’t know what will come out of it. I’m just taking it step-by-step. My first step is the interviews.” They were interrupted by a knock on the door. Jane looked at her watch. It was 9:20. “Oh, I’ve overrun my time. Sorry, Mr. Bauer. That’s probably Mr. Walker. Thanks again.” * “Hello, Mr. Walker, sorry to have run late with Mr. Bauer. I’m Jane. I’m working on the MPL project. We’re trying to see what happens with Mayer’s products from start to finish.” “Yes, I received a message from Frau Mueller. I’m not sure if I’m involved though.” “Let’s see. Could you tell me about your product-related activities, please?” “I run the Supply Chain Group. I’m not sure what you mean by product-related activities. Perhaps I should tell you about our activities and you can judge what’s product-related?” “OK, so please tell me about your activities.” “Yes, I’ll try. Our Group develops, implements and manages Mayer strategies related to optimal supply assurance, quality, delivery, flexibility and pricing. We manage transportation and logistics, warehouses and inventory. We source strategically taking account of ethics, human rights and sustainability. The Supply Chain Group selects and validates suppliers, liaises with suppliers, prepares Master Purchase Agreements, and manages supplier relationships. We develop key performance measures and manage risk, quality and compliance. We also drive continual cost reduction and continuous improvement initiatives, lead problem-solving projects and build improvement action plans. We follow-up and manage any disputes with suppliers and, generally speaking, prepare for Supply Chain 4.0.” Jane was having trouble keeping up with Mr. Walker. She wasn’t sure he really understood what she was asking, so phrased her next question differently. “And when you work with your suppliers of raw materials, parts, components, assemblies and the like, what kind of data and documents do you have?” “We have a lot. We have many types.” “Would it be possible to have a list of the different types?” “Yes,” said Mr. Walker, writing something down on his notepad. “I’ll get one of my deputies to send you that.” Jane was pleased to be making progress. “And could he also send me a list of the computer systems that you use in the Group?”

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“Of course,” said Mr. Walker, jotting that down. “Anything else?” “Just two more questions. First, what kind of problems do you have when you work with your suppliers of raw materials, parts, components, assemblies and the like?” “There are always problems. Changing government regulations, lack of qualified personnel, complex international logistics, the environment, commodity price fluctuations, suppliers going out of business, unforeseen delays, lack of traceability, inadequate communication between parties and many others. Yes, there are many types of problem, but I don’t know which ones would interest you.” “Perhaps your deputy could send me a list of those as well?” “Yes, that would be good,” said Mr. Walker, writing another note to himself. “And the last question is about improvement actions. What’s the most useful action you can see to improve your activity of working with your suppliers of raw materials, parts, components, assemblies and the like?” “That’s difficult as we’re always running improvement projects. If there’s something to improve, we improve it. I’d need to think about that.” “OK, so why don’t you think about it, and then get your deputy to send me the answer?” “Very good, I’ll do that. Anything else?” “I almost forgot, could your deputy also send me a copy of the Group’s working procedures?” “Yes, we’ll do that,” said Mr. Walker. “I’ve noted we have five things to send you. I’ll get him started right away.” “Well, thank you, Mr. Walker,” said Jane. “You’ve been very helpful answering my questions. Do you have any questions for me?” “Your project is tremendously important. Will we be able to have a copy of your report?” “I’m sorry, Mr. Walker, but I don’t know the answer to that question. It’s for Dr. Bender to decide.” “I understand. Well, goodbye. Who are you going to see now?” “Now I have to complete my notes from my meeting with you. Then I see Mr. Tempe at 10:40.” “Mr. Tempe?” “Jochen Tempe.” “Mr. Tempel. From Quality. He leads the Product Quality Group. Well, I must be going. Nice to meet you.” * Jane went back to the Container. The first interview of the day seemed to have gone much better than the second. But, as long as Mr. Walker’s deputy sent her everything he’d promised, she should be able to fill in the gaps. In the meantime, she’d read through this morning’s notes and add anything she’d left out. Arriving at the Container, she saw she had a coffee machine. And cups. Well done, Fritz! Careful, check first to see if it works. Yes! Well done, Fritz!

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* Mr. Tempel’s door was open. Jane looked in and was surprised to see a white-haired man with a bright blue bow tie. Strange, she thought. The only other person she’d seen wearing a tie at Mayer was Dr. Bender. Mr. Tempel looked up, bounded across his office and took Jane by the arm. “Hello, do come in. Sit down. You must be Jane. I’ve been waiting for you. What an exciting project this is! Tell me all about it.” “I think you’ve heard about it from Frau Mueller. Dr. Bender asked me to interview you for the MPL project. The aim is to identify what happens with Mayer’s products from wherever they start to wherever they finish. I’ve found the best way to start is by asking people about their product-related activities. What would yours be?” “Yes. That’s an excellent place to start. Well, in my case, I developed the strategic vision for the Product Quality Group and now I’m leading our PQ team to accomplish the vision. And I oversee career development of all PQ team members. The team develops, maintains and evolves Product Quality strategy, policy and governance in alignment with Mayer’s business strategy and direction. We drive product quality across the site, providing a consistent message around Total Quality. And we provide a supplier quality program to ensure supply chain product quality is delivered. We develop and maintain the PQ procedures, and specify new PQ systems and applications. The team acts as role models, setting an example of professionalism, integrity and ethical behaviour. We set the product quality goals and own the metrics. We ensure quality is built into both product and component designs and the processes that manufacture them. We participate at NPD Milestones, in corrective and preventive actions, in mitigating nonconformities, and we lead Risk Management activities. How’s that for a quick introduction?” “That’s excellent. My next question is about data and documents. Which productrelated documents do you create, modify and use? And would it be possible to have copies of them?” “When Frau Jansen mentioned you’d be coming to see me, I thought you’d ask about that. Here you are.” Mr. Tempel pointed to two piles of paper on his desk. “On the left are our procedures. And the stack on the right is the product-related documents. You’ll see that they’re stamped as not valid for use, but they’re yesterday’s version. The valid, up-to-date versions are on the intranet. Oh, perhaps I forgot to tell you. We also do Quality Audits on supplier sites. It’s very difficult to ensure Quality from them. For example, once one of them delivered a lower grade material. They had treated it so that it looked, to our people in Incoming Goods, the same as the normal higher-grade material. But then, a few months later, customers started complaining about cracks on their machines. By the time we’d done our root cause analysis, the supplier had shut down and moved on. They must have made millions supplying low-cost material at a higher price. And we had to pay millions to settle with our customers.” “Thank you. My next question is about the computer systems you use.” “Yes, that’s what Frau Jansen said. Here’s a list of the systems the PQ Group use.” “The next question, what are the major product-related issues you face?”

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“Probably the Cost of Quality in the supply chain. On this site, we’ve done an excellent job, but there are always problems with some of the suppliers.” “And the final question, what would be your top suggestion for a product-related improvement?” “We need to strengthen our business process approach. And I’m hoping that your MPL project will help us achieve that. What do you think? What will you recommend?” “I’m a long way from recommending anything,” Jane laughed. “This is only my sixth day here. I’ll know more by mid-July.” “That’s incredibly good. A short but wide-ranging study. An excellent way forward. Just to be sure you noted that, Jane, my suggestion for improvement was to strengthen our business process approach.” “Yes, thank you, Mr. Tempel, I did note that. But now I must be going. Thank you for all your assistance.” “Goodbye, Jane. I look forward to reading your report.” * After the meeting with Mr. Tempel, Jane went back to the Container and completed her notes from the interview. She knew that if she didn’t do it immediately, she’d forget some of the details. Once it was finished, she went for lunch. As so often, she was among the last customers. That didn’t leave her much choice. However, there was less hustle and bustle, and she was able to eat leisurely at her trestle table. By 12:50, she was back in the Container, and preparing for the afternoon’s interviews. * The 13:00 interview was with Cornelia Blum of the Quality Department. Jane found her office quickly. It wasn’t far from Lianne Jansen’s. The door was open, so Jane looked inside and said, “Hello, I’m Jane. I’m working on the MPL project. The aim is to identify what happens with Mayer’s products from wherever they start to wherever they finish. I’m asking people about their product-related activities. What would yours be?” “Hi, I’m Cornelia. Please come in and sit down. I don’t have any product-related activities, but Lianne Jansen told me you’re here. She said I should tell you about one of my activities, our company’s Quality Manual. That’s the document which describes how our Quality Management System operates. At the front, it has sections on our Quality Policy and Quality Objectives. Then there are sections on: Scope; Terms and definitions; Context of the organisation; Organisational roles, responsibilities and authorities; Planning to achieve the objectives; Support; Operation; Performance Evaluation; and Continuous Improvement. As you can see, there’s nothing detailed about products in there. It’s all high-level material. It was last fully reviewed when ISO 9001 was updated. I’ll send you a link to the current version so you can see what’s there. Lianne wants me to develop a new version next year. That should have more about products in it, but it doesn’t exist yet.” “OK, Cornelia. Thank you. I’ll read the version for which you send me the link. Do you have any other activities that might be product-related?”

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“I have a new activity that I’m just starting. Lianne wants me to work on business processes. I’m looking first at Human Resource Management and Finance. So far, I’ve only collected a few activities for each. For HR, so far there’s: hiring new employees; onboarding new employees; filling a job vacancy; offboarding employees; updating employee data; managing vacation time; updating executive data; participating in job fairs; managing executive bonuses; managing new hire requests; managing vacation requests; making adjustments to the payroll; managing changes to employee status; and responding to enquiries from prospective employees. And for Finance, so far there’s: invoicing; accounting; cash management; managing accounts payable; approving budgets; managing purchase requests; preparing reports; presenting reports; accounts receivable; contract management; reconciling invoices; managing wire transfers; authorising investments; managing expense requests; and managing capital expense requests. I’ll be working on them for the next few months. I haven’t seen anything product-related so far.” “OK, Cornelia. Thank you. I’ll get back to you if I have any questions. Now I’ll let you get back to your work.” * The next interview was with Lisa Kuhn, the New Ventures person from Finance. As it wasn’t until 14:20, Jane went back to the Container and worked on document labelling. At 14:15, she left for the interview with Lisa. * “Hello Lisa, I’m Jane. Frau Klumpf suggested I meet you. I’m working on the MPL project, trying to find out what happens with Mayer’s products from wherever they start to wherever they finish. I’m asking people about their product-related activities. What would yours be?” “Hello, Jane. Yes, Frau Klumpf told me about it. And I saw the interview mail. I’m happy to meet you and discuss, but I’m not sure I can help. You see, I’m our company’s New Ventures Director. I can tell you quickly about my activities, and you can judge for yourself. I start by setting the focus for our New Ventures activity in agreement with our CEO. Then I identify candidates for start-up, acquisition or partnership, and then may get into discussions with them. Depending how things go, I usually take the lead in deal discussions, structuring, negotiations, and closure. I also lead our cross-functional company team. That often includes people from Legal, Marketing, Sales, Engineering, and Operations as well as other people from Finance. You say that you’re looking to see what’s happening with Mayer’s products from their beginning to their end. To be honest, I don’t know about that. Although perhaps you could say that if we make an acquisition as a result of my work, then that could bring some new products to Mayer. Acquired products rather than new internally-developed products.” “OK, thank you for the explanation. Just to be clear, do you have anything to do with Mayer’s current products?”

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“I feel like saying definitely not. But of course, I have to be aware of what’s in the product portfolio. Because our New Ventures activity needs to fit with the current company.” “OK, I understand. Thank you for the clarification. I’m looking at activities with current products, so I think we can stop the interview now. Thanks for participating.” * Jane went back to the Container thinking that she wasn’t making much headway. She wondered how things would go at 15:40 with Martin Reich. While waiting for that interview she made progress with her document management work. At 15:35 she went to Martin’s office. * “Hello Mr. Reich, I’m Jane. Frau Klumpf suggested I meet you. She said you lead on Product Costing. I’m working on the MPL project, trying to find out what happens with Mayer’s products from wherever they start to wherever they finish. Product Costing must be part of that story. I start the interviews by asking people about their product-related activities. What would yours be?” “I get involved with products in two situations,” said Mr. Reich. “In a New Product Development project, I’ll review and analyse the product documentation to develop a cost estimate for the new product and put that in the system. And for products on the market, I have two roles. The first is a kind of passive role which is to review my planned, proposed cost estimate from the NPD phase, and see how it corresponds to the actual cost. And do Variance Analysis. That can lead to replacing the planned cost by the actual cost in the system. And then, there’s a more active role which is to look, with the plant manager, for ways to reduce the material and manufacturing costs of a product. For example, by changing the design, or materials, or manufacturing method to reduce costs. In the background to those two activities, I build and maintain my database of costs of materials, labour, inventory and so on. I also support inventory valuations and corrections. I wasn’t sure what documentation to send you. In a way, the only data about a product that I generate, or at least suggest, is a cost. Yet to do that, I may need to access nearly all the documents defining the product and its production. As for computer systems, I mainly use spreadsheets and the ERP system.” “Thank you, Mr. Reich. That’s a very helpful explanation. It leaves me with just two questions. The first is about any issues you have with Product Costing. And the second is about improvement suggestions for your Product Costing activities.” “On the first question, perhaps the biggest issue is that many of the people who should be interested in product costs are more interested in something else. People who are looking for a career in Marketing or Engineering typically don’t see product costing as a key skill. Instead, product costing gets left to backroom people like me in Finance. It isn’t an activity with a high profile, not for example like bringing a new product to market. It’s low-profile, so doesn’t get the resources it needs. Or the IT systems and system interfaces it needs. And then you can multiply those issues by two

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because of all the changes going on with products. Shorter lives, more geographies, changing currencies and so forth.” “And on the second question,” prompted Jane. “One answer is to fix those issues. But more important would be to educate managers and executives about Product Costing and its importance. I guess there’ll only be change when executives see Product Costing as a critically important foundation for reducing costs, pricing products competitively and taking fact-based strategic decisions.” “Thank you for answering my questions, Mr. Reich. You’ve been very helpful. Do you have any questions for me?” “Do you think I could have a copy of your report? I’m sure it’s going to be very useful.” “I don’t know. I expect Dr. Bender will decide that. Thank you again.” * Jane went back to the Container for a final review of the day’s interview notes. She had the feeling it had been a mixed day, some good interviews, some less useful. However, there was no benefit in judging interviews, she just had to make sure she collected and documented as much information as possible.

7.2 Wednesday 12 June Jane woke up at 6:30 am and was down at breakfast by 7:00. She poured herself an orange juice, cut off a chunk of cheese, chose three slices of bread, and went to her table. Frau Adler came in and asked her if everything was in order. “Yes, thank you, Frau Adler. All’s well this morning. Another hard day’s work in front of me.” By 7:40, Jane had finished breakfast, collected her things for the day, and was on her way. * Jane’s first interview of the day was with Ravi Kumar, the IT Operations Group Manager. She walked over to the IT Building, found his office and knocked on his door. “Come in, you must be Jane. Please sit down. How can I help?” “I’m working on the MPL project. We’re trying to find out what happens to Mayer’s products from their beginning to their end.” “That sounds interesting. How can I help?” “I usually start by asking people about their activities, what they do. I heard that you run IT Operations for Mayer, partly here and partly in Bangalore.” “That’s right. About half and half.” “Does that mean you travel a lot?” “Me? Quite a bit. Usually one week here, and one week at home.”

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“That sounds tiring. How long’s the journey, nine hours?” “No, with the ICE it’s a bit less, about four hours to Hanover.” “Oh, I didn’t know you lived in Hanover.” “Yes, my wife’s a doctor there. Here she is, with our children,” he said, turning the photo on his desk. Jane studied the photo, “Your son takes after his father.” “That’s what everyone says. And you, you’re from the West Country?” “Yes,” she said, surprised. “Somerset.” “That’s what I thought. My dad always supported Somerset. He listened to cricket radio commentaries from there. Your accent brings back memories.” “Good ones, I hope.” “Oh yes, very good. But what can I tell you for your project? Our Group has little to do with Mayer’s products. Our job is to keep the computers and applications and communication networks running for everybody in Mayer. I guess it’s like IT Operations in any company. We have very little to do with Mayer’s products. The departments select the applications they need, not us.” “Could you tell me about any product-related documents and data that you use?” “I can’t think of any. I know there are more than fifty applications out there, ERP, PDM, CRM, CAD, CAM and so on, but my Group doesn’t use them, we just make sure they run.” “Would it be possible to have a list of all the applications? That would help me make sure I’m not missing out a system or a group of users.” “Yes, of course, we have that. I’ll send it to you.” “My next question is usually about product-related issues, but I don’t think that’s relevant. But here’s a different question. Will Industry 4.0 affect the IT Operations Group?” “I expect it will affect some of the applications, and some of our infrastructure. But that’s always changing anyway. Our job is to make sure the systems and applications and communications all work. I don’t think our overall role will change, but I expect some of our detailed tasks will.” “Well, Ravi, I think we can stop the interview now. I have no more questions for you. Thank you for your help.” * Jane’s 9:20 interview with Lutz Lange was also in the IT Building. Jane introduced herself and asked about his activities. “I’m the technical and functional leader for Mayer’s ERP system,” replied Lutz. “My activities include system testing and development, system administration, access control, problem resolution, training and user support. My target is to maximise the benefits of Mayer’s ERP system. I maintain and support the system, troubleshooting system errors. I manage our ERP development projects, collaborating with business and technical teams, leading to business benefits in all functional areas. I’ve built, and I deliver, an effective ERP training program so that all business users can use the system productively. To achieve my targets, I’ve built, and I maintain, deep knowledge and understanding of Mayer’s business needs.”

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“Thank you for explaining that Lutz. If I’ve understood correctly, you’re not involved directly in Mayer’s product-related activities.” “That’s right.” “In that case, I have no more questions for you. I’ll leave you to your work. Thanks for meeting me.” * Jane looked at her interview list. The 10:40 meeting was with Marlene Busch, also from IT. Marlene’s office was also in the IT Building, but it wasn’t even 9:40. Jane had plenty of time to go back to the Container, have a coffee, and work on her documents. * At 10:40, Jane was back in the IT Building, and had located Marlene Busch’s office. “Hello, Marlene. I’m here to interview you for the MPL project. You know about that from Frau Mueller’s mail. My name’s Jane.” “Yes. Come in, sit down.” “Thank you, Marlene. I usually start the interview by asking people to tell me about their product-related activities.” “I’m not sure I have any. I’m the Business Analysis Manager. I manage a team of business analysts driving enhancements to Mayer’s systems. In that role, I’m responsible for decisions regarding employment and training. I assign work to the team members, and coach them in areas such as effective communication and technology best practices. Sometimes I take on the role of a Program Manager, leading large-scale technology projects, accompanying them through to successful completion. In those cases, typical project activities include planning, budgeting, analysis, requirements management, and implementation. Throughout the Program, I communicate with Program Sponsors, Steering Committees, the project teams, and future users on project progress and issues. Another role I have is to provide advice on technology issues across the company for various initiatives, keeping abreast of a range of technologies, and looking for opportunities to introduce new technology into Mayer as appropriate.” “Thank you for explaining that. I didn’t hear you mention any activities that sounded particularly product-related. Is that a fair summary?” “Yes. The team here doesn’t work on Mayer’s machines. We’re IT people.” “Good, it’s important for me to get that clear. I’ve only been in Mayer since last week, so I don’t know exactly what everyone does.” “That’s OK, I know the feeling. It’s such a big company that we often have to work with people who we’ve never met before. And often, when we start, we know nothing about their activities.” “I know all about that!” said Jane. “But as you’re not involved directly in Mayer’s product-related activities, I have no more questions for you. I’ll leave you to your work. Thanks for meeting me.” “Please feel free to recontact me if you do need anything from me later.”

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“Thank you, Marlene.” * Jane walked back to the Container wondering when she’d have another in-depth interview. This morning’s interviews had all been short. However, that had one advantage. She could go to the canteen for an early Line 2 lunch in preparation for the afternoon’s site visits. * At 13:00, Jane walked down to the factory gate. She felt conspicuous in her green Mayer overalls and cap, but Mr. Sauer had said it was the best way to see some machines without going through weeks of bureaucracy. At the gate, she told Mr. Schwanemann she’d be out for a couple of hours with Mr. Sauer to visit some customers but would be back later. He said she could keep her visitor sheet, though he’d make a note that she’d gone out in case anyone asked for her. * Mr. Sauer drove up in a car with the company name on it. He waved to Mr. Schwanemann. Jane got in and off they went, “Mr. Sauer, you’re not dressed in green?” “No, I’d like to be in green and touching machines, but these days I’m an executive. This afternoon we’ll start by meeting Werner Reiter. He’s on a maintenance visit, so you’ll see that first. Afterwards, we’ll go and see the beginning of an installation and will finish up with a breakdown.” Jane looked at her interview list, “On here, I have Thomas Niemann, Installation. Then Murat Polat, Maintenance. Then Tobias Mueller, Returns.” “We’re going in a different order. If we don’t start with Werner, he might finish before we get there. And when we get back, we can hunt down anyone we miss.” * After about thirty minutes, Mr. Sauer turned in at a company entrance. He got out at the gate, spoke to the guard, and came back with two badges. “You see Jane, he knows me. You’re obviously a Service guy, so no problem.” He drove over to a large building, parked next to another Mayer car, and went in the nearest door. “Hi Werner, how’s it going?” “All in order, Mr. Sauer. No problems.” “Werner, this is Jane. Keep going, we won’t disturb you.” He turned to Jane and pointed to the machine that Werner was working on, “What do you make of that?” “It’s an injection machine and small. An AX Series.” “Right first time! This one usually makes bottle tops. You can see that Werner has taken the housings off to do the maintenance service. That makes it easy to get at the working parts. You can see the platform and the other modules. This company looks after its machines well, so he should have finished in half an hour. That’s why we came here first. Any questions?”

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“Werner doesn’t seem to have any documents with him.” “Werner,” said Mr. Sauer. “Have you got any drawings with you?” “Over there, Mr. Sauer,” Werner replied, pointing to a computer next to a toolbox. “Jane, after you’ve been in Maintenance for a while you get to know the machines so well you don’t need drawings. But, if anything comes up, he can look on his computer.” “Sorry in advance for this, Mr. Sauer, but what’s on his computer?” “My fault for not being clear. From his computer he has access to the Service Department’s database of drawings, lists, procedures and everything else.” “OK. Interesting. Good to know.” “I thought it would be much better for you to come and see what’s happening, rather than just talk about it.” “You’re right. Seeing it makes a huge difference. Seeing is believing!” “I think you’ve seen everything here. Any more questions?” “No.” “OK, let’s go. Bye, Werner.” “Bye, Mr. Sauer.” * Forty minutes later they were at another company site, parking next to another Mayer vehicle. Mr. Sauer led the way down a passage to an area resembling a scrap yard. There were half a dozen Mayer service people there. “Hi, Tomas. Hi everybody, how’s it going?” “Hi, Mr. Sauer,” the green overalls chorused, looking at Jane. “This is Jane everybody. She’s working for Dr. Bender. I brought her down here to show her what life is really like in Mayer. So, please at least pretend to be working.” Tomas laughed. “OK, Mr. Sauer. Hello, Jane. Come on guys, let’s get back to work.” “Now Jane, what do you make of this?” “It’s huge. There’s not much there to go on, but from here that looks like the base part of the platform module.” She looked around at the various pallets, containers, boxes, crates, bags, tool kits, bubble-wrapped packages and dollies. “It’s another injection machine. Much bigger than the one we saw before, so it’s probably an FX Series. But it’s huge, what will be made with that?” “I don’t know exactly, but this company often makes aircraft parts. Maybe it’s for aircraft cabin overhead storage bins. They can be over two metres long. Jane, as you’re here, look at the number of pallets and containers and boxes. This is how it is at installation time. How many?” She looked round and started counting. “So far more than fifty, and I’m still counting.” “Right. The whole machine is too big to come on a truck, so it has to come in bits and pieces. And look, you can see some of it comes from Mayer and some of it comes from other companies. You can tell where the thing comes from by the logo on the box. The next thing for you to see is the customer’s wiring and piping systems to which we have to connect. Come round here. There you can see power

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cables and wiring for the controller and communication. And there’s a fibre optic cable, very fragile. That’s coolant there, and that’s an airline over there,” he said pointing. “They’re just at the beginning of the job. Offloading the base module, then positioning, alignment and levelling. This is the opposite extreme to the maintenance job that Werner was doing. It will take days, maybe more than a week.” “Mr. Sauer, what about documents?” “Tomas also has access to our database of technical drawings and documents. But usually these guys bring drawings for an installation and put them up on a wall or a board. I’ll ask him where they are. You stay here, you’re safer here.” Mr. Sauer went over and talked to Tomas who pointed to a large container and then apparently went into a long explanation. Mr. Sauer came back, “Jane, the drawings are over there on the board behind that container. You can only see a bit of it from here. Tomas says he’s got his PC here, and so has his deputy. And he said that if you want more details you should talk to the Department’s Superuser, Max Feldman. We should be going now, we’ve one more visit to make this afternoon.” Mr. Sauer turned to Tomas and waved, “Bye, Tomas.” “Goodbye, Mr. Sauer. Goodbye, Jane,” came the reply. * Another twenty minutes saw them in yet another factory building with more greenclad Mayer service people. “Hi, guys,” said Mr. Sauer. “Where’s Tarzan?” A huge man appeared from behind a milling machine and came to greet them. “Hello Mr. Sauer, is this the new team member you promised me?” “No, this is Jane. She’s doing a special project for Dr. Bender, and I’m showing her what happens in our department. We’ve just been with Werner to see a Maintenance job. And Tomas showed us his Installation job. So now we’d like to see if your Returns Group does any work.” Mr. Mueller laughed, “We’d love to work, but we still haven’t got the go-ahead from the customer. It looks like we’ll be here all night.” Mr. Sauer turned to Jane, “This is how it is in After-Sales. We’re very dependent on the customer. We’re always on customer sites and have to fit in with them. Sometimes, there’s nothing to do but wait.” He turned to Mr. Mueller, “What’s going to happen to this machine? By the way, Jane, this is an old machine. Ten years, Tarzan?” “Twelve actually. There’s not much anyone can do with it. It started off in another company, then came here. It seems there’s never been the money to upgrade it, so it’s really just good for scrap. There’s a lot of wear and tear, and it dates from a time when people were less concerned about energy consumption, pollution, weight reduction and other environmental things. It’s nearly ten tons, so export is unlikely. Most will be scrapped, maybe a few parts can be reworked and reused.” “Tarzan, Jane usually asks people questions about our documents, drawings and computer systems. I usually reply that everybody has access to our database from wherever they are, but that people may also take a few paper drawings and documents on site with them. Does that sound OK to you?”

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“Yes, Mr. Sauer. We don’t bring a lot of paper with us. We have a few drawings here, and a few lists. Nothing very interesting. We could show you more back in the office at Mayer,” he said, turning to Jane. “Lothar Kreis is our IT specialist. You could talk to him.” “Thanks, Mr. Mueller, I’ll add him to my list of interviews.” “There are lots of Muellers in the company. I’m usually called Tarzan.” “Good,” she smiled. “You Tarzan, me Jane!” “Jane, I see it’s time to go,” said Mr. Sauer. “Thanks for your help, Tarzan. I hope you can get started here soon.” * Mr. Sauer was thoughtful on the way back to Mayer. “Jane, I’m sorry Tarzan wasn’t able to start disassembling that machine before we arrived. It would have been helpful for you to see that. Did you notice he said it was twelve years old. That’s far from the oldest machine we still service, but it says something about the lifetime of our machines. I’d have liked to have shown you the controller from that machine. It dates from fifteen years ago. Can you imagine that? Not that it matters as long as it does its job controlling the machine. But a controller that’s fifteen years old! It’s like using a fifteen years old PC. It doesn’t make sense. But my main concern is that our guys have to work across such a wide spectrum of technology. We’ve always had to work with mechanical and electrical parts. But now we also have four or five generations of electronic components and software. It’s difficult to find people who have all those skills. That’s one reason I’m interested in MPL. I think it’s going to open a lot of people’s eyes. And it’s also going to raise a lot of questions. You know that in the Engineering Department they have the Mechanical, Electrical, Electronic and Software Groups. But today, in Service, we don’t have that structure. I’m wondering if, like the Engineering Department, we’ll also need to have four Groups in future. To be honest, I don’t like the idea. I’d rather have people who are multi-skilled and share knowledge. Another issue I have is that most of the company thinks Service isn’t important. They talk proudly about spending 10% of the budget on R&D. We’re just a few percent, but we do real work, keeping the company’s machines running at customer sites. I’m hoping that your study will help people understand the importance of Service. But we’ll see. I hope Dr. Bender allows you to share your results with us. I’d be very interested to read your findings on Service in Hanover and France.” * After they got back to the Mayer site, Mr. Sauer suggested another interview. “Jane, if you’re going to meet Lothar Kreis and Max Feldman, you should probably meet Marco Jovanovic as well. He’s the Maintenance Group’s key user. I’ll organise it with Murat, Tomas and Tarzan. When would you be available?” “I’m not sure. I know I have interviews next Monday. So perhaps next Tuesday.” “OK, I’ll check with Frau Mueller. I hope today has been useful. I thought it might help to see the machines on customer sites. You said MPL was aiming to find out what happened with products from beginning to end, and it seems to me that most of the time they’re on customer sites.”

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“Yes. It’s been really useful. It was a great idea to let me see the machines where they belong, with customers. Many thanks and see you next week!” “Sorry Jane, I forgot. You had Murat Polat on your interview list for this afternoon. Let’s go over to his office and see if he’s there.” * “Murat,” said Mr. Sauer. “This is Jane. She’s working on a project for Dr. Bender. MPL. She was expecting to interview you this afternoon, but instead she’s been on site visits and met with Werner Reiter, Tomas and Tarzan.” “Hello, Jane,” said Murat. “Nice to meet you. Did you have an instructive afternoon?” “Yes, Mr. Polat,” replied Jane. “I learned a lot, asked a lot of questions, and got some great answers. But I’m sorry I wasn’t able to see you.” “That’s OK. I’m sure Mr. Sauer looked after you very well. I have to go to another meeting now, but if you have any specific questions about Maintenance, don’t hesitate to contact me. I’d be happy to answer your questions.” “Thank you, Mr. Polat. I’ll remember that.” * Jane went back to the Container. It had been a great afternoon. In the morning she’d felt frustrated, meeting people who didn’t seem to be directly involved with Mayer’s products. But the afternoon had made up for that.

Chapter 8

Thursday 13 June

Jane woke up at 6:15 am and was down at breakfast by 6:50. She poured herself an orange juice, cut off a chunk of cheese, chose three slices of bread, and went to her table. Frau Adler came in and asked her if everything was in order. “Yes, thank you, Frau Adler. All’s well this morning. Everything went well yesterday and today I have another full day of work in front of me.” By 7:35, Jane had finished breakfast, collected her things for the day, and was on her way. * Jane’s first interview of the day was scheduled for 8:00 am. It was with Ralf Lehmann, the leader of the Software Architect Group. Jane introduced herself and the MPL project, then asked Ralf about his activities. “I’m a Software Architect,” he replied. “My background is in software development and project management. I have proven practical experience with modern delivery methodologies. In Mayer, you could say I look two ways. One way, I work with the software development team. The other way, I work with business stakeholders. I work with them to understand business requirements and determine software requirements. Once those are understood, I create high-level product specifications and design documents which I agree with the business stakeholders. From there, I take the high-level product specifications and design documents, and convert them to architectural blueprints for the software development team to follow. I guide, assist and support the team, ensuring they adhere to best practices, schedules and deadlines. I troubleshoot and resolve any issues with design or coding. The development team delivers the final product. I test it to be sure it meets software and business requirements. Along the way, I present progress reports.” “Thank you, Mr. Lehmann. That was very clear. If I understood right, you’re not involved directly in Mayer’s product-related activities.”

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. Stark, Product Lifecycle Management (Volume 5), Decision Engineering, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46887-2_8

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“I agree.” “In that case, I don’t need to ask you any more questions. I’ll leave you to your work. Thank you for taking the time to meet me.” * Jane went back to the Container wondering why some of these people were on her interview list. They seemed to be far away from Mayer’s machines. But then she reasoned that, after meeting them, she knew what they did and could see how their activities supported the product-related activities of other people. * The 9:20 interview was with Viktor Nagel. Jane introduced herself and the MPL project. Then she asked him about his activities. “I’m the Programming Group Leader,” replied Mr. Nagel. “I have long-time experience in software design and programming at Mayer. These days, I lead a team of software developers both technically and personally. I assist and mentor them, coach and develop them. I review their work and ensure they apply appropriate practices, standards and guidelines. I ensure strong technical documentation. The programming team members work on many projects. I assign them to these projects. I work with the project leaders to create task and schedule estimates. I’m often involved in the early stages of a project, eliciting, analysing and reviewing requirements. Then I’m mainly overseeing progress as the project moves through design, coding, test, build, release and maintenance. I organise and participate in review sessions. I help track and report progress.” “Thank you for the explanation, Mr. Nagel. If I understand correctly, your team doesn’t have product-related activities? By product, I’m referring to Mayer’s machines.” “That’s right.” “OK. We can stop the interview now as I’m focused on product-related activities. Thank you for participating.” * Jane went back to the Container wondering if this was going to be another morning of interviews of limited value. Not that it really mattered, she had plenty of work to do with all the documents she’d received. * The next interviewee was Karen Born, who worked in Human Resources for Frau Rosen. Jane made sure she arrived on time at precisely 10:40 for the interview. She didn’t want to receive another lecture about not keeping to the rules. “Hello Karen, I’m Jane. I’m working on the MPL project for Dr. Bender. The aim of the project is to identify what happens with Mayer’s products from wherever they start to wherever they finish. I’ve found the best way to start the interview is by asking people about their product-related activities. What would yours be?”

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“Hello, Jane. I don’t know if I have any product-related activities. My work is people-related. Perhaps the nearest I come to products is that I’m working on building a skills matrix for the Engineering Department. Is that of interest?” “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me about it?” “It’s basically a spreadsheet with a person in each row. And competencies in the columns. From the spreadsheet, we can create skill level reports for individuals, Groups and the whole Department. Each row of the spreadsheet shows the current skills of an individual. And the whole competency matrix shows all the skills of the Engineering Department. And it also shows the skills that the Department is missing. And from that we can work out the skill profiles of the people we should hire in the future. We also use it to identify learning and development opportunities for people. It helps people understand their own competencies and what they’re missing. And it helps us schedule training courses and workshops to teach new skills and improve levels of current skills. That’s about it. Is that of interest?” “It could be. I’ve noted it down, and will see later if and how it fits. Anything else?” “No, that’s the only thing that seems near to product-related.” “Well, thank you for telling me about the skills matrix. I don’t have any more questions, so we can stop the interview now. Thank you for your help.” * As Jane walked back to the Container she wondered if and how the skills matrix could fit with MPL. But when she got back to the Container, she decided to work on the documents that were piling up rather than think about the future uses of MPL results. By the time she thought about lunch, it was too late for Line 2, so she had another quiet Line 1 lunch at her trestle table. * Jane saw from the list that the 13:00 interview was with Madeleine Krause. Like Karen, Madeleine was in HR, so Jane made sure she arrived on time. “Hello Madeleine, I’m Jane. I’m here to interview you for MPL. It’s a project I’m working on for Dr. Bender. My job is to find out what happens with Mayer’s products from beginning to end. I usually start the interview by asking people about their product-related activities. What are yours?” “I’m leading a project to develop our company’s Sustainability Program. The lead is in the HR Department because we’ll write the job descriptions and hire the Sustainability Team. We have two main lines of investigation. One is to identify elements of a Sustainability Initiative. The other is to define the roles and responsibilities of the Sustainability Team. On the latter, there’s a lot to do. Starting by creating a Sustainability Vision, developing the business case, formulating mission and operating principles. And then, probably forming and leading a Steering Committee for Sustainability, prioritising areas for sustainability activities, fostering a Sustainability Culture, analysing our current operations, setting Sustainability KPIs, measuring our Sustainability performance, implementing changes, auditing results. And a lot of

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education on the importance of Sustainability, and internal and external communication about Sustainability. The Sustainability Initiative will probably have elements such as reducing waste, increasing recycling, green procurement, reducing water consumption, improving energy efficiency, reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and pollutants, and reducing the noise footprint. As I said, the Sustainability Initiative hasn’t started yet, so there’s no effect yet on the products that you’re interested in. Once it starts though, I expect it will affect many of the product-related activities that take the product through from beginning to end. And also the product itself. But all that’s for the future.” “Thanks for the explanation, Madeleine. It sounds like a great initiative but, as you say, it’s something for the future. So, we can stop the interview now as I don’t need to consider it for MPL. Thanks for being so helpful.” * Jane went back to the Container thinking that the Sustainability Initiative sounded worthwhile. However, once again, it was out of scope for her activities. Perhaps Dr. Bender would ask another student to look at it. Back in the Container she worked on her documents until leaving for the 14:20 interview with Kerstin Sunderman of the Legal Group. * “Hello Frau Sunderman, my name’s Jane. I’m here to interview you for MPL. I’m working on the MPL project for Dr. Bender. He wants to know what happens with Mayer’s products from beginning to end. I start by asking the interviewee about their product-related activities. What are yours?” “Hello Jane, yes, I’ve heard about MPL and received the mail. What are my activities? Well, I’m Mayer’s leader on legal matters. I provide advice and counsel to our executives on business, company, compliance, legal, legislative, and regulatory issues. I lead and manage the legal team. The team supports all the departments as in-house subject matter experts, for example, assisting in the drafting of procedures, policies and forms needed to meet standards. What else? I develop the plans and strategies for Mayer’s legal function and manage the associated budgets. I oversee day-to-day legal matters such as contract negotiations, employment, corporate governance, property, product and service-related claims and investigations. I keep up to date on all relevant laws and their interpretations. I work closely with our intellectual property and patent specialists. I liaise with external firms.” “Thanks for the explanation. However, in the MPL project, I’m looking at what happens to Mayer’s products from their beginning to their end. It sounded as if you’re not directly involved with the products?” “I’m not personally directly involved with the products. Although some team members do have such involvement.” “And how could I find out about that in more detail?” “We sent you a lot of documentation and examples. If you look in our operating procedures, you’ll be able to see who does what, what they do, and the documents

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and systems they use. Once you know which activities are of interest to you, I could arrange for you to meet the relevant team members.” “Oh, that would be very helpful,” said Jane. “In that case, I don’t need to ask you any more questions, so we can stop the interview now. Thank you for your help.” * Jane went back to the Container. She felt that she was making good progress with the interviews, even if many of the most recent had contained little that was productrelated.

8.1 Friday 14 June Jane woke up at 6:30 am and was down at breakfast by 6:55. She poured herself an orange juice, cut off a chunk of cheese, chose three slices of bread, and went to her table. Frau Adler came in and asked her if everything was in order. “Yes, thank you, Frau Adler. All’s well this morning. Another day of interviews in front of me. Fortunately, it’s Friday! Frau Mueller, is it OK if I work in the dining room tomorrow morning? I need to read my notes and think about what to do next.” “No problem, Jane. You’ll be alone as there are no other guests tonight.” By 7:45, Jane had finished breakfast, collected her things for the day, and was on her way. * Jane’s first interview of the day was listed for 8:00. It was with Nadja Beck of the Intellectual Property Group. Jane introduced herself and the MPL project. Then asked Nadja about her activities. “I lead the IP Team,” replied Nadja. “That includes hiring, firing, performance appraisals, professional development plans, promotions, and disciplinary procedures. I’m responsible for IP Team finances, including approval of budgets and expenditures. I’m also responsible for developing IP Team strategies, procedures and best practices. The IP Team provides legal guidance and support in the management, licensing and transfer of intellectual property rights. We develop and review contracts related to IP transactions. We assist in negotiations and drafting of collaboration, licensing and other agreements. We’re involved in agreements relating to IP in areas such as non-disclosure, licensing, services, development, and material transfer. We manage relationships with external IP counsel.” “Thank you for explaining that,” said Jane. “In the MPL project, I’m looking at what happens to Mayer’s products from their beginning to their end. If I understood correctly, your team gets involved with Mayer’s products at various times, but you personally aren’t directly involved? You don’t create any product-related documents, or use any product-related computer systems? But some of the people in your Group probably do create product-related documents, and use product-related computer systems?”

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“That’s usual.” Jane felt that she was in a similar situation as she had been with Frau Sunderman. “I’m sorry, Nadja, but I didn’t fully understand the documents you sent me. I’ll look at them again now that I know better what you do. And then perhaps I can arrange to interview some of your team members.” “That makes sense to me.” “OK, in that case, I think we can stop the interview here. Thank you for your time.” * Jane went back to the Container thinking that sometimes she had interviews with the wrong people. It felt as if Kerstin Sunderman and Nadja Beck were both too high up in the organisational structure to provide her useful information for MPL. If she had time, she’d interview people at a lower level to find out about their activities. Perhaps she’d get something more useful from her 9:20 meeting with Steffen Lampert. * Jane introduced herself and the MPL project. Then she asked Mr. Lampert about his activities. “I’ll do my best to explain,” replied Mr. Lampert. “I manage Mayer’s team of patent engineers, ensuring patent team training, education and development. I develop and implement our patent strategy, and ensure we develop and implement patent-related procedures, processes and tools. I make sure we comply with company standards and deliver top quality patent work. I ensure that our KPIs are met. We work closely with the company’s various departments, in particular counselling the Engineering Department in identifying new opportunities for patenting and in ensuring patentworthy inventions are protected. We manage the patent-filing process, coordinating clearance for emerging products. We assist in patent infringement litigation. We execute patent monitoring, searches and analysis, prior art and Freedom to Operate. We draft and prosecute patent applications, review internal proposals, initiate and supervise the patenting process, and provide input to our patent attorneys. We execute patent maintenance and ensure our patent rights are respected. And we optimise the patent portfolio.” “Thank you, Steffen. As you know, in the MPL project, I’m looking at what happens to Mayer’s products from their beginning to their end. It sounds to me as if your team may also be involved with a Mayer product from its beginning to its end.” “Yes.” “What product-related data and documents do you use? And what product-related computer systems do you use?” “We make use of all sorts of product-related data and documents, but we don’t access them directly. The person we’re working with, for example an engineer, makes copies or shows them on their system. We don’t use their computer systems. We wouldn’t know how to. We have our own system, a Patent Management System.”

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“That’s good to know. And when does your team get involved with a product? Just at the beginning? Or later as well?” “We could be involved at any time.” “OK. Now that I know better what you do, I need to look again at the documents you sent me. And then perhaps I could interview some of your team members?” “Of course. Just let me know.” “Thank you. I haven’t got any more questions for you, so I suggest we end the interview here. Can I get back to you if I have any other questions?” “Of course.” “Thank you.” * Jane went back to the Container thinking that a top priority now was to look again at the documents that the Legal Department had sent her. She’d looked before, but she wasn’t familiar with these subjects, and hadn’t looked at them in detail. Hopefully it would be easier now that the legal eagles had given her some explanation. But before then she needed to prepare for the 10:40 meeting with Kai Hartman of the Corporate Purchasing Group. * Jane introduced herself and the MPL project, then asked Kai about his activities. “I develop and lead all Mayer’s procurement strategies and processes, and lead and coordinate Purchasing Team activities. I work with all Mayer’s plants, and all the product management and product development teams. I have a range of responsibilities and activities. For example, ensuring cost-effective acquisition of direct and indirect materials and services. Another target is lead-time reduction. We aim to leverage buying power in supplier commitments. I’ve implemented Mayer-wide Purchasing strategies, policies, and procedures. I ensure on-going training for our Purchasing Teams. I develop strategies for effective direct and indirect sourcing. I work on supplier strategy, market and delivery conditions, adaptation of the supply base and supplier qualification, as well as developing and maintaining relationships with suppliers. I also work on internal controls and scorecards, and systems development and implementation. And I get involved with contract preparation and negotiations.” “Thank you for explaining your role. As you know, in the MPL project, I focus on what happens to Mayer’s products from beginning to end. If I understood correctly, you set the strategies and guidelines, but you’re not directly involved with Mayer’s individual products? It’s the various Purchasing team members who are involved. They’re the ones who make use of product-related documents and use the computer system. For example, Nadine Kramer, who I’ll be interviewing next week.” “Yes, generally speaking that’s the case.” “OK, I understand. In that case, I don’t need to take up any more of your time. I’ll ask the Purchasing Team members, like Nadine, about the details of documents and systems for individual parts and products when I interview them. Thank you very much for your help.”

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* Jane went back to the Container pleased with her morning. Progress was slow, but at least she was making progress. After lunch she only had two more interviews. Grigor Kanfer at 13:00 and Farida Qureshi at 14:20. But until then she could have lunch and relax a little. * Jane took a good look at her interview list, but there wasn’t a room number for Mr. Kanfer. The list just showed Engineering Building, Ground Floor. She went in at Door A, and wondered which way to go. There were only two corridors to try, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to find Mr. Kanfer. She chose one of the corridors, and went down to the end, reading the names on the doors. No sign of a Grigor Kanfer. She went back and started down the other corridor. Again, no Grigor Kanfer, but at the end of the corridor there was a door with a piece of paper on it, ‘R&I Lab’. This must be it. She knocked, went in and was surprised to see that it wasn’t an office. It was more like a workshop. But whereas most workshops are well-organised and tidy, this one was cluttered with all sorts of stuff. The only person in sight had his back to her. “Hello,” she said. There was no reply. Did he have a hearing problem? She repositioned herself in his line of sight, and said, “Hello.” “Hi,” he said, removing his ear plugs. “Can I help you?” Typical researcher, thought Jane. “Yes, I’m here to interview you for the MPL project. I usually start by asking about your product-related activities.” “Product-related activities,” he repeated slowly. “Yes, what are your product-related activities?” she asked again. “I just work on this,” he said, showing her a piece of wire in his hand. She wondered if he suffered from some medical condition. If so, it was a pity they hadn’t mentioned it before. “And what documents do you work with?” she asked. “What documents do I work with,” he repeated slowly. “Yes,” she said, patiently. “Documents. Like procedures and drawings. Can you show me some of yours?” He looked around the workshop and said, “There are some documents in the folder on that shelf. I’ll get the folder and show you.” He got off his stool, went over, picked up the folder and took the documents out. “Here you are. Is this what you’re looking for? Which ones do you like? I can make copies for you.” Jane heard someone else come in the lab and felt reassured. Hopefully someone sane! “Hi Jacob, everything OK?” “Sure, Grigor, just helping this lady. She’d like some documents.” Jacob? She was talking to a Jacob? She was meant to be interviewing Grigor. “I’m sorry, I thought you were Grigor. Now I understand. Sorry to disturb you, Jacob.” Jane turned to Grigor, “Hi Grigor, I’m Jane. I’m here to interview you for the MPL project.”

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“Hello, Jane. Let’s find a place for the interview. I received a mail from Frau Mueller about MPL. It looks like a great initiative. I don’t think Jacob can help you much. He’s a student from the University. Perhaps I can help you?” “I usually start by asking the interviewee about their product-related activities.” “This Group’s only been here four months, so I can’t tell you much,” replied Grigor. “Mr. Ramsberger wanted someone to have free time to think about new products, materials and technologies like the Internet of Things. Everyone else is busy on Engineering Change projects and NPD projects.” “And what kind of product-related documents and data do you work with?” “The usual. Part drawings, specifications, CAD models, wiring diagrams.” “Jacob showed me some wire?” “Yes,” said Grigor. “Our Electrical Department does the wiring for the machines, and one day it just came to me, Eureka! Now we’re working on a new component.” “Do you use any computer systems?” “Not much. We have a CAD license. And an Additive Manufacturing system. And an Internet of Things platform for our Digital Twin project. That’s about all.” “If you’ve only been here four months, this may not be relevant, but the next question is usually about any product-related issues you may face.” “Nothing special. I’ll pass on that one.” “And improvement suggestions?” “Get rid of all the bureaucracy? After four months here I still don’t have my nameplate on the door!” Jane thought for a moment, “Sorry, but did you just say you have a Digital Twin project?” “Yes, that’s right.” “What’s that about?” “I expect you know that a Digital Twin is a virtual representation of a physical product that represents the product throughout the lifecycle?” “Yes.” “Digital Twins can be useful in many ways, and Mr. Ramsberger wants to see where they can help us. We know they can be used in many ways such as reading sensors to monitor machine use in the field, visualising machine performance, getting insights into machine use, running diagnostic analytics to understand issues, predicting part failure to reduce the number of unexpected machine breakdowns, scheduling service interventions as a function of actual need to reduce the cost of service interventions, deciding if, at the end of product life, a part may be reused directly or needs some remanufacturing, and eliminating weak points seen in machine use. We need to find out which of those is most useful for us.” “It’s sounds like a great project. I’d like to hear more about it, but I have to leave now for the next interview.” *

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It was getting near the end of a long week. Jane went back to the Container and made herself a coffee. It felt as if her mind had stopped working. She sat down and looked out the window. When she’d finished her coffee, she looked at her watch. Now she had to hurry, otherwise she’d be late for the interview with Farida Qureshi. * Jane introduced herself and the MPL project, then asked Farida about her activities. “I’m a Key User in the Mechanical Engineering Group. I’m an experienced Mechanical Engineer. I’ve been with Mayer for more than ten years, so know how things work here. As a Mechanical Engineer, I have several activities. I design new parts and test them. I analyse existing parts to solve problems and make them better. I often design or redesign a mechanical part using CAD. Most times, I start with requirements and an idea, then do calculations, and develop a concept. I create it in CAD, and can see and analyse it before it’s built. I draft up a full design, and then get a prototype made. Then I test the prototype. At other times, we’ll be wanting to improve a part, maybe to reduce the cost, or to resolve a problem, for example, cracks appearing in a gear. I analyse the system, investigate why parts fail, see if I can find a way to do it better. All those are pure Mechanical Engineer activities that I like. Then there are a couple of other activities I like less, going to meetings and documenting. But they’re both important. There are a lot of meetings, but it’s important to communicate and be sure everyone’s on the same page. Similarly, there’s a lot of documenting work, but it’s important. If you don’t do it, nobody will know what you’ve done, so your design won’t be used. And, apart from that, I’m a very experienced and competent user of our Mechanical CAD system. That means I can help other people in the Group who aren’t such good users, maybe because they’re new in the Group, or maybe because they don’t use the system very often. They can come to me and ask me questions about the system, and I’ll answer and explain. If they say they have a problem with the CAD system, I can troubleshoot. I also give training on the CAD system. To make sure I maintain my knowledge level, I go to the advanced training sessions given by the system vendor. I also go to meetings they have about new modules for the system. That way, I’m always up to date with what’s happening with the CAD system, so can help, or at least advise, the other users.” “In the MPL project, I’m looking at what happens to Mayer products as they go from their beginning to their end. As a Key User, what type of product-related data and documents do you use? Are they different from those of the other users in Mechanical Engineering?” “I think they’re the same data and documents as for the other users. Documents likes CAD models, work orders, technical drawings, requirements, project information and the like. In terms of the product-related work, I do the same work as the other users, so have the same data and documents. It’s just that I know the CAD system better and am more competent in its use.” “Thanks Farida, that’s helpful. No more questions. Enjoy the weekend!” *

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As Jane went back to the Container, she remembered that she’d drawn a parallel between Mayer and the Armed Forces. The Armed Forces also had many levels of hierarchy above the people who were expected to do the hands-on work. But now she saw a key difference. In the Armed Forces, most people spent most of their time training, so they’d be ready for battle when it came. But in Mayer there seemed to be little training. If people didn’t know what to do, they were told to read the procedures or to ask a colleague. She wondered if that was sufficient. But then decided she had more pressing things to think about and to do before leaving for the weekend.

Chapter 9

Saturday 15 June

Jane had set the alarm for 7 am. It was Saturday, but she had work to do and was down for breakfast at about 7:30. Frau Adler came in and asked if everything was in order. “Everything’s good, Frau Adler. May I work down here this morning?” “Yes, no problem.” * By 8:15, Jane had finished breakfast and was back at her table reading through her interview notes. She wondered how she’d managed to write so much. She’d now interviewed more than thirty people. And next week there were more to come, about a dozen more. What were the notes telling her? A lot probably, but what exactly? She went back to the beginning. What was the objective of her work? What was her task? Dr. Bender had asked her to find out what happened with Mayer’s products from beginning to end. She still liked her idea of a horizontal arrow, so drew one across a sheet of paper. In her mind, the product started at the left end of the arrow with the Market and finished at the right in the Returns Group. But then she remembered something Mr. Bauer had said. What was it? ‘It’s only after we’ve done our work that the part can really exist. Before then, it’s only the Engineering Department’s Ivory Tower theory.’ That was saying the right-hand side of the line was real product and the left-hand side was theory product. She wrote that down and looked at it. No, that’s not right, because even after Mr. Bauer has done his work, the theory part continues and people in Mr. Polat’s Maintenance Group refer to it. Perhaps she’d make better progress with another pen? She had one upstairs. * Jane soon found the pen she was looking for in her room. Then she looked out of the window. The sky was blue and everything was peaceful. She wondered how many other people had looked out of this window since the house was built. To know that,

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she’d need to ask Frau Adler when it was built. Enough of this, get back downstairs and improve that sketch! * Back downstairs, Jane tried another sketch. A long upper horizontal arrow, and underneath it a shorter horizontal arrow. The lower arrow started somewhere around the middle of the upper arrow. The upper arrow was the theory product. The lower arrow was the real product. That looked better. It was more understandable. The upper arrow started in the Market and ran across to Returns. The lower arrow started when the product was made and continued to its end, in Returns. Mr. Mueller in the Returns Group had said machine parts were sometimes reworked and reused, sometimes sent as scrap to be melted down. The upper arrow wasn’t the physical product. It was another manifestation of the product. Was it a virtual product, a theory product, a planned product? She was stuck, so decided to have a break and ask Frau Adler if she could have a coffee. And hopefully be offered some biscuits. * Strengthened by the coffee and biscuits, Jane looked at her two horizontal arrows again. She felt the picture wasn’t telling the whole story, so split the upper line into two halves. That gave her three horizontal lines. She adjusted them so that the upper line started on the left, in the Market, and stopped in the middle of the page. It was the Engineering Department’s Ivory Tower theory. The middle line was just below the first line and started where it ended. It represented the physical product. It started when the product was made and continued to its end in Returns. The lower line was just below the middle line. It started where the middle line started and ended where the middle line ended. This lower line represented information about the product created when it was made and after it had been made, for example, its performance, or changes to parts, or maintenance activities. Did that make sense? It was difficult to concentrate on something that didn’t exist. How do people do that? * Jane went over to the window and looked out. She remembered she hadn’t finished her coffee and biscuits, so went back to her table to see what remained. There wasn’t much left. She finished it off quickly. Then went back to the window. Frau Adler had a lovely garden. And the weather was great. Shouldn’t she be outside? Stop it, get back to work! * Jane couldn’t see anything obviously wrong with the three-line sketch. However, what was troubling her now was the left side of the top line. Marketing’s Angela Kreitz had said they started with market analysis. That fitted to her ‘Market’ on the sketch. But Mr. Beck had said he started with customer requirements. And Annette Maier had said that Willy’s research projects were a source of ideas for new products. And Mr. Pfeiffer had said the Czechs had come up with the new product families in a one-hour brainstorming session. That meant there were different start points for

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the upper line! Dr. Bender had asked her to find out what happened with Mayer’s products from beginning to end. But now she could see that the same thing didn’t happen with all products. There were different Product Happenings. That meant more work! Jane looked at her watch. Frau Adler might suggest an omelette for lunch, but lunch was at least an hour away. She decided to think through the four different examples. That should take her up to lunch time. She’d start with a new machine, starting with market analysis. Then do Mr. Pfeiffer’s example. Then Willy’s research. And finally, Mr. Beck and his customer requirements. * “Jane, sorry to interrupt,” said Frau Adler. “But I’m about to make lunch. I’m having a cheese and ham omelette. Would you like that as well?” “Sorry, Frau Adler. I was miles away. I didn’t hear you come in. Yes, that would be great! Can I help you?” “No, you stay here. It will take me a good twenty minutes to prepare. There’ll be asparagus soup to start with, and some fresh strawberries from the village.” Jane wondered for a moment if this is how all MBA research is done. Warm sunny days, looking out over a beautiful garden, coffee and fresh strawberries delivered to the student’s desk. If so, perhaps she’d do another MBA after this one. But before then, she had to think about the different things happening at a product’s beginning. * She started with the new machine from market analysis that Angela had mentioned. The market analysis was on the far left. It was done by Marketing. Then, still on the upper line, came Engineering and other functions. That’s all theory, paper. Then comes Mr. Bauer’s breakpoint and the machine is made, assembled and installed on the middle line. That’s the first machine of this new type. Now it’s going to be used. Physically, it’s on the middle line, maybe with some parts being changed. Eventually the Returns Group will disassemble it. That’s still on the middle line. And the information about it is on the lower line. For the second machine of this new type, the theory activities on the upper line don’t have to be done again because they’ve already been done. So, for the second machine, we’d start on the middle line. * “Lunchtime, Jane! Sorry to interrupt,” said Frau Adler. “Thank you. I need a break.” * After lunch, Jane started by planning her afternoon. One thing she needed to do was to read all the interview notes again. She couldn’t keep every detail in her head all the time, and there might be some more examples of what happened on the left side of the upper line. Another task was to think about her research report. Her tutor had said she needed a research objective and a title and an abstract. But she hadn’t understood what he meant. She’d never written an MBA research report before. How was she supposed to know what it should look like? Perhaps it was clear to him, but it

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wasn’t clear to her. She’d look on Google for examples of MBA research reports and work from there. What else? Take a quick look at the interview list to see who else she had to see here. And then, think about Hanover. Now that she’d done so many interviews here, perhaps she should organise Hanover differently. And a fourth point was organising everything in the Container. There were really two points there. First was how to physically organise all the paper. And second was about presentation. How to present the documents she was collecting, and how to present her results. And a third, she should make some lists of key information. Where to start? Perhaps by finishing the coffee? * After finishing the coffee, Jane calculated that if she was going down to the village at 6 pm, she had about four hours in front of her. Reading the interviews would take longest, she’d do that last. Thinking about organising the Container would also take time, that would be third. She’d start by looking at MBA research reports for ten minutes, then review the interview list. She started with a search on ‘MBA research report’. She saw lots of search results, so decided to read all that later. Next, the interview list. She should finish the interviews here by Tuesday. That would leave a few days to organise the Container before going to Hanover. Next, the interviews for Hanover. Eight top managers to interview and thirty-seven others. Based on her experience in Mayer, she felt she could reduce her time with top managers. Maybe thirty minutes each. And she’d ask in advance for their key documents, such as their strategy and planning documents. They’d all have those as their boss would have asked for them. What about the other interviews? She’d love to reduce their length as well, but she’d need the time if they turned out to be useful. She’d have to ask Frau Mueller if she’d have a meeting room. And what about a hotel? She’d ask people to send her their procedures and working documents beforehand. And bring a copy to the interview as well so they could review them together. With lists of documents and systems. And why not, lists of issues and improvement points? Jane wondered if Frau Adler had any more biscuits. She called her name. There was no reply. But what about the TV room, maybe there was something in there? * Jane had never been in the TV room. The door was always closed. She knocked and went in. All was quiet, but there was a collection of bottles on the dresser. An apple juice would keep her going if she could find a bottle opener. She found one in the top drawer. Frau Adler was well-organised. And in the lower drawer she found a collection of snacks. Frau Adler was very well-organised. * Jane went back to her table and thought again about Hanover interviews. Perhaps she could try for eight interviews in a day. But that would still take five days. Plus one for the top managers. Still more than a week. She’d have to be there more than a week. She couldn’t do nine interviews in a day. What about seven interviews each day? That would be seven days. Maybe that would be a good compromise. Four in

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the morning. And three in the afternoon. In the morning they could start at 8:00 am, 9:00, 10:00 and 11:00. And then in the afternoon at 13:30, 14:30 and 15:30. What next? Jane saw the interview notes. Then saw she’d finished the apple juice. * Jane went back to the TV room. Fortunately, there was another apple juice on the dresser. And there were still some snacks in the lower drawer. Armed with her refreshments, Jane went back to her table and started reading the first interview report. * By 5 pm, Jane had finished reading the interview reports. She’d found another two examples for the left side of the upper line. Grigor had said a Eureka moment led to working on a new component. And somehow, the modularisation project had led to new machines. That made six examples for the start of the upper line. But she only had two for the end of the middle line, reuse and scrap. That wasn’t balanced. What else could there be? Mr. Mueller had said something about export, so maybe resell the machine? Her mind was blank. She decided to stop and go down to the village. She wrote a thank-you note to Frau Adler and left it next to the empty bottles.

Chapter 10

Monday 17 June

The alarm woke Jane at 6:30 am. She was down at breakfast by 7:00. Frau Adler came in and asked if everything was in order. “Yes, thank you, Frau Adler. All’s well this morning but, after the weekend, it’s not so easy to get back to work.” By 7:45, Jane had finished breakfast, collected her things for the day, and was on her way for her 8:00 meeting with Norbert Stein, a Key User in the Production Department. * “Hello Mr. Stein, I’m Jane. I work on the MPL project for Dr. Bender. He’s asked me to find out what happens with Mayer’s products from beginning to end. I start the interview by asking people about their product-related activities. What are yours?” “Hello, Jane,” replied Mr. Stein. “I’m Norbert Stein. I’m a Key User for the Production Department and had a lead role in the ERP system implementation. I was selected as a Key User by Mr. Pfeiffer as I’m open to change and flexible. I’m a communicative person and helped convince other users of the advantages of the new ERP system. Now I’m involved whenever there are discussions about changes and improvements to the system and our way of working. I’m like a typical user and am a key link between Mayer and the system vendor. I make a list of questions asked by other users in Production and address them to the ERP system implementer.” “Thank you. And do you give training on the system?” “No, someone from the ERP system implementer gives training.” “What about if one of the users from another Department has a question. Do they come to you for help?” “That’s unlikely. We all work with different parts of the system. If they have a problem in their part of the system, it’s unlikely that I could help. They know their part much better than I do and they’d have their own Key User. All I could do would be to suggest they contact the system implementer.”

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“OK. And in your role as Key User, do you have any additional product-related data and documents that a person with your job who isn’t a Key User would have?” “No, the role isn’t about the specific area of work. I sent you copies of the productrelated data and documents that I work with. Did you see them?” “Yes, they’re very revealing. Thank you, Norbert. I appreciate you taking your time to talk to me. If I have any further questions, would it be OK to recontact you?” “Yes. No problem.” “Thank you.” * Jane went back to the Container feeling good. She was pleased with that interview. It would help her fill in her picture of what was happening with products. But now she needed to prepare for the 9:20 meeting with Frank Hoffmann. * “Hello Frank, my name’s Jane. I’m here to interview you for MPL. It’s a project for Dr. Bender. He wants to know what happens with Mayer’s products from beginning to end. Urs Steller suggested I should talk to you. I usually start by asking about product-related activities. What are yours?” “Hello Jane, my name’s Frank Hoffmann. I’m not sure which of my activities are product-related activities, so perhaps I’ll tell you about what I do, and you can decide. I’m responsible for the management of the Engineering Department’s Document Control Section. I plan, direct, and coordinate the Section’s operations. I develop, maintain and promote our Document Control procedures, methods and best practices. I represent Document Control on Mayer projects as needed. I manage the activities of the Document Control Section’s people, and train them on documentation and document control processes and procedures. I set their goals and objectives, and monitor performance including performance reviews. We manage and maintain the Document Control systems, and assist in the development of the PDM system, the Product Data Management system. You might have heard of it. We perform validation of PDM software updates. We execute test scripts to support improvements. We help interface the PDM system to other systems within and outside Mayer. We manage new user accounts and we delete terminated users. We manage user access rights and system security. We manage data integrity and perform data quality audits. We’re responsible for back-ups and archiving. We train, coach and guide system users. We provide PDM system training to suppliers as required. We developed Key Performance Indicators, and we provide management reports. We assist management and users with questions and concerns. We ensure that effective templates are available. We establish workflows, such as for review, release and change processes. We develop, maintain and improve the document signature matrix for each document type. We help ensure that Document Control rules, such as document numbering, number of signatures, and lifecycle states, are applied by users. We have various lifecycle states such as In-Work, In-Review, Released, Under-Revision, Obsolete and Archived. These lifecycle states have a lot of meaning and value. They tell everyone what state a product, part or document is in at a particular time, so what can be

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done with it, and what can’t be done with it. For example, when a document is in the In-Work state, so hasn’t been released, other people aren’t allowed to use it. Similarly, you’re not allowed to use a part that’s in the Obsolete state. The logic and rules around the states can get quite detailed, but they’re very important and useful. Another activity, we participate in making improvements to current document control procedures, policies and processes. I hope I’ve not forgotten anything, but if I have, you’ll see it in the procedures I sent you.” “Thanks Frank, that’s a very complete answer to my question. I’ve no more questions. Thanks for your help.” * That was clear, thought Jane as she walked back to the Container. Once there, she looked on the list and saw the next interviewee, at 10:40, was Otto Maeder, a Configuration Manager in the Mechanical Engineering Department. She hoped the winning streak would continue with him. * “Hello Mr. Maeder, my name’s Jane. I’m here to interview you for the MPL project for Dr. Bender. He wants to know what happens with Mayer’s products from beginning to end. Urs Steller suggested I should talk to you. I usually start by asking about product-related activities. What are yours?” “Hello, Jane. I’m Otto. I received the mail and have sent you the documents and other information you asked for. What do I do here? Well, I’m a Configuration Manager. Configuration Management within Mayer is used to manage, control and report the content of the product. It helps assure the long-term support of our products through consistent identification of all product information. The goal is to provide a clear, consistent and coherent picture of the product at any point in time. That requires knowing the product’s constituents, the Product Breakdown Structure. And maintaining an up-to-date database of the corresponding documents. My role includes development, analysis, and compliance verification of product baselines. I also define, plan, and conduct product technical design reviews and audits. More generally, I contribute to developing, implementing and improving configuration and data management standards, processes, and systems. And, even more generally, I contribute to outlining the provisions for configuration identification, configuration control, configuration status accounting, and configuration audits. Does that answer your question?” “Yes, it does. Thank you for that explanation, Otto. As you know, in the MPL project, I focus on what happens to Mayer’s products from beginning to end. If I understand correctly, Configuration Management plays a key role in that.” “Yes. In theory, definitely. But unfortunately, in practice, maybe less. It’s difficult to get Configuration Management accepted as a key discipline. Unfortunately, the majority of engineers are more interested in designing an improved mousetrap or a better buggy whip.”

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“That’s an interesting remark. I’ll note that as an issue. And what would you propose as an improvement suggestion?” “Configuration Management education and training. Starting from the top, the executives, and working down to the project engineers.” “Thank you. That’s very helpful. I don’t have any more questions, so will leave you to get on with your work. Once again, many thanks for participating.” * As Jane walked back to the Container, she felt that the winning streak was continuing. Otto had been very helpful. She hoped the streak would continue after lunch. * Jane’s 13:00 interview was with Tillman Schwarz, the Electrical Engineering Group Power User. She introduced herself and the MPL project, then asked Tillman about his activities. “Hi Jane, my name’s Tillman. I received your mail and sent you the material you asked for. I hope you got it. It was a big mail with a lot of attachments. I’m sorry about that, but we have a lot of procedures and component documents.” “Thank you for sending it, Tillman. You’re right, there were a lot of documents there! But now, please tell me about your activities.” “I’m an experienced Electrical Engineer doing Electrical Engineering work. I’ve been with Mayer quite a few years. I develop solutions, from conceptualisation to validation, taking account of constraints such as cost, manufacturability, reliability, volume and weight. I analyse requirements and specifications, and define work packages. I translate requirements into a conceptual design and then a detailed design. I research and validate components. I create design drawings and update existing drawings using our CAD system. And develop detailed technical reports and associated supporting documentation. Then I’m involved in converting detailed designs into production designs. I provide input into factory acceptance testing, and work with Production to help identify and resolve any design issues. Then I participate in tests and trials to confirm system performance meets design intent. I verify that designs are fully compliant with safety rules and quality requirements. Apart from that, sometimes I investigate any shortcomings in design and system performance of our products. Then participate in developing solutions to overcome any problems. In my Power User role, my main activity is to provide support to the Electrical Engineering Group with CAD training and coaching. My secondary task is answering ad hoc queries about use of the CAD system.” “Thank you for that explanation, Tillman. One more question. What are the main problems you face in your Power User role?” “The Power User role isn’t defined, so I finish up doing all sorts of things for other engineers, many of which are frustrating and of little value.” “So, for an improvement, you might suggest defining the Power User role.” “Exactly.” “OK, Tillman, that’s noted. Thank you for participating and giving me so much information.”

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* Another good interview thought Jane as she went back to the Container. The next interview wasn’t until 14:00 so she had some time to work on her documents. * The 14:00 interview was with Timm Weber, a Mechanical Engineer. Jane introduced herself and the MPL project. “Hello Mr. Weber, my name’s Jane. I’m here to interview you for Dr. Bender’s MPL project. He wants to know what happens with Mayer’s products from beginning to end. I usually start by asking about product-related activities. What are yours?”. “Hello. I’m just starting in Mayer. I do whatever the boss tells me to do.” “That’s interesting. I’m looking for someone like that. Can you cook, wash and iron clothes, and clean the house?” “No. I have a degree in Engineering, not Home Studies.” “That’s not a problem, many people say that university studies are over-rated, too theoretical. Practical experience is just as good. Didn’t your mother organise that?” “No, she gave up. She said I had two left hands.” “I’m sorry to hear that. Now, coming back to your current boss, what does he ask you to do?” “He gives me machine parts that have problems. He asks me to find the problem and fix it.” “And how do you do that?”. “I start by looking at the part to see what the problem looks like. Then I ask people where the part documentation is, and what the problem is. That usually takes a long time because everyone’s busy and nobody knows where anything is. Then I look in the CAD system to see what’s next to the part, because I’m not allowed to change anything else. Then I’ll probably do some calculations. Then I might change something in the CAD system. Then I’ll show Mr. Steller what I’m thinking. If he agrees, I can get a prototype made and test it. Then I show Mr. Steller the results. If he thinks it could be a good solution, he sends it to a senior engineer. If not, I try again.” “My next question is about product-related data and documents. What do you create and use?” “Failure reports, CAD models, drawings, calculation results.” “And which product-related systems do you use?” “CAD, word processing, spreadsheet, analysis.” “And what’s the biggest problem with your product-related activities?” “This work doesn’t interest me. I want to design new machines.” “OK. Next, a similar question, but slightly different. What are the biggest problems in your product-related activities?” “Wasting time looking for information. Wasting time finding the right person to talk to. I want to do real engineering work, not be wasting my time trying to find information.”

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“Thank you for answering my questions. I don’t have any more, so will leave you to get on with your work for Mr. Steller.” * Another good interview thought Jane as she went back to the Container. When she looked at the interview list, she was surprised to see that the next interview wasn’t until Tuesday morning. That’s good, she thought. That gave her time to review some more of the documents she’d received.

10.1 Tuesday 18 June Jane woke up at 6:20 am. She was down at breakfast by 7:00. Frau Adler came in and asked if everything was in order. “Yes, thank you, Frau Adler. All’s well this morning.” By 7:45, Jane had finished breakfast, collected her things for the day, and was on her way for her 8:00 meeting with Maria Schuster, a Super User in Product Management Area 1. * Jane introduced herself and the MPL project, then told Maria that when she interviewed Hans Guenther, he had suggested that she should interview Maria. “OK, I understand. I often help Mr. Guenther. He says I’m the best Super User for the Customer Relationship Management system!” “It’s good to hear some praise sometimes! What do you do as a Super User?” “My role is mainly user assistance. I’m supposed to be the friendly face everyone can go to when they’ve a query about our CRM system. Mr. Guenther said he picked me for it as I had first-class knowledge of the system and the way it works, and great communication skills. I also get involved in any CRM system-related transformation, standardisation and simplification initiatives. And I contribute to special projects as needed. What else? I organise training sessions and give some training. I keep up to date with new versions of the system. I coach and mentor CRM community members about specific tasks and processes. And I provide support for new joiners. I’m the first point of escalation for the CRM user community. If anything goes wrong, they come to me. I check it out and see if I can troubleshoot it. If there’s really something wrong, I can contact the system vendor. That’s about it. Does that help?” “Yes, thanks Maria, that’s perfect. And I understand why Mr. Guenther appreciates having you around! On another subject, thank you for replying to the mail and sending the documents. I haven’t had time to go through all of them yet, but they’re very helpful for the MPL project. And on yet another subject, what are the main problems you face in your Super User role?” “My problem is that the other users have so many problems. I’ll tell you about three of them. First, the system isn’t exactly user-friendly. Second, we don’t have all the interfaces we should have, so users often have to re-enter data by hand. Third,

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there’s not enough time allotted to training, so the users don’t know the system well enough. Those three issues lead to many problems.” “And what would you suggest to overcome the problems?” “At least increase the amount of training.” “I understand. I don’t have any more questions, so we can stop now. Thanks for participating.” * Jane went back to the Container unsure if that had been a successful interview. After thinking about it, she decided that the interview had been successful, but it was the operation of the CRM system that wasn’t successful. She saw that her 9:20 interview was with Mattheus Wermuth of the Document Control and Record Management Section. However, she was confused. She’d interviewed Frank Hoffmann, wasn’t he Document Control? * When she met Mattheus, Jane introduced herself and the MPL project. Then she explained her confusion. “I interviewed Roman Bachmann for MPL, and he suggested I should talk to some Section Leaders. The first one he suggested was you. I wrote down in my notes that you led the Document Control and Record Management Section. But I interviewed Frank Hoffmann and he said he was the Manager of the Engineering Department’s Document Control Section.” “That’s right,” said Mattheus. “Frank’s the Section Manager. I work for Frank. I lead a small team of Document Controllers who manage and oversee documents for a particular project or product. We make sure all the documents are created and signed, all the data is accurate, and all the documents are stored correctly. We think this role should go away in the future once the PDM system is fully up and running. It should do that work automatically. In the past though, we didn’t have a system that could do it automatically. In the past, we had to do it all manually, and on projects with tens of thousands of documents it seemed safer to appoint someone to take responsibility for all the documents. That takes a special kind of person. Usually, the type of person who is a Project Leader or a Product Manager isn’t good at that. That’s why we introduced the Document Controller role. It’s a role for people who are really detail-oriented, and don’t mind administering documents all day long.” “Thank you for the explanation, Mattheus, now I understand the role. I don’t want to waste your time, so I suggest we stop the interview now. Thank you for participating.” * Jane went back to the Container. The next interview wasn’t until 10:40. With Jon Trap. That left her some time to have a coffee and read some procedures. * “Hello Jon, my name’s Jane. I’m here to interview you for MPL. I’m working on it for Dr. Bender. He wants to know what happens with Mayer’s products from beginning

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to end. When I interviewed Roman Bachmann, he suggested I should talk to some Section Leaders, including you. I usually start by asking the interviewee about their product-related activities. What are yours?” “Hello, Jane. I’m Jon Trap, I’m the Project Management Section Leader. I lead a team of project managers. There are two parts to my job. First, it’s my job to develop and maintain procedures for the project management team, and to drive best practices and continuous improvement. And, secondly, I oversee the delegation of work to the project managers, and ensure delivery of their projects is on time, in alignment with scope, without scope creep, and on budget. Related to that, I monitor progress and provide regular project status reports. And I measure and report our KPIs, analyse team performance and take corrective action if necessary.” “OK. I understand the project manager role. And thank you for the documents you sent me. I gathered from them that you are project managers. But one question, just to be sure. You’re in the Engineering Department, aren’t you?” “Yes.” “Perfect, that’s what I thought, but I’ve interviewed so many people in Mayer that I’m beginning to get confused. I don’t have any more questions, so I suggest we stop now. Thank you for your participation.” * Jane went back to the Container wondering if she was cracking up. She felt she’d already interviewed a project manager in Mayer. Had she really, or was she imagining it? Was it déjà vu? Fortunately, she was nearing the end of the interviews in Mayer! * After lunch, the 13:00 interview was with Nadine Kramer. “Hi Nadine, my name’s Jane. I’m here for the MPL interview. It’s a project I’m working on for Dr. Bender. When I interviewed Roman Bachmann, he suggested I should talk to some Section Leaders. He suggested you, and said you lead Purchasing.” “Yes, that’s right. I lead the Purchasing Team in the Engineering Department. We do all the Purchasing for the Engineering Department. Everything. Materials, components, parts, equipment, whatever. The engineers aren’t authorised to purchase. The engineers send us a Purchase Request Form, signed by their boss, specifying what they want. There’s a section on the form where they can give all the details they want. There are different situations for Purchasing. Sometimes, if it’s a new development, they might send us a sketch of a part. Other times, it could be for cost reduction. So they send us a link to a part in the ERP system and ask us to find something that does the job but costs less. We review the form for completeness, then identify potential suppliers, and negotiate for the best price and service. We inform the engineers about progress, and advise managers on decisions. We negotiate contracts, and get them reviewed for legal correctness, acceptability and pricing. We prepare and issue Purchase Orders. We oversee delivery. We get involved if there are any problems during the process. I manage the Purchasing Team. That includes interviewing, hiring and training new Team members. And coaching of Team members. And conducting performance evaluations.”

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“Thanks for the explanation, Nadine. That’s very clear. And thank you for sending me copies of your documents. I don’t have any more questions, so we can end the interview now. Thank you for participating.” * Jane went back to the Container, then decided to go back to the Adler. She wasn’t feeling well. It was if she’d been in too many interviews. She ate a little at 6 pm, then went back to her room and went to bed. She hoped she’d feel better in the morning.

10.2 Wednesday 19 June The alarm woke Jane at 6:30 am. She didn’t feel great but was down at breakfast by 7:00. Frau Adler came in and asked her if everything was in order. “I hope so, Frau Adler. Today’s the last day of interviews here.” By 7:45, Jane had finished breakfast, collected her things for the day, and was on her way for her 8:00 meeting with Max Feldman, the Installation Group’s Superuser. * Jane introduced herself and the MPL project, then asked Max about his activities. “I’m Max Feldman. I’m an Installation Engineer. I perform machine installation and assist in Site Acceptance Testing, assuring operational quality of the machine. I write daily installation progress reports and a comprehensive Installation Report when the installation is complete. Sometimes I give customer orientation on aspects of the machine to ensure their people can operate and adjust the machine, and train customer maintenance staff. A few times, I’ve been asked to provide Sales support. Sometimes, I’m involved in training other service engineers. And occasionally I’m asked to make recommendations for improvements.” “Mr. Sauer told me that Tomas said you were the Group’s Superuser. What does that mean?” “That’s for our database of technical drawings and documents. It’s got all our technical information in it. All the part models and drawings and all the other machinespecific specifications, characteristics and documents. And all our working procedures. Everything. I know it better than anyone else in the Group, so I help anyone who has any questions about using it. I also train any new people on how to use it. And when there are updates, I train everybody about them.” “OK,” said Jane. “I understand. Is there anything else you’d like to tell me about your activities?” “No, not that I can think of.” “Thanks, Max, so that’s all clear. And thank you for sending me the documents. I don’t have any more questions, so we can end the interview now. Thank you for participating.” *

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Jane went back to the Container. She wasn’t feeling good. Fortunately, there were only three more interviews. * The 9:20 meeting was with Marco Jovanovic. Jane found him in a Service building. She introduced herself and the MPL project, then asked about his activities. “Hello Jane, I’m Marco Jovanovic. I’m a Maintenance Engineer, a Field Service Engineer. In the Maintenance Group, we maintain customer machines and troubleshoot and resolve any machine performance issues. We perform preventive maintenance tasks and other scheduled maintenance at our customers’ sites including cleaning, inspection, diagnostics, and testing. That includes lubricating with grease and oil, and doing mechanical and electrical calibration and re-alignments. We inspect and replace worn or damaged parts, bearings, belts, brakes, motors, rollers, bushings, isolators, power supplies, temperature controllers, relays, variable-frequency drives, control devices, and others, many others. Then, we also respond to service calls and fix machine stoppages and breakdowns. For example, we check, evaluate, troubleshoot, and diagnose problems with electrical wiring and circuits to determine the type and extent of problems, and determine appropriate solutions. We make reports on all our field service activities. I also provide guidance to less senior field service people, and train and assist other field service engineers.” “Mr. Sauer suggested I interview you. He said you’re the Maintenance Group’s IT specialist.” “That’s for our database. It’s an important resource for all our work. It contains all our technical information, everything we need to be able to work with our machines on customer sites. I’m the person in the Maintenance Group who knows it best, so I have to train and help everyone else in the Group with it.” “OK,” said Jane. “I understand. Is there anything else you’d like to tell me about your activities?” “No, nothing comes to mind.” “Thanks, Marco, that’s all clear. Thanks for sending me the documents. I’ve no more questions, we can end the interview. Thanks for participating.” * Jane went back to the Container, not feeling good. Fortunately, there were only two more interviews. * The 10:40 meeting was with Lothar Kreis. Jane found him in a Service building. She introduced herself and MPL, then asked about his activities. “I’m in the Returns Group,” said Lothar. “My activity comes at the end of the product’s life. My activities happen when a customer doesn’t want our machine any longer and they want to return it to us. Depending on the size and state of the machine, we may dismantle it on the customer site, and bring the bits and pieces back here. Or we may bring the machine back here, and then dismantle it. Occasionally we also dismantle demonstration machines, for example from Industry Shows.”

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“Mr. Mueller said you’re the Group’s Key User. What does that mean?” “He probably meant that I’m the most experienced user of our database of technical drawings and documents. That means that if anyone else in the Group has a question about it, they come to me and I help them. I sometimes run training sessions about the system, initial or refresher.” “Is that the same database for which Max Feldman is a Superuser?” “Yes. It’s the same database, but some of the data and documents are only of interest to the Installation Engineers, and other parts are only of interest to us in Returns. Max helps Installation Engineers with what’s of interest to them. I help my Returns colleagues with what’s of interest to us.” “Thanks, Lothar, that’s clear. Thanks for sending the documents. I’ve no questions, we can end the interview. Thanks for participating.” * Jane went back to the Container, wondering if she’d make it through the day. Fortunately, there was only one more interview. * The 13:00 interview was with Willy Hirschfeld. Jane introduced herself, then asked about his activities. “I design and develop Machine Controller software for Mayer machines,” said Willy. “Usually it’s for our standard controllers, but it also could be specific to a particular customer or a particular project. Usually we reuse existing software, but sometimes I write controller programs from scratch. I debug and commission the software here at our facilities during system integration, and I carry out thorough testing of machine functionality to verify the software’s completeness and robustness. I also write the documentation for each project. Another part of my work is maintenance of the controller software that’s on our machines in the field. Either someone’s found a bug that we need to fix, or there’s a requirement to change something. We’re always working with the other Engineering Groups to improve our technology, with the goals of enhanced safety, speed, functionality and cost. The starting information I get is usually a mix of requirements documents, written specifications, drawings, sketches, tables, and verbal instructions from Annette. The output is the program. And the documentation. And the test results.” “Thanks, Willy, and thanks for sending the documents. One more thing. Annette Meier mentioned that you’re working on a Digital Twin project. Could you tell me about that, please?” “There’s not much to say. A Digital Twin is a virtual representation of a physical product that represents the product throughout its lifecycle. We’d like to have a Digital Twin on the machine controller. That would help shop floor workers in all sorts of ways.” “Could you give me some examples, please.” “For example, to prototype a part ahead of manufacture to reduce defects, to monitor manufacturing operations, to improve first-time quality, to diagnose faults

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on machines, to reduce changeover times, to improve maintenance activities, and to reduce machine downtime due to fatigue failures.” “Thank you. No more questions, we can end the interview. Thanks.” * Jane walked to the Container, then decided to go back to the Adler. She ate a little at 6 pm, then went to her room and went to bed. She hoped she’d feel better in the morning.

Chapter 11

Sunday 23 June

Jane hadn’t worked on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. She’d rested and focused on getting back into shape. On Sunday, she took the train to Hanover. The hotel was only a five-minute walk from the main railway station. Frau Mueller had said that, as Dr Bender stayed in that hotel when he went to Hanover, she would have a nice room. She’d explained there were no hotels near the factory and, as everywhere up there was flat and miserable and it was usually raining, there was no other choice. Jane could take a taxi in the morning to the factory. It was less than thirty minutes away. * In the train, Jane thought about her interviews with the Hanover executives. She’d have less time with them than with the Mayer executives, so would need to adjust her interview approach. She was fairly sure the executives wouldn’t be deep in the details of product-related documents. But she could ask them about the reports they made and received. They probably got their Group Leaders to report monthly, and perhaps the reports would include product-related information. Similarly with systems, the executives probably wouldn’t know the details of the computer systems. It would be better to ask them about product-related issues. Their answers could help her get a better overview of what was happening with the products.

11.1 Monday 24 June Jane had set the alarm for 6:30 am and was down for breakfast by 7:00. There was a lot more choice on the buffet here than at Gasthaus Adler. She decided on cereal, followed by eggs and bacon, and then toast and marmalade. She had a long morning in front of her and wanted to be sure she’d have enough energy to get through until midday. By 7:20 she’d finished breakfast. She was in a taxi on the way to the factory

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. Stark, Product Lifecycle Management (Volume 5), Decision Engineering, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46887-2_11

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by 7:30. Arriving on site at 7:55, the taxi took her over to the management building. She checked in with the receptionist, told her she had a meeting with Dr. Koch and was handed a badge. She was asked to sit down and wait by the window, but decided to talk to the receptionist instead. “Will I be able to get a taxi back to my hotel this afternoon?” “Yes. Just ask us here, and we’ll call one for you.” “I forgot to ask about this before. Is there a canteen here where I can eat at lunch time?” “Yes, but there’ll be someone with you. They’ll show you the way.” The phone rang. “That was Dr. Koch’s secretary,” said the receptionist. “He’s waiting for you. It’s the second door along the corridor.” The door was open, so Jane knocked and went in. She was surprised to see an elderly man. “Hello,” he said. “I’m Rolf Koch. So you’re Jane.” “That’s right, good to meet you.” “Come in, come in, sit down. Would you like a coffee? No? You’ve got a busy schedule ahead of you, so let me give you some quick background. This company was bought by the Mayer family about five years ago. I’ve been here more than twenty years. About fifteen years ago, there was a management buyout, and with some colleagues I became a part-owner. But we hit rough economic times, and the colleagues sold out to an investment firm. That didn’t work out, and we were sold on to another investment firm. They lost interest, and eventually the Mayer family bought their shares. That explains why we’re part of Mayer now. By rights, I’m too old to be CEO, but I’m still a minority shareholder, and I know all our customers and people. And the family trust me. I first met Dr. Bender a few months ago and was really impressed. An excellent man! He’s told me about this project of yours and I fully support it. I agree that it’s important to understand what happens with our products from beginning to end. My feeling is that, these days, no-one has that overview. People only understand what happens with products in their own areas. My secretary Anja has organised everything for you. She’s reserved a meeting room for you along this corridor. That will be your base. I’ll show you where it is. Today you’ll have all the meetings in the meeting room. The other days you’ll also meet some people in their daily working environment, as you asked. Here’s the meeting room. And here’s Anja.” “Anja, this is Jane.” “Good morning, Jane.” “Good morning, Anja. Dr. Koch said you’ve been organising everything for me. Thank you very much.” “I was just checking the room,” said Anja. “Everything’s good. Someone will bring the lunch trolley at 11:45. And collect it at 12:30. And I’ve ordered a taxi each day for 17:00. Is that OK?” “Perfect. Thank you.” “Very good. If you need me, I’m in the office next to Dr. Koch’s.”

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“So,” said Dr. Koch. “All’s ready. Dr. Bender said you didn’t want to present anything?” “That’s right. I’m here to listen and look. I’ve nothing to present at the moment. Perhaps in a few weeks.” “I understand. Well, I’ll leave you to it. I wish you a good day of interviews.” * The day’s interviews were with the top executives. Jane didn’t expect to get a lot of low-level detail. She expected to explain to them about the MPL project, listen as they told her about their strategies and plans, and make sure she had interviews planned with their Group Leaders who could most likely give her more useful information. But the day turned out more useful than that. The first interviewee, Martin Graf, suggested she should meet Franziska Huber from Bids and Proposals, and a Product Manager rather than the Coordination Group Leader. He said that the Coordination Group didn’t have much to do with products. They were focused on getting people to work together. He also told Jane the story of how the company had started making medical equipment as well as machine tools. Apparently, in his younger days, Dr. Koch had run the US sales organisation. When the market turned down, a friend had suggested he try selling medical equipment. He said it was a new emerging market, not like traditional machine tools. The customers really wanted the products, so didn’t haggle over every cent. A market survey had confirmed the opportunity, and Dr. Koch had come back to Hanover and set up the medical equipment business. And to be honest, Mr. Graf said, if he hadn’t, we probably wouldn’t be here now. Jane liked the story. It gave her yet another input for the left-hand side of the upper arrow of her three-line sketch, and led her to ask Mr. Graf about returns of used medical equipment. He replied that he wasn’t sure of the details but, as far as he knew, they didn’t take returns. There would be a lot of associated decommissioning and decontamination procedures and health and safety issues. It probably wouldn’t be worth it. Most likely a hospital would donate the equipment to a charity or sell it to a certified recycler. * After Mr. Graf left, Jane had a few minutes before Felix Portman would arrive. She went over to get a coffee, but was surprised to see there was only hot water and herb tea on the trolley. How strange. She chose mint tea. It might keep her going longer than chamomile tea. * Felix Portman was the next interviewee. He was the Program Management Department Leader. When he arrived, he told Jane he was also the Program Management Director, and ran the PMO, so could answer any questions about project management. Jane asked him about tools and documents. She’d never heard of the project management system he mentioned, but everything else sounded familiar. Then she asked him if he had any issues related to the company’s products, the machines. He said his Department didn’t get involved with product details but focused on projects.

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His people were project managers, not engineers, and they didn’t know the details about the company’s products. * After Felix had left, Jane took another sip of mint tea. She wondered why there was no coffee. * Patrik Meyer was next on the list of interviewees. He told Jane he was the Service Department leader. He said he’d met Mayer’s Mr. Sauer several times and shared experiences. He knew they were organised differently in Mayer. He said that Jane would get the information she wanted from the three planned interviews with his Group Leaders. The Customer Support Group Leader was responsible for service for medical equipment. The Product Support Group Leader was responsible for service for machine tools. And the Training Centre worked for both types of products. Jane asked, “Is the training for customers or for the Service team?” “It’s for both.” * After Mr. Meyer had gone, Jane tried to remember if anyone in Mayer had talked to her about training of customers and the Service Team. Nobody came to mind. * The last interview before lunch was with Jan Schmidt, the CFO. He suggested Jane should talk to some of his reports. For example, Karsten Zumstein about Project Costing. And Anton Weiss, the IT Manager. Jane asked him how decisions were made about pricing. He said he’d leave Mr. Zumstein to answer that. He felt that a lot of pricing decisions were just guesses. He didn’t know how they could do better. It was only after the product had been on the market for some time that you knew what the price should be. Jane asked if he had any other product-related issues. He replied that another issue was to understand the contribution of a particular product. They had a lot of data, but the problem was to make sense out of it. Somebody came in with a trolley, removed some cling paper and went out. Jan said, “I’m sorry I have to leave. I have another meeting now. Enjoy your lunch.” * Jane found herself alone with the trolley. She went over to see what she was having for lunch. There were two Swedish style crispbread open sandwiches, an apple and a banana. And a bottle of water. What’s this, she asked herself? Is this an appetiser or is it lunch? She looked closely at the sandwiches. One seemed to be a lettuce and cherry tomato sandwich, the other a cheese and pickled herring sandwich. For some reason she thought of a school day out to Devon. Why’s the cheese so dry, she wondered? It looks like a left-over from last week. Presumably, this was how Anja thought guests should be treated. She began to understand Frau Mueller’s feelings

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about Hanover. But she was hungry, so decided to eat the two sandwiches. At least she thought they’d be clean as she’d heard some cling foil being removed. She was hungry and needed some energy for the afternoon interviews with Andreas Vogt, Claudia Schuler and Tanja Dietrich. Jane ate the sandwiches, but didn’t like the look of the apple and the banana, so wrapped them up and put them in her bag. She didn’t want anyone to assume she wasn’t hungry and cut her rations even further for the rest of the week. At 12:30, the lady who had brought her lunch came in to collect the trolley. Jane went over and asked if it would be the same tomorrow or would there be something different. After consulting a sheet of paper, Gizem, the trolley lady, said the order for tomorrow was the same, but Jane could change it if she wanted to. “Yes please,” said Jane. “I’d like to change it. What else do you have?” “Nothing else for vegetarians.” “I’m not vegetarian,” replied Jane. Gizem looked at her list, “But you have allergies. Which ones?” “None, as far as I know.” Gizem looked at her list again, “But you’re ill?” “Not as far as I know.” “Oh well, in that case, we have fish, beef, lamb and cheese rolls.” Jane was relieved, “That sounds good. That would be great.” “OK. One of each. Do you prefer one type of bread or would you like a variety?” “A variety please.” “And soup? And yogurt?” “Yes. Yes.” “OK. I’ll bring that tomorrow at 11:45.” “Thank you, Gizem. I couldn’t have survived all week on today’s lunch. Another question, do you have coffee here as well as herb tea?” “Of course. Would you like coffee now? And in the morning? And biscuits?” “Yes please, yes now. And yes, in the morning. And yes, biscuits.” “Good. I’ll go and get it now.” Gizem came back with coffee and said, “Sorry, there was a mix-up. They thought it was for Anja, not a visitor.” * At 13:00, Jane heard someone at the door. “Come in,” she said. A man in a suit came in and introduced himself as Professor Dr. Andreas Vogt, Head of the Engineering Department. They shook hands and Jane asked him to sit down. She thanked him for coming to the interview. “It’s a pleasure,” he said. “I’ve always been interested in products. Your project looks remarkably interesting. Which Professor suggested it?” Jane though about that for a while before answering. “It wasn’t a professor, it was Dr. Bender.” “Really? In Germany, it’s usually the professor who proposes the research subject. But I suppose in the UK that would be difficult as you’re so oriented to service industries. Here we still have a big manufacturing sector. More than 20% of the

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economy. Where are you studying? Cambridge? Warwick? I’ve often worked with them.” “No, London. It’s an MBA. And as you say, doing my research in a manufacturing company means I’m an exception. Most of my fellow students are doing research in the service industry.” “I’m a Professor of Machine Engineering, but I have some other interests in life. Football, 96 of course. And linguistics. You speak very good German, but occasionally I hear something non-standard. It sounds like Bremen’s dialect. Have you been there?” “Yes, I worked there one summer. I must have picked up some of the vocabulary without realising it.” “There’s nothing wrong with it. But, let’s turn to your work, how can I help with your project?” As the interview was only planned to last thirty minutes, Jane decided to limit herself to her two most important questions. Otherwise Frau Schuler would be here before she had the answers. “Professor, according to my interview schedule, I should be meeting fifteen of your Group Leaders. Why are there so many?” “That’s a good question. You see, I believe in companies being organised by functional Department. You’re probably aware from your studies of the classical Marketing, Engineering, Production and Service structure. It’s a very good approach. You know the theory. There are clear responsibilities for the department, there’s a clear focus to the department’s activities, the command structure is clear, there are clear career paths, people can focus and excel in a few specific activities, the most appropriate tools can be identified for the activities, people have the time to learn about departmental working methods, they have time to learn specific skills, they have time to get to know their colleagues well. I apply the same theory at the next level. At the level of the Groups. That way I bring together the people working in a specific function. For example, all of our Software people are in the Software Group. They learn from each other, they work together, they’re trained together. They’re always thinking about software. We can give them the best software tools. Whereas all the Electronic Engineers are in the Electronics Group. Likewise, they work together, learn from each other, share the best tools. It’s an approach that builds our know-how and our performance. Of course, people in a particular group also work with people in other groups. We have an approach called Concurrent Engineering that enables them to do that. You may have heard of it. It’s also called Simultaneous Engineering.” “Thank you for clarifying that, Professor. I’m looking forward to meeting your Group leaders. From what I’ve heard, they’re doing a great job.” “Yes, that’s right.” “One last question, Professor, to help me with the project. I was wondering if you could point me to some good books on the subject. I’m aware of some books, but it’s difficult to know how they relate to the project.” “That’s a good question. It’s always useful to get some input from the experts. I recommend Stark’s Product Lifecycle Management to my students. Very relevant. Of course, you should read Deming on Quality, but I expect you’re aware of that. Robert Cooper’s books on Stage and Gate are excellent, we have a phase-gate here. From

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the US, Hammer for Business Process Re-engineering. And Competitive Manufacturing from Porter. And Kotter on Organisational Change Management. That’s been instrumental in making change happen. There’s something from China, but I don’t remember the title. They’re big in manufacturing now you know, bigger than Germany.” “Thank you very much Professor Vogt, you’ve been very helpful. Frau Schuler should be here for the next interview in a minute. Do you have any questions for me?” “No. I also have to go to another meeting now. I look forward to reading your report and recommendations.” There was a knock at the door. “Come in,” said Jane. In came Frau Schuler and out went Professor Vogt. * “That’s good timing,” said Frau Schuler. “Hello, I’m Claudia. I guess you’re Jane. I’ve read about your study. Where do you want to start?” “I’m due to see your six Group Leaders. I’ll talk to them about details of systems and documents. I was hoping you could show me your annual plan and monthly reports. Just to see if there’s anything product-related in there. And after that, perhaps you could give me a quick tour of the factory.” “Very good,” said Frau Schuler. “Here are the plan and the management reports. Machine downtime, absenteeism, training, throughput, first time yield, nonconformities, exceptions, investment in new equipment. All the usuals. Would you like to see the plant now?” “Yes, please. I have about thirty minutes.” “Good. Let’s go. In case it helps, I know what the Mayer Production buildings look like. Mr. Pfeiffer showed me. The main difference here is that we have two separate production lines, machine tools and medical equipment, whereas Mr. Pfeiffer just makes machine tools. This building has the line for machine tools. You may recognise some of the machines. The same as Mr. Pfeiffer’s. The other difference is that here we’re very much laid out according to a continuous-flow approach. Mr. Pfeiffer often has Work-in-Progress Inventory, we don’t. That’s not necessarily good or bad. The choice depends a lot on volumes and the type of parts being manufactured. And even on the available buildings and space. And from your viewpoint, of the product, I guess it makes even less difference. In both cases, at the end of the line is the finished product. This is our Electrical area and the Electronics area is next. We have enough space for them to feed into the line. From memory, Mr. Pfeiffer doesn’t. Now we’ll go across to the other building and the other line, the one for medical equipment. We have some other machines there, but the principle is the same. And at the end, we package and label and ship.” “Is everything medical small enough to go in a package,” asked Jane. “Or does it need to go in several packages and then be installed on site, like some of the Mayer machines?”

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“It’s all small enough to go in one package. That can be a big package, but it’s got the whole machine in it. That makes it easier for the customer.” “But from what somebody told me, you do help the customer with set-up.” “Well, not us, not the Operations Department. The Service Department does, yes. How’s the time going?” “Time to head back,” replied Jane. “Otherwise I’ll miss Tanja Dietrich.” “So Sales is next. You are a fast worker!” “Dr. Bender would like me to see everything. I’d like to spend longer with everybody, but don’t have the time. Hopefully, I’m getting most of the story from everybody. There may be some holes when I put everything together. If there are, I’ll go back and ask for the missing information.” They arrived back in Jane’s meeting room, and she asked if she could keep the reports. “Yes,” replied Frau Schuler. “They’re copies I made for you.” “Thank you. And thank you for the plant visit.” “A pleasure, let me know if you need anything else.” Claudia left, and Jane had eight minutes to herself before 15:30. * There was a knock at the door. “Come in,” said Jane. In reply, another knock. Jane went over and opened the door. “Hi, I’m Tanja. I need to put these down somewhere,” said a woman in a striking red top and black jeans. She put a pile of papers and her PC on the table, and repeated “I’m Tanja. And this is Achim Klein. He leads Medical Sales. Come on in, Achim.” Achim came in and put down another huge pile of paper. “Achim suggested we show you the documents we have in a typical Sales situation.” Achim arranged his pile of paper in four smaller stacks. “Which one’s which, Achim?” asked Tanja. “These two are medical I think, and these two are machine tool. I remember this one, this was a new machine tool. That means this one is the order-specific example. And what are these two, Achim? That looks like the standard machine, and so this one is the special machine. Great idea to show all this, Achim! We’re totally drowning in paper. You must be Jane. Hello!” “Yes, I’m Jane. Hello, Tanja. Hello, Achim.” “Hello, Jane,” said Achim. “Achim saw this interview is your last today, so we’ve reserved the rest of the afternoon in case you want to talk more. Would you like us to start with one of these examples, or do you have some other questions for us first? Achim also made these three lists for you. That one’s a list of our procedures. In the middle is the list of the different types of product-related documents we use. And this one’s a list of our systems. These lists are medical and machine tool combined, aren’t they Achim? And Achim’s brought some swimlane diagrams as well. These are horizontal swimlane diagrams that Achim made. On the left side, you can see the roles of the swimmers who are about to dive in the pool. Of course, they’re not swimmers, they’re the roles of the people who are involved in a particular activity. You can see the activities going

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down the swimlanes. These swimlane diagrams are great for showing how people from different departments work together in an activity. I thought it would be useful to come with Achim because we have so much stuff. We also have an online database to show you on our PCs. If I’d come alone, I’d have got lost with the documents and it would have been impossible to put them back in the right order. But together, it should work. We’d thought of starting by showing you the NPD project, that’s the big pile, there, but if you prefer, we could start with another, or with something else if you prefer. By the way, people sometimes say I’m very talkative, so if I talk too much, just tell me and I’ll keep quiet.” “Well,” said Jane. “Why don’t we start with that small pile, the standard medical machine? And we’ll ask Achim to explain, and I’ll ask him questions when I don’t understand.” “That’s a good suggestion,” said Tanja. “Over to you Achim, and I’ll keep quiet.” Achim looked embarrassed, “Me, I don’t talk a lot. So, please interrupt if you want me to say more.” “That’s not true,” said Tanja. “You’re a great communicator. You know, Jane, Achim was on the technical side before he got into Sales. The customers love him because he really understands their language and can go into the technical details. Every quarter, he’s one of our top three salespeople. By the way, you asked for our annual strategy and plan. Here they are. And you asked for the reports from the Group Leaders. That’s this pack.” “Thank you,” said Jane. “Now Achim, perhaps you could tell me about all these documents for the sale of a standard medical machine?” “Great,” said Tanja. “And while he’s doing that, I’ll lay them out on this other table so you can see better. This is a customer request mail, sometimes we get them, sometimes we don’t. These are screenshots from our online catalogue which the customer can access. Here’s the machine in a Marketing brochure. And here’s the specification sheet. There are two of those, if you look in the bottom right you can see one is dated December of one year and the other is from June of the following year. This is from the customer. This is where they want to put the machine. And here are facility layouts from the customer. Power, water, and communications. Now this one’s an assembly drawing. So is this one. These are detailed drawings. This is the user interface. This is the electrical diagram, multi-sheet as you can see. And this one’s a PCB layout. This is a test result. Here’s a part list for that assembly I showed you. Achim can show you all this on his PC, we have it all on our PDM system. This is a NC program. This is the process plan for that part. Some more test results. Here’s a design review report. And now a risk management report.” “This is great,” said Jane. “This is what I was looking for. What’s the PDM system look like, Achim?” “We have all this for the other machines as well,” said Tanja. “You can see each pile is a different size. That’s because we need different drawings for different machines. We’ve brought four examples today, but we could provide you some more if you need them. What else do we have Achim? Upgrades for sure, they produce a lot of paper. And then there’s the development of a new medical machine, perhaps that’s the most paper because of all the regulatory requirements. Oh, I said upgrade, but there are

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two types of upgrades. There’s a general upgrade of one of our machines. And then there’s an upgrade of a customer-specific machine. We also sell consumables and accessories. We could get you examples for those as well if it’s helpful.” “Achim, could you show me this drawing on your PC? Does it take long to find?” “No,” said Tanja. “Look it’s already there on the screen. The system is really fast and easy. We can search on drawing type, or part number, or developer, or release date. And you can always navigate from one thing to another. Achim, click on part number. Look, now you can see the part that the drawing belongs to. And everything about the part.” “Yes, I see. Achim, do you have all the product-related data there in the PDM system?” “No,” replied Achim. “This is a PDM system we’ve had for many years. But last year the Engineering Department got a new PDM system for their CAD system. So now our system doesn’t have all of their data. And the Service Department has its own system. We don’t have all of their data and documents either.” “What about Operations?” asked Jane. “They now have to work with the Engineering Department’s PDM system, so don’t put everything in the old PDM system.” “Thanks for bringing this paperwork, Tanja. It’s really helpful to see it all. But Achim, you know what would be even better. If you could put the documents in a timeline. Starting on the left with the first one, and finishing on the right with the last one.” “We could do that,” said Tanja. “You mean so it shows how the product evolves from the beginning to the end?” “I’m not sure it would be 100% exact,” said Achim. “That’s probably not necessary, is it Jane? You’re looking for an overview I guess.” “Yes. An overview would be fine. It doesn’t have to be 100% correct. But it would be good to have something that’s as complete as possible.” “I could try for the NPD project,” said Achim. “That’s got a lot of documents. Although it doesn’t have much from Service.” “That’s fine. It would be a great starting point. I can always ask the Service guys to do something similar. I saw Mr. Meyer earlier this morning and I’m due to meet Renata Albrecht and Jens Feuerbach this week. One more question, Achim. Do you know if anyone here is working on Digital Twin or Digital Thread?” “We had a Digital Thread project. We created a thread of product data and ran it through our PDM system. It could flow throughout the product lifecycle, and whoever needed it could find it there, whenever they needed it. But then, last year, as I told you, the Engineering Department got a new PDM system, and that broke the Digital Thread. So now there’s no Digital Thread here and no Digital Thread project. I’ve heard Engineering has a Digital Twin project, but I don’t think it’s making much progress. A Digital Twin is a virtual representation of a physical product that represents the product throughout the product’s lifecycle. For a Digital Twin, you need CAD data and data from the field, which is what the Digital Thread can give you. But they broke the Digital Thread, so I don’t see how they can have a true Digital Twin now.”

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“Thank you, that’s very helpful. It’s the first time I’ve interviewed someone who’s worked on Digital Thread. How did you justify implementing it?” “That’s easy. We saw the Digital Thread as a continuous unbroken strand of product data that flowed through the product lifecycle from ideation to recycling and reuse. That implies the business processes in which the product data is created and used are smoothly connected with no gaps or barriers between them. And the same goes for the applications that create the data. That means product data can flow along the product lifecycle, and be available for people when they need it. It wasn’t like that before we made the thread. There were gaps and breaks in the data flow, departmental silos, contradictory versions of data, duplicate activities, interfaces where details got lost or misinterpreted, and places where people were re-entering product data manually. All that slowed us down and caused quality problems. In turn, that led to customer dissatisfaction, higher costs and reduced profits. When we introduced the Digital Thread, all that changed, all those issues I just mentioned went away. We improved the quality of information and traceability. We improved product quality, first-time yield and throughput, and reduced rework and scrap. And customer satisfaction increased.” There was a knock at the door. Jane wondered who it was. Another interviewee perhaps? She went over to open the door. “Hello, there’s been a taxi waiting outside since 17:00. Is that for you?” “Sorry, yes, that’s for me. Could you ask them to wait another minute please?” Jane shut the door, and went back to the table. “Tanja, Achim, thanks for everything. It’s been really helpful. Let’s meet again later this week. Sorry to leave you all this to clear up.” Jane ran down the corridor, left her badge with the receptionist and went out to the taxi. She suddenly realised she’d been inside since before 8:45. What a day! It had been long, but she’d interviewed the top eight people in the company. And collected some really useful information. She needed to work on her notes before she forgot everything. And she needed some food. * Arriving back at the hotel at 17:45, Jane saw that the restaurant opened at 18:30. She reserved a corner table. She should be able to work on her notes in peace there. * At 18:30, Jane was the first customer at the restaurant. She opened the menu and saw a page headed Vegetarian Dishes. She quickly shut the menu. No way! She opened it again carefully to see the first page. This looked better. Two daily specials. Some kind of beetroot soup. Why do restaurants have to come up with such long names? Seven words to say beetroot soup. And ten words for braised veal. The desserts didn’t look great, she’d pass on them. But she’d have a beer, she hadn’t drunk enough during the day. And now for today’s interview notes. As she read through her notes, she added missing pieces of information. There was more updating to do than usual. Perhaps eight interviews in a day was too much. Still, she’d managed to see all of the top

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management team. And tomorrow she only had seven interviews. When her soup came, she ate all the bread and then asked for more. She was hungry. Poor Anja! What a life she must have if she could only eat dry bread and lettuce leaves. Then she looked at her list of interviews. So, what’s the plan for the rest of the week? Tomorrow, seven people from Engineering. Wednesday, another seven from Engineering. Thursday, three from Engineering and four from Operations. Oh no! On Friday there are two from Operations, and three from Proposals, and then two from Project Management. But Felix Portmann had said those can be cancelled. So two people from the Service Department could move up to Friday afternoon. Or maybe two from the Finance Department from Tuesday. Jane regretted that Frau Mueller was so far away. She could fix everything in a minute. But Anja? Jane felt she couldn’t ask poor Anja to do it. No, she couldn’t give extra work to Anja. She’d be in burn-out. Jane decided to leave the two slots from Project Management empty. Perhaps she’d need them for someone from Engineering or Operations. Jane saw her braised veal coming, and put an extra piece of bread next to her fork. She wasn’t taking chances in Hanover. “Would you like some more bread?” asked the waiter. “Yes please, it’s very good. Is it baked here?” “No, it’s from the bakery next door. Would you like another beer?” “Yes, please. I see it’s local, it’s very good.” As she ate her veal, Jane had an idea. For tomorrow’s interviews with Engineering, she’d ask each person from who they received their work, and to who they gave their results. As she had fifteen people to see, that would give a good picture of the flow of work in Engineering. Great idea! She wondered where that had come from. Maybe Achim showing her all those paper documents and Claudia showing her the flow down the production line. But now she should stop thinking about work and concentrate on her dinner.

11.2 Tuesday 25 June The alarm woke Jane at 6:15 am. She’d set it earlier than usual so that she could spend longer at breakfast. She wanted to be sure that she had enough to eat and drink to get her through the day. In addition to bacon and egg, she added a sausage, beans, tomatoes and mushrooms. She also took two pieces of toast. After her second cup of coffee, she felt ready for the day. At 7:30 she was in a taxi and on the way to the factory. She arrived on time in the meeting room, and checked that coffee and biscuits were there. At 8:25 she headed towards Dr. Ernst Gersten’s office. * “Good morning, Dr. Gersten, I’m Jane. I’m here to interview you for the MPL project. Professor Vogt told me you lead the Technology Group. Could you tell me what the Group does?” “We investigate new technologies for our machines. Our focus is on Industry 4.0.” “Oh,” said Jane. “Technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Robotics?”

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“Not quite. We leave Operations to look at robots, that’s Frau Schuler’s Department. We’re in Engineering, so we’re looking at Industry 4.0 for the machines that our customers will use in their factories. So yes, some AI. But also sensors, Internet of Things, and software.” Jane remembered something she’d heard in Mayer, “New NC controllers, perhaps?” “Well, yes and no. More like new platforms.” Platforms sounded familiar to Jane. Someone in Mayer had mentioned platforms. But who? She couldn’t remember. “Will you be integrating several systems and applications on one multi-functional platform?” “Well, at the moment we’re just studying it,” replied Dr. Gersten. “In addition to the basic machine control functionality, I guess you could include communications, user interface and sensing functionality. And maybe connect up to the ERP system, and the Manufacturing Execution System. And even out to customers’ systems.” “Yes.” “What about Big Data and Analytics functionality? Would that be included?” “We haven’t decided yet. We’re looking into it now.” “And what about Artificial Intelligence? Would that be included?” “Probably, but we haven’t decided yet. We’re looking into it now. Of course, AI could add a lot of value for our customers. It can predict and automate. It can foresee the impact of a change. It can provide recommendations and decision assistance. It can carry out quality assurance. It can enhance image recognition technologies. It could be a transforming, empowering technology.” “And what about Digital Twin functionality? Would that be included?” “Probably, but we haven’t decided yet. We’re looking into it now. It could add a lot of value for our customers to have a Digital Twin. It would let them do a lot of simulation and monitoring on the shop floor and help them reduce set-up time and the time lost to breakdowns.” “And Digital Thread functionality?” “We haven’t decided yet. We’re looking into it now.” “And how long will it take to bring such a platform to market?” “Several years I expect. We’re right at the beginning now.” “Apart from the new Industry 4.0 platform, what other subjects are you looking at in your Group?” “Nothing else. The focus is on the new platform.” “Another question. What kind of product-related documents do you work with?” “I’m not sure I understand what you mean,” replied Dr. Gersten. “It’s a question I ask everybody. I’m trying to draw up a picture of how product data and documents flow in the company. For example, do you have CAD models, or drawings, or lists?” “No, we don’t have any of that. We’re more conceptual. We’re at a very conceptual stage. We have to make an advisory report to Professor Vogt by July, and then make

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a feasibility study by the end of October. That will allow him to plan and budget activities for next year.” “Thank you, Dr. Gersten. You’ve been very helpful.” * Jane went back to the meeting room and poured herself a coffee. She saw there were four biscuits, so decided to have two now and leave the others for later. She read through her notes from the Dr. Gersten interview and expanded on a few points. It seemed to be a good start to the day. She was eating her second biscuit when she realised that Dr. Gersten’s work was another example of the beginning of a product. Another example for the left side of the upper line of her three-line sketch. There was no sign of the market or a customer here, just a technology review. Excellent. She’d been hoping for some documents, but instead she’d found another example of the beginning of a product. But now she needed to leave for the 9:30 meeting with Dr. Kraft. * “Good morning, Dr. Kraft, I’m Jane. I’m here to interview you for the MPL project. Professor Vogt told me you lead the Innovation Group. What does the Group do?” “We’re a fairly new group. We’ve only existed since the beginning of last year. We’re setting up the company’s Innovation culture.” “That sounds interesting. How do you do that?” “We started by going to Innovation Conferences and learning about Innovation best practices. Some of us are also enrolled in a course. Master of Innovation. And we’re working with Innovation consultants.” “That sounds great. Please go on.” “This year we started to put Innovation in place in the company. We set up the Innovation organisation. I’m the Group Leader. There are two Section heads reporting to me. They each have their teams. We’ve put in place Key Innovation Performance Indicators. We’re preparing company-specific Innovation courses, Innovation communication tools such as posters, a newsletter, town halls, after-works, and an Intranet section. We’re writing Innovation procedures. We’ve developed an app so that everybody can propose Innovation suggestions. Depending on urgency and value, the app uses Artificial Intelligence to decide the next step. For example, if it’s safety-related, it needs immediate attention. If it’s potentially of high value, it’s sent to the Innovation Committee for the next meeting.” “It sounds great. How many Innovation suggestions have people made?” “It’s not officially launched yet. We aim to launch in October when everything is ready.” “Dr. Kraft, at this point in the interview I’d usually ask about the product-related documents you create and use, but from what I understand, you don’t have any.” “That’s right. We’re focused on Innovation, not specific products.” “Well, I don’t want to waste your time, so I think we can stop now. Thank you for your help.”

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* Jane went back to the meeting room. She looked to see who was next. Dr. Roth, Project Engineering at 10:30. Hopefully he would have plenty of documents to show her. In the meantime, she could have a coffee and eat the third biscuit. * “Good morning, Dr. Roth. My name’s Jane. I’m here to interview you for the MPL project. Professor Vogt told me you lead the Project Engineering Group. What does the Group do?” “This is one of the oldest groups in the Engineering Department. It’s always had this name, but its activities have changed. These days we work on something very specific. You know we make machine tools here?” “Yes,” replied Jane. “There are different ways to improve their performance, but you have to be careful when you’re cutting metal. For example, if you cut too deep or too fast you can break the cutting tool, or the part you’re cutting. You could even put the machine out of action. And you don’t want to do that. In this Group, we study that interaction between the tool and the part, and look for ways to improve performance. You could say that’s our key competence. It’s our key know-how.” “OK,” said Jane. “I’ve written that down, but I’m wondering where that fits with everything else that I’ve heard. By the way, in these interviews I usually ask if people could show me the product-related documents they create and use. What do you have?” “We create some tables of suggested working parameters for the machines. That’s about it.” “When do you create them? When do you use them?” “We create them right at the beginning of a new machine project. They should be used later by the Mechanical Group when they design the machine.” “Thank you, Dr. Roth. I don’t have anything else to ask. I’ll leave you to your work.” * Jane went back to the meeting room. She didn’t feel good about the interview with Dr. Roth. Maybe she didn’t know enough about machine tools to understand what he was talking about. Probably she should have asked some more questions, but she hadn’t been able to think of anything useful. But presumably somebody used his Group’s tables of working parameters, so she should come across them in another interview. For the moment, she’d review her interview notes, have a coffee, eat the last biscuit, and prepare for the next interview which was going to be with Carsten Nyffenegger at 13:30. * Gizem brought the lunch trolley at 11:45. There were soup, buns and yogurt. Jane sat down and did her best to enjoy her lunch. Several times she found herself thinking

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about the morning’s interviews and had to remind herself to live in the present. Enjoy your lunch! And if you’re not enjoying it, think about yesterday’s lunch! * After lunch, the first interview was with Mr. Nyffenegger. “Good afternoon, Mr. Nyffenegger. My name’s Jane. I’m here to interview you for the MPL project. Professor Vogt told me you lead the Medical Engineering Group. What does the Group do?” “We’re an Engineering Group that works closely with customers of our medical industry machines to understand what they’re looking for in the future. Then we translate that into specific requirements for our development and improvement projects.” Jane finished writing her notes, and then reread what she’d written. She wasn’t sure if she’d got that right. “I’m not sure if I understand properly,” she said. “Your Group gets requirements from customers for new machines. Did I get that right?” “Our emphasis is more on making sure that customer desires are correctly translated into requirements that the Engineering Department Groups can work with.” Jane didn’t understand. Isn’t that why the Marketing Department exists? Why would Mr. Nyffenegger’s Group in the Engineering Department do that? She decided to ask another question. “Mr. Nyffenegger, usually at this point of the interview I ask about product-related data and documents. Could you show me what your Group creates and uses? And tell me where they come from and where they go to.” “Of course. I’ve sent them to you as the mail requested. And I’ve made this copy of everything.” He pointed to a stack of documents. “How do you like to do this? Shall I show them to you? I have a list here as well. And a list of systems.” “Yes, please. Thank you for sending them to me. It would be helpful if you can show me some examples.” She looked again at the stack. “I’m not sure if we have time for all of them. I should leave at about 14:20.” “OK, I’ll try to be quick. Let’s start with this, a spreadsheet table of customer desires. You should look at these. I mean you should read them. You see, they’re quite vague. There could be a hundred ways of meeting these wishes. We couldn’t give that to our engineers. They wouldn’t know what to do. We gather such information from many customers and that leads to this, which is the Consolidated Needs Report. By the way, this table links back to the desires of each customer. And next, Functions and Features, and here’s the Engineering Specifications document. I’ve sent you all these, but please be careful with them. They’re very sensitive.” Jane could see that several were stamped in red, Confidential, Business Sensitive. “Yes, of course,” she said. “By the way, I signed an NDA.” “And then we come to these documents, CAD models, assembly drawings, parts lists, and the like.” This second set of documents looked familiar to Jane. She’d seen something similar among Achim’s documents. But she didn’t remember seeing the confidential ones before.

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“So there you have it,” said Mr. Nyffenegger. “Do you have any other questions?” “No, I don’t think so. There are the documents, and there’s the list. What about the working procedures?” “Sorry, I forgot to print them out. But I did mail them to you. Would you like me to print a copy now?” “No, thank you, it’s not necessary. And I see we’re running out of time. One final question. Who gives you the list of desires?” “Each customer gives us its desires, and we make the list.” “Thank you. That’s what I thought I understood before. I just wanted to confirm it. Thank you very much. You’ve been very helpful.” * Jane’s 14:30 interview was with Jens Alff. According to the door, he was Head of the Prototyping Engineering Laboratory. Jane knocked. There was no reply. She reasoned that, as it was a laboratory, he could be far away. She knocked again, harder this time, and opened the door slowly. She couldn’t see anybody, so stepped inside, “Hello. Hello, Mr. Alff.” “Hello, Alff here.” A tall thin man appeared from behind a machine. “Hello, Mr. Alff. I’m Jane. I’m here to interview you for the MPL project.” “Oh yes, sorry. I didn’t realise it was so late. How can I help you? Would you like to see the lab?” “That would be great. I can ask my questions as you show me round.” “Right. I’ll start over here, and then we’ll work our way over to the other window. These are our machining centres and milling machines. There are two lathes. Some controllers. Bits and pieces. The pick-and-place machine. An SMT. Two 3D printers. Two CAD screens. We have a good range.” “It’s very well equipped.” “Yes, we try to have everything available so that we don’t slow projects down. If anyone needs something, we can usually get started in a day or two.” “I usually ask people about their product-related drawings and other documents. What do you have?” “We try to keep away from paperwork,” Mr. Alff replied. “The project people generally bring in a file, and we work from that.” “And working procedures?” “There is one. From memory, there’s not much in it. Would you like a copy?” “Yes, please. It’s probably easiest if you send it to me.” “I will. Anything else?” “No. That’s all, thanks very much. Thanks for showing me around.” * Jane went back to her room. She was confused by what Mr. Nyffenegger had said. She’d thought that the Marketing Department collected customer desires, not the Engineering Department. However, she didn’t have time to think about it now, so added it to a list of points to review. Fortunately, she still had time to have a coffee,

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fill in some of the details in her notes, and then go to the next interview at 15:30. Who was this with? Werner Weigl, the Head of the Project Management Group. * Jane knocked at Mr. Weigl’s door. “Come in.” “Hello, Mr. Weigl. My name’s Jane. I’m here to interview you for the MPL project. Professor Vogt told me you lead the Project Management Group.” “Yes, I was expecting you. But I’m not sure I can help you much. This is the Project Management Group. We’re project managers. We don’t have anything to do with products.” “I understand, but one thing I don’t understand is how you relate to Mr. Portmann. I saw him yesterday, and he’s also the Head of Project Management.” “That’s an easy question to answer. Felix Portmann is Corporate Project Management. We’re Engineering Project Management.” “But, do you do the same thing?” “No. Mr. Portmann is Corporate and PMO, Project Management Office. We manage development projects in Engineering. Look, you can see some on the board behind you on the wall. That’s our phase-gate approach.” “Oh, yes. Professor Vogt told me about that. How many phases are there?” “Five. You can see them in the left column. Then there’s a column for the Group. And then a column for the activity the Group is doing there. And a column for the deliverables. You can see the Groups work in parallel. It’s a Concurrent Engineering approach.” “Could I have a copy of that please? I’d better study it. If Dr. Bender asks, I’d better know what’s happening.” “Of course, I’ll send you a copy now. Basically, during each phase, no that’s not right. Basically, in a given phase, one or more of the Groups is doing its activity, and producing its deliverables. Or Groups are working together and producing deliverables. In a given phase, several Groups produce deliverables. Then, at the end of the phase, there’s a gate. And at the gate, the Gatekeepers review the deliverables. If the deliverables meet all the requirements, then the project can move to the next phase. If not, whoever hasn’t met the requirements with their deliverables goes away and works to bring them up to target. Then the Gatekeepers review the project again. Hopefully, everything is in order this time and the Gatekeepers let the project pass through the gate to the next phase.” “And you use that for all projects?” “Yes.” “For New Product Development and Engineering Change projects?” “No, just for NPD. Engineering Change projects are something different, they’re usually smaller. They’re managed differently.” “Someone mentioned a way of prioritising new projects. I’m sorry. I don’t remember the details. Do you have that as well?”

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“Perhaps Mr. Portmann mentioned it. No, we don’t have it, but we’re thinking about it. Today, once an NPD project starts, it runs to the end. Or until Professor Vogt stops it.” “Thank you. You’re very helpful. I have another question. Again, I can’t remember who mentioned it, but they talked about milestones in the project. They started with M0 or M1. Is that like your gates?” “No. It’s really different. We used to have milestones, but Professor Vogt changed us over to gates. Gates are much more meaningful. Let me give you an example. Let’s say your project is for you to leave here and drive to Hamburg. And your first milestone, M1, is at Bremen. OK?” Jane tried to visualise the map, “That doesn’t look the shortest way.” “It’s not the shortest way, but this is just an example. M1 is Bremen, OK?” “Yes.” “Now, in your project, you’ve left Hanover and you’re at Bremen. You tell Professor Vogt that you’re at M1. Is he pleased?” “I’ve got to the milestone, so I expect so.” “And you continue your project?” “Yes.” “But you shouldn’t.” “Why not?” “Because you’ve spent all your money, you forgot your credit card, you’re out of gas, you have a puncture, and you’ve caught the flu.” “Oh. I see. You mean a milestone doesn’t say much. It only says I’ve got to Bremen, but nothing else. And what about the gate?” “At the first gate, the Gatekeepers don’t just check one parameter in a project. They check maybe five or six parameters. They wouldn’t let you leave Bremen for Hamburg. You’d have to fix your other project problems first.” “That’s a great explanation. Thanks. I’m running out of time. Just one more question. Do your project managers create and use product-related documents?” “We don’t create any. We don’t get into product details. All we would do is check that the deliverables that should be produced by the Groups exist. They could be product-related, but they can be very different for every project.” “Thank you very much, Mr. Weigl. Now I must go.” * Jane went back to the meeting room. The taxi wasn’t due until 17:00, so she had time to tidy up her notes and review some of the documents she’d received during the day. She should label them as well. Otherwise she’d forget where they came from. There was a lot to do, so she concentrated on getting it done as quickly as possible. There was a knock at the door. “Hello, there’s a taxi waiting outside. Is it for you?” Jane looked at her watch. “Yes, sorry, I was busy with all this paper and forgot to check the time.” “No problem. See you tomorrow.” “Bye, see you tomorrow.”

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Jane went out to the taxi and apologised for keeping the driver waiting. “No problem. Let’s go!” * Jane looked at the menu. Perhaps she should stop eating here. It was too fattening. Either that or behave like an adult and have a soup and salad. OK, soup and salad today. Or maybe the vegetarian menu? Definitely not! She’d have soup, salad and a fruit salad. The waiter asked if she’d like king prawns or herring with the salad. “Herring, please.” At last, time to relax. Perhaps tomorrow evening she’d go and look at Hanover, but not today.

11.3 Wednesday 26 June Jane had set the alarm for 6:15 am. That gave her time to have a good breakfast before taking the taxi to the factory. While eating breakfast she thought again about the idea that she’d had the previous evening. She couldn’t finish the interviews here this week, so perhaps it would be best to go back to London on Friday and come back to Hanover on Tuesday. Then have interviews in Hanover on Wednesday and Thursday. Then she could take the train, be back at Gasthaus Adler on Thursday evening, and be at Mayer on Friday. That would give her time to check in with Frau Mueller and prepare for her visit to the French factory. It still seemed a good idea. * Jane’s 8:30 meeting was with a Mr. Metzger in the Engineering Analysis, Test and Simulation laboratory. She knocked at the door, but there was no reply. She knocked again. Still no reply. She couldn’t open the door, there wasn’t a handle. She knocked again. The door opened. “Hello,” said a bearded individual. “Can I help you?” “Yes, are you Mr. Metzger?” “No, he’s over there.” The bearded individual walked away and shouted, “It’s for you.” “Coming.” “Mr. Metzger?” said Jane. “Yes, that’s me. You must be Jane. I got the mail. I sent you everything you asked for. Is there anything else?” “Well, as I’m here, perhaps you could show me what you do.” “Yes. Come in, sorry. I was just running a test. So, what do we do here? Well, I run the Lab. And I also run the Test Section. We test anything. Anything from individual parts to whole machines. I mean real tests. On real objects. Lukas, who you just spoke to, he runs the Analysis Section. They do computer analysis on parts. An engineer sends them a CAD model of a part, and a list of parameters, and Lukas and his people run the test in the computer program. Tests like stress analysis and

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thermal analysis. Then Lukas sends the test results back to the engineer. And then there’s Franck. He runs the Simulation Section. Again, it’s all computer stuff. Again, an engineer sends a request. Franck’s guys do the simulation on the computer. Franck sends the result to the engineer. I sent you examples. You’ve not seen them? You didn’t get my mail?” “I’m sorry, but I’ve been so busy with interviews that I’m behind with my mails. But tell me, why don’t the engineers do the Analysis and Simulation themselves?” “It’s not so easy to do Analysis and Simulation. You need to be a specialist with the tools otherwise it’s easy to get it all wrong. And then the results can be dangerous if they’re mis-interpreted.” “Did you send me a list of the computer systems they use as well?” “Yes.” “Thank you. Another question, do people from Marketing ask you to do tests, analysis and simulation?” “They only ask for tests. Sometimes they somehow get hold of a competitor’s component, and we’ll test it for them.” “And what about Production? Do they ask for anything?” “Production? Not too often, but sometimes they may ask for a test if there’s a problem with a part they’re making. I don’t remember Lukas analysing anything for them. Sometimes they get Franck to simulate a layout or a movement.” “What about After-Sales?” “I think After-Sales doesn’t ask us anything. Not directly anyway. But if a customer has an issue with something, there’ll be a Service Failure Report or a Customer Complaint Report. And we can be asked to do tests. And then I might get Lukas involved. But I don’t remember involving Franck.” “I don’t have any more questions. Actually, I do have one. I’m a visitor here, I’m in a meeting room and don’t have a printer. Would you be able to print a copy of the documents you sent me? That way I can look at them this afternoon.” “No problem. You’d better wait here. It’s safer. I’ll do it right away.” A few minutes later, Mr. Metzger came back with a stack of paper. “Here you are. Let me know if you have any other questions. You’ll see that we always produce a Test Result Form for each test. And there’s the Test Request Form. Depending on the details, there could be other documents as well.” “Thanks Mr. Metzger. You’ve been very helpful.” * Jane’s 9:30 meeting was with Armin Freisleben of the Support Technology Group. She explained briefly who she was, what she was doing, and asked him about his activities. “We develop the strategy for the Engineering Department’s tools,” he replied. “The Group is about two years old. It was set up by Professor Vogt when we needed to change some of our systems. Before we existed, Engineering IT was planned by the central IT group, but that wasn’t a true strategy. As a result, we didn’t have an Engineering IT architecture and we had tools from many vendors. One of the vendors was acquired by another company. That’s when Professor Vogt set up the Support

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Technology Group. IT is so strategic for us in Engineering that he wanted to be sure we had the right strategy. We had two main ways to go. We called one way the Best in Class approach. In that, we would use the best tools on the market, whoever the vendor. We called the other strategy Single-Vendor. In that strategy, we would use as much as possible the tools from one vendor, even if they were not Best in Class. I’m talking here about the Engineering Department’s tools. Tools like Mechanical CAD, CAE, PDM, Electrical and Electronic CAD, software, Application Lifecycle Management, Analysis, Simulation, Digital Twin, and so on. We have many. We need them all. The question is do we select best-in-class or do we select a single vendor? There are advantages and disadvantages to both sides. For example, on one hand, best-in-class has advantages such as being independent from any one vendor, being able to use the best applications, and being less concerned if a particular vendor exits the market. Whereas single vendor has advantages such as better interfaces between the vendor’s applications, only having one vendor to administer, having an easier update schedule, and having a smaller support team. We made a study. Then reported back to Professor Vogt. After many discussions he chose Single-Vendor. Since then, we’ve been implementing that approach. It has many impacts, but again we weigh up pros and cons before taking decisions. Perhaps the main advantage now is that, with our single-vendor solution, we have a continuous product description in the system, a continuous unbroken flow of product data, a Digital Thread. It was not like that before when we had to do conversions and interfaces between systems.” “That’s very clear, Mr. Freisleben, thank you. I just have a couple more questions. First, I always ask people about their machine-related data and documents. What do you create and use in the way of machine-related data and documents?” “Nothing. We don’t work with machines. We create strategy reports and system architectures.” “That’s what I thought, but I had to ask. Secondly, I think somebody told me about a change of PDM system. I don’t remember who, I’ve interviewed so many people.” “Well, that’s partly true. With our new strategy, we have a new PDM system. However, the old PDM still exists. There are several issues that arise when you change systems. For example, one is to decide what to do with the product data in the old PDM system. Do you maintain the old PDM system and leave the data in it? Or do you migrate over all the data from the old system to the new system, then switch off the old system? We decided to maintain the old PDM system, and only put in the new PDM system the data that we’re using today. So, for example, the data from all NPD projects currently running goes in the new PDM system. We didn’t think it made sense to convert all the data from old machines and put it in the new PDM system since it’s almost never used now.” “You mentioned Digital Twin and Digital Thread. What’s their status today?” “We’re investigating Digital Twin and looking at the options. We’re due to report to Professor Vogt by the end of the year. On Digital Thread, we’re more advanced. We investigated that and proposed the way forward for implementation. Professor Vogt gave that the go-ahead.”

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“That’s interesting, what implementation approach did you propose?” “To start with, initiate the Digital Thread project and give the project participants some education about Digital Threads. After that, the team documents and reviews the current product data and the product-related processes and applications, looking for Digital Thread opportunities. Next, they list the Digital Thread opportunities they’ve identified, and then prioritise them. After that they take the top opportunities, and detail them for business value and cost. And then select the best opportunity, and implement it.” “Good, thank you. I understand. Thank you, Mr. Freisleben, you’ve been highly informative.” * Back in her meeting room, Jane saw she had time to call Frau Mueller and reorganise the interview schedule. After telling her about the weather, Jane explained that she’d decided to go home for the weekend and would finish the interviews next week. Frau Mueller said it was good for Jane to have a break. It would be no problem to rearrange the interviews. With that done, Jane reviewed her notes from the interview with Mr. Freisleben and had a coffee. Then she left for the 10:30 interview. * Holger Bindbeutel’s office door was open. Jane knocked and looked in. She was confused, not sure what to do. There were two people in the office. “Come in, you must be Jane. I’m Holger Bindbeutel, Mechanical Engineering Group Leader. And this is Petra Holler, Electrical Engineering Group Leader. We saw that you’re going to interview us both, and thought we’d suggest a joint interview as we have a lot in common. We’ve both replied to your mail with all the material you asked for, haven’t we Petra? “Yes, I sent everything yesterday. Hello, Jane.” “Hello, Petra. Well, OK, let’s try a joint interview. If I need to, I can always ask you something separately afterwards.” “Jane,” said Holger. “The reason we thought of a joint interview was because of these presentation slides from Professor Vogt. He often shows them at conferences, and I think he uses them in his courses at the University. These are for you. This first slide is an overview of how we work on a new machine. Starting in the top right, you can see that there’s a requirements document and a work breakdown structure. Then there’s a product structure and a project management schedule. That’s where some of the work comes to me in the Mechanical Group and some goes off to Petra in Electrical. Then it goes to one of my people. They look to see if they can reuse something from an existing machine. Or can modify something from an existing machine. Or will develop something new on their CAD systems. They start to flesh out their design, so we have an idea of what’s going where. Then you see Petra’s people get involved. My people may want to simulate something or analyse something, so they ask the Test Group to do that. You can see the data is put in the PDM system, so it’s easy to access. We try to keep the data electronic as much as possible, and not use paper. Here we might make a part to test. And down here you

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can see the software and the electronics comes in. And again, there can be more tests there. And we would do some risk reviews, and some design reviews. Then we get to the proto machine and more tests. But, all the time, the data is in the PDM system so everyone has the right version. On the next slide, it’s more or less the same picture, but this one also shows our phases and gates. Each phase has its own colour. The gate for each phase is a similar colour, but slightly darker. You can see here that the deliverables are in the PDM system before the gate, so they can be reviewed. And after the gate, there’s the gate review report. The next slide shows which systems we’re using at each time. And finally, this one shows the documents we create. When I say document, that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a paper document, it can stay electronic. It’s just a meaningful collection of data that’s useful to bring together for a certain purpose at a certain time.” Holger stopped, “Anything to add Petra?” “Nothing. Great explanation! Any questions, Jane?” “I don’t know. That was wonderful. It’s a great presentation. It’s probably helpful for me because Dr. Bender wants me to find out what happens with products from beginning to end. This presentation is doing that. I can see the data and systems on the slides, and you’ve sent me examples. That’s usually one of my questions, so I don’t have to ask that. What about improvement suggestions, do you have any suggestions for improvement?” Holga and Petra looked at each other. “We’ve got this working well in our Electrical and Mechanical Groups,” said Petra. “But it’s more difficult with the Electronics and Software Groups. Andrea and Helena will agree with that. That’s where we’re trying to improve things now.” “I don’t know whether I should say this, because it’s not at our level,” said Holger. “Everything you see here is in the Engineering Department. It would be great to include the manufacturing engineers from the Production Department. But we can’t do that.” “But didn’t I see a CAM system on the slide?” asked Jane. “Yes, the system is there,” said Holger. “But it’s only our Prototype Group that uses it. Not the guys in Production.” “Anything else, Holger? Petra? No. Well, thank you both very much. It’s been very useful. This presentation will help me a lot.” * Jane went back to her meeting room, read through her interview notes, and updated them as appropriate. She also made some notes about the contents of each of the slides. This was good material and she didn’t want to lose it. That done, there was still time for a coffee and the last two biscuits. Before long, Gizem arrived with the lunch trolley. Best to forget about MPL and concentrate on lunch. * Jane had been due to meet Petra at 13.30, so the next interview wasn’t until 14:30. It was with Helena Thoben, the Software Engineering Group Leader.

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* Jane found Helena in a cubicle in an open-plan office. Helena was looking intently at something on her computer screen, deep in thought. Jane felt she shouldn’t disturb her, so waited. However, Helena remained focused on her screen, so Jane tapped on the cubicle wall frame and said, “Excuse me, we have a meeting.” Helena turned around. “Sorry, I was looking at this,” she said, indicating something on the screen. “Hello, are you here for the MPL interview?” “Yes, I’m Jane. You’re Helena, I guess?” “Right, I’m Helena. Shall we do it here or find a meeting room?” “Here is fine.” “I’ve sent you all the things you asked for. Everything’s in our ALM system. I’ve sent it all to you.” “Thank you,” said Jane. “ALM, what’s that?” Helena raised her eyebrows, “ALM, that’s the acronym for Application Lifecycle Management. It’s the system we use in this group to manage our applications and data. Our software. That we develop. And maintain. Everybody in the group has a license. We all use it.” “I’m sorry, I didn’t know. I’m not a software development specialist. The MPL project aims to find out what’s happening with the whole machine tool from beginning to end. It’s not just about software.” Jane felt this interview was going badly, but she kept going, “Do you use the Engineering Department’s PDM system?” “No, there’s no interface.” “Do you use the Engineering Department’s phase and gate approach?” “It’s not suitable for software. We’re Agile.” Jane felt this interview was going from bad to worse. She should ask about issues and Improvement suggestions. But she had to be careful how she phrased it. “Do you have any problems in your work?” “No, we deliver what we promise.” “And do have you any suggestions to improve your activities?” “No.” Jane decided enough was enough. “Well Helena, thank you for your help. I’ll review your mail and get back to you if I have any more questions.” “OK.” Helena turned back to her screen. * The interview list showed Andrea Wyss, the Electronics Engineering Group Leader, at 15:30. Jane hoped that Andrea wasn’t going to be another Helena. Her door was slightly open, so Jane knocked, and looked in. However, there was a man sitting at Andrea’s desk. “Hello, sorry to disturb you,” said Jane. “I seem to have come to the wrong office. I’m looking for Andrea Wyss.” “Yes, that’s me, come in. Sorry to confuse you,” he laughed. “Blame my mother, she’s Italian. How can I help? I saw your mail and replied with all our data. Please, sit down. What else would you like to know?”

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“You’re the Electronics Engineering Group Leader I think.” “Yes, that’s right. I’m Andrea Wyss, Electronics Engineering Group Leader. Now, what about your project?” “The MPL project is for Dr. Bender, CEO of Mayer.” “Yes, I know. I’ve met him.” “The project is to find out what happens with the machines from the beginning to the end.” “Yes, I know. That’s important. Nobody in the company has that overview. How can I help you?” “To start with, perhaps you could tell me what your Group does,” said Jane. “We develop all the electronics for our machines. I don’t like to say it, but we’re a very important Group. Twenty years ago, the machine tool business was all about mechanical and electrical engineering. But now, most of the value-added is from electronics and software. That’s what Industry 4.0 is about. Have you heard of it?” “Yes.” “Good. You see, if we don’t improve our electronics and software, Germany will be left behind by other countries. Nobody will want mechanical and electrical machines without electronics and software. Every time there’s a new machine here, the customers want more electronics and software. It’s the same for both medical equipment and machine tools. Even more so for medical. At the same time, more and more suppliers are making more and more electronic components that we can use, so we have great opportunities. There are new sensors every day, new motors, new everything. Every day we could add functionality. Now we have to be really fast developers.” Andrea paused, and Jane slipped in a question that had come to mind. “But if everything is changing, how can your assemblies keep up? You can include today’s best motor, but in six months it will be out of date. If it’s on a machine on a customer site, how can you upgrade it?” Andrea raised his hands and applauded. “Excellent question. You should join this Group! What you say is clear to me, and to Industry 4.0. But in many companies, there’s unfortunately no solution. The mechanical engineering and electrical engineering groups are too slow, they don’t understand. And the software engineering groups are too small. They’re overloaded fixing bugs in old software and can’t develop new software for new electronic opportunities. The only solution I’ve found is to add software developers in my electronic teams. They don’t get slowed down by maintenance work, so can concentrate on new developments. But to get back to your question, our current solution is to keep the electronics separate, and put it in industry-standard modules. Then, when we want to update our design, our Service people can simply remove the old module from the machine and replace it with a new one.” “I’m sorry, I have another interview soon, but I have just a few more questions.” “I’m ready.” “First, do you use the Engineering Department’s PDM system?” “No. It’s not for electronic components. We have our own PDM.” “Second, do you use the Engineering Department’s phase and gate approach?”

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“Yes, sometimes.” “What else do you use then? Milestones?” “Please don’t write this down. It’s just to help you understand. We use the Engineering Change system. It’s much lighter.” Jane would have liked to ask for more details, but saw that time was running out. She’d look at it on her own later. Instead, she asked another question, “What are your main product-related issues?” “I don’t have time to tell you about all our issues. There are all sorts. For example, incorrectly defined products, incorrectly structured products, conflicting definitions of data, incorrectly defined procedures, ineffective application interfaces, manual data re-entry, too many projects, lack of training, lack of competent personnel.” “And what would your main product-related improvement suggestions be?” “That could take hours to answer, but I’ll give you just two. Our products should be more modular. We shouldn’t change the underlying platform often, maybe just every four or five years. But some modules, like electronics, should change every six months. And the other improvement would be to speed up the way the organisation works. What takes two years today should take six months.” “Thank you, Mr. Wyss. I’m afraid I must go now, but you’ve been very helpful. Thank you so much.” * Jane walked slowly back to the meeting room. For a moment she felt overwhelmed. But then she told herself to remember her objective. She didn’t have to solve the problems she heard about. They weren’t her problems. Her job was just to do the interviews and gather information so she could tell Dr. Bender what was happening with his products. And more importantly, write a research report. So that’s how many interviews now? About sixty in Mayer. Eight on Monday. About a dozen today and Tuesday. About eighty. And she still had three more days here. And a week in France. She’d have quite enough material for her research report. All she had to do now was review her notes from the afternoon interviews and then get her taxi back to the hotel. And this evening, she’d walk around Hanover for a while before having dinner. * Back at the hotel, Jane decided to forget about MPL for a while. Instead she’d go out and look at Hanover. She’d walk towards the Maschsee and have something to eat on the way back to the hotel.

11.4 Thursday 27 June Jane had set the alarm for 6:00 am. She wanted to be in her meeting room by 7:45 so she could look through the mails from the Production people she was going to see. That way, assuming they were doing similar work to those in Mr. Pfeiffer’s Department, she might be able to save some time. But to do that she needed to take

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the taxi to the factory at 7:15, and that meant breakfast at 6:30. During breakfast, she finalised her plan for the weekend. Early on Friday morning, she’d take the train to Hamburg Airport. She’d leave most of her stuff at the hotel so she could travel light. She’d be at Bristol in the afternoon and would stay with Mum on Friday and Saturday. Then, on Sunday morning she’d take the train to London to see how things were with her room. She’d stay two nights there, then fly back to Hamburg. That way, she’d be back to start the next round of interviews on Wednesday morning. She’d finish them on Thursday, then take the train South. She’d be in Mayer on Friday morning. All is clear! Enjoy your breakfast! * Jane’s 8:30 interview was with Florian Kreis. His door was open. She knocked. “Hello, I’m here for the MPL interview. I’m Jane.” “Hello, I’m Florian Kreis, Configuration Management Group Leader. Sit down please. Would you like a coffee?” “No thank you, I’m fine. Would you like to start by telling me what you do?” “Sure. By the way, I answered your mail, and I’ve sent you all our documents. Have you had a chance to look at them?” “No, I’m afraid not. I’ve been interviewing all day for several weeks. But, please tell me. What does your Group do?” “We’re Configuration Managers. Our main task is Configuration Management. I’m the Configuration Management Group Leader, so I have another task, sorry other tasks. I lead the group and I’m responsible for developing our company’s Configuration Management guidelines and governance.” “I understand about the different tasks. Could you tell me some more about your role as Configuration Managers as that’s probably where everyone’s involved.” “Yes, that’s right. Well, our role is a Configuration Manager role. We’re responsible for providing the overall Configuration Management infrastructure and environment for projects. We co-ordinate CM activities and provide guidance to project members. We ensure operation of configuration management and change management policies, procedures, activities and tools.” “Thank you. And three last questions. This will probably be obvious once I’ve looked at your mail, but which product-related data and documents do you work with?” “You’ll see from the mail that there’s a huge variety. And a huge volume. Basically, our job is just about management of product-related data and documents. But they aren’t our documents, they belong to the project.” “Next question. Do you have any product-related issues?” “We have a lot. Configuration Management is a new approach in this company. Many people don’t like it, or don’t understand it, or don’t want to learn about it.” “And what would you suggest to improve the situation?” “It’s too late for this now, but as soon as Configuration Management was mentioned in the company, we should have put in place an Organisational Change Management program to support the change. Now, it’s more difficult. But it’s still possible. A lot of training. A lot of hands-on support. A lot of coaching.”

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“Thank you, Mr. Kreis. You’ve been very helpful. Once again, my apologies for not having read your mail and documents. I’ll do that as soon as possible and will get back to you if I have any questions.” * Back in the meeting room, Jane had just enough time to write up her notes from the meeting with Mr. Kreis and have a cup of coffee. Then she had to go to the 9:30 interview. * There was no answer when Jane knocked on Catharina Schneider’s door, so she decided to wait patiently. A pause wouldn’t hurt. She looked at the nameplate and wondered if it was the longest name she’d seen in the company. Catharina, nine letters. Excluding people with hyphenated names she couldn’t think of a longer name. There were some others with nine letters like Fritz’s Friedrich but was there a longer name? “Hello, I’m Catharina. This is my office. Is the door alright? You seem to be inspecting it very closely!” “Sorry, I’m Jane. I’m here to interview you for the MPL project.” “Well, let’s go in. We can sit at the round table. How can I help you? I read your mail and sent you the documents. Is that what you wanted?” “Yes, but I’m sorry, I haven’t had time to look at them yet. But I will do. For this interview, could you start by telling me what you do.” “It’s on the door you were inspecting. I’m the Technical Writing Group Leader.” “And what’s Technical Writing?” Jane got the feeling she wasn’t making a great impression. “Let me start by asking you an easy question. A clinic orders one of our medical machines. What do they receive?” “One of your machines I suppose.” “Wrong. They receive a box with our company name and a machine name on it.” “OK. I see.” “What do they see in the box?” continued Catharina. “The machine I guess.” “Wrong again. They see packaging. Again with our name on it. They remove the packaging. What do they see?” “The machine I hope.” “Wrong again. The IFU.” “The IFU?” “Instructions For Use,” explained Catharina. “Ah. I see. And your Group writes that?” “Not only that,” said Catharina. “But also the text on the boxes and the packaging. I apologise for the questions, but there were two things I wanted you to understand. The first is important for ordering and logistics. When we have an order, we can’t deliver without the box, packaging and the IFU. They need to be in the ERP system. And before that they need to be in the PDM system.”

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“In the PDM system?” “Of course. It’s Engineering’s job to engineer the product. Unfortunately, most of our engineers have no idea about the product we deliver to our customers. Most of the software developers wouldn’t know an IFU if they met one in the street.” “Is technical writing just for your medical machines?” “No, for the machine tools as well. For them, there are documents with different names, like Installation Manual. User Manual. Maintenance Manual. And machine tools are used in a different environment to medical equipment. There’s a good chance that the shop floor worker doesn’t read German or English, so the material has to be in a dozen languages. And with useful drawings. And on video.” “So technical writing is really important? Without it, people can’t use the machines. Or maintain them.” “That’s right,” said Catharina. “Technical writing is really important. It would be difficult to sell machines without technical writing. We do all the shiny brochures with photos of the machines, and the specs for each machine that’s in the online store. I’m sorry. I don’t want to give you the impression that we’re the most important Group in the company. All the Groups are important. Everyone brings something to the party, everyone’s a piece of the jigsaw.” “Thanks, Catharina. You’ve taught me a lot. The MPL project aims to find out what happens with products from the beginning to the end. You’ve told me things I’d never heard of before. We just have a few minutes left. A question I always ask. What are your main product-related issues?” “Are you serious? There must be nearly a hundred. The root cause is that the company thinks as if it’s a mechanical engineering company and our business is making and assembling bits of metal. Maybe that was the case fifty years ago, but since then the world has changed. The company culture hasn’t. From that one root cause come all the issues. It’s unbelievable. Technical Writing, what’s that? Software, what’s that? Electronics, what’s that? Customers, what’s that?” “My last question. What’s your suggestion for product-related improvements?” “Again, I could give you many. I don’t know what to say. If I give you something very big, you’ll think I’m being vague. If I give you something small and detailed, you’ll ask yourself if that’s all. One thing that comes up time and time again is that people say our Group’s deliverables are late, behind schedule. But the only reason they’re late is because other people give us the information we need too late.’” “Thanks, Catharina. That’s been great. Really enlightening. I’ll look at your documents and let you know if I have any questions.” * Jane arrived on time at 10:30 at Daniela Wagner’s office. She was surprised to see that Daniela’s title was Regulatory Affairs and Industry Relations Group Leader. As she was reading the title, and wondering how Regulatory Affairs fitted with Industry Relations, she heard someone coming down the corridor. “Hello, I’m Daniela, sorry to be late. You must be Jane.” “That’s OK, I only just arrived. Hello, Daniela.” “Come on in, would you like a coffee? I need one.”

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“I’m fine thanks. I’ve already had three this morning.” “Shall we get started? What would you like to know?” “I see you have a very long title.” “Yes, in a way it’s two separate jobs, but they’re related. Industry Relations is our participation in industry groups. You sound English. I don’t know if you have these Industry groups in England. In Germany we have these groups of companies from particular industry sectors. We’re in the machine tool group and the medical equipment group. In each group we all compete against each other, but we also do some things together. Like defining training standards for our sector. Or sending a study group to another country. Or organising an event in another country. It’s a good way of keeping informed and being represented without having to pay for everything ourselves. The cost is shared. The other activity in this group is RA, Regulatory Affairs. That’s divided into two areas. One is to keep up-to-date with the regulations as they change in each country. The other is to make our regulatory submissions. That mainly involves making sure everything’s correct from the formal point of view. We don’t know all the technical and medical details about the equipment. So we work closely with the Product Manager. Does that help?” “Yes, thank you. That sounds good. Next question, what about your productrelated data and documents?” “I sent you those. Didn’t you get them?” “I saw the mail, but haven’t looked in detail so far.” “Well, we see a lot of documentation that’s produced by other people. We hardly produce anything ourselves.” “OK. And do you participate in the Engineering Department’s phase gate approach?” “Yes. Not in every phase, but in several.” “And do you use the Engineering Department’s PDM system?” “I don’t know if you know, but there are two PDM systems and we have to use them both. And neither is user-friendly.” “Another question. What are the main product-related issues you have to face?” “Probably the people. A lot of people here don’t understand RA. They think it’s bureaucracy.” “And what would you suggest as one important product-related improvement?” “Get people to understand Regulatory Affairs. That would stop them wasting time doing things they shouldn’t. And it could help them do things that would add value for our products.” “Good. That was my last question. Thank you for your help. Do you have any questions for me?” “Nothing professional. I was just wondering from where you come.” “At the moment I live in London. I’m doing an MBA there. This work for Dr. Bender is also for my research report for the MBA. But originally I’m from Somerset.”

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“That’s a coincidence! I thought your accent sounded familiar. I have a friend from Somerset. From Clevedon. Do you know it?” “Yes, but it’s a long way from me. It’s on the opposite side of Somerset. Probably about as far as Bremen is from here. But it’s still Somerset. That’s what’s most important! I’m sorry but I have to leave now, my next interview. Thanks for your help.” * Jane went back to her room and read through her notes. Then had lunch. And then left for the 13:30 interview with Bettina Mangels, the Purchasing Manager for the Engineering Department. * Jane found Bettina in a cubicle in an open-plan area. “Hello, I’m Jane, I’m here for the MPL project interview.” “Hello Jane, I’m Bettina Mangels. I’m the Purchasing Manager for the Engineering Department. Sit down please. How can I help you?” “I’m working on a project for Dr. Bender. He wants to understand what happens to products from beginning to end. I’ve already interviewed lots of people. And I’ve looked at the documents you sent me, so I know that you purchase parts and other components outside the company.” “That’s part of the story. Yes, if for example an electronics engineer wants some special component, I’ll find the possible suppliers and work for the best deal. It’s not just for an electronic engineer, it can also be for mechanical or electrical engineers. And the other part of the story, and they’re linked, is that our Group is responsible for standardisation. Prof. Vogt doesn’t want people continually reinventing the wheel. If a part exists, the engineer should use it, not design it again. I hope you understand now why I sent you so many documents. We can be involved with any type of part, or component, or material, and they all have their documents.” “Thank you, I understand. Next question. Do you participate in the Engineering Department’s phase gate approach?” “No.” “And what about the PDM system, do you use that?” “There are two PDM systems. The old and the new. We have to use them both.” “Next, what are the main product-related issues you face?” “Mainly people in the Engineering Department. A lot of them don’t like Purchasing. They’d rather develop everything themselves. They’re sure they could do it better.” “And could you tell me a product-related improvement suggestion please? “It would be great if we had an app that would compare the total lifecycle cost of developing a component from scratch to the lifecycle cost of purchasing it. A lot of engineers don’t understand that. And another one would be an app that goes through our existing parts and looks for similar parts. Then we could standardise on one part and remove the similar parts. And another one, an app that looks through our spare parts, and identifies those that haven’t been needed for the last ten years, so could

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be removed. Nobody knows what’s happening with our parts. We’ve been creating them for fifty years, but we never uncreate or de-create them, whatever the word is.” “That’s very interesting. Thank you. I don’t have any more questions, so will leave you to your work.” * Jane walked slowly back to the meeting room, deep in thought. She was meant to find out what happened to Mayer’s products from beginning to end. And Bettina seemed to be saying that parts, at least, didn’t have an end? They were still somewhere after fifty years? That needed more thought. But for the moment she had to focus on the interviews. And next were some of Claudia Schuler’s Operations people. Back in the meeting room, Jane looked at the interview list. Another two interviews today. From what she’d seen with Claudia, and by looking at the documents that people had sent her, Jane had a feeling that the Production activities here were fairly similar to Mr. Pfeiffer’s. On that basis it might be best to run these interviews differently. * Jane’s 14:30 interview was with Uwe Stelzer, the Manufacturing Group Leader. She arrived at his office in the Production building on time. “Hello, Mr. Stelzer?” “Yes, that’s me. Are you here for the interview?” “That’s right, I’m Jane. Shall we start?” “I’m listening.” “Well, Mr. Stelzer, first of all, thank you for sending me all your product-related documents. I’ve looked at them carefully and I’ve concluded you’re Mr. Haerdle and Mr. Bauer in disguise.” “Pardon, I don’t understand.” “I’m sorry, Mr. Stelzer, I’m joking. I’ve met Frau Schuler, so I know who you are. But I’ve also received product-related documents from Mr. Haerdle and Mr. Bauer in Mayer. Do you know them?” “Yes, of course.” “I’ve compared your documents to theirs, and they’re very similar. Not in the details, but in the type of documents. I conclude, in my role as Sherlock Holmes, that you must be doing similar jobs.” “Are you serious? Can you see that from the documents we use? You mean it’s like we all have a different product data fingerprint?” She laughed, “I hadn’t thought of it like that, so we could say that we’ve invented a new theory together.” “I still don’t really understand. But my job is very similar to what Mr. Haerdle and Mr. Bauer do. We have meetings every year. Last year, we were down with them. We share experience and knowhow about our machines and our way of working. We have group sessions with everybody present, then we have individual sessions. Frau Schuler talks to Mr. Pfeiffer. Mr. Raschke talks to Mr. Egli because they have similar jobs. Henning talks to Mr. Walker. And I talk to Mr. Haerdle and Mr. Bauer because, you’re right, I do more or less what they do together. But I’m amazed you can see that from the documents we use.” He thought about it for a while. “I guess

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it’s logical. My documents wouldn’t look like Mr. Raschke’s planning documents. And certainly not like Mr. Pfeiffer’s. His are probably strategy presentations, and plans, and reports. I’m amazed, I never thought of that before.” “I did see one difference. Do you know what?” “A difference between their documents and mine? I don’t know. We cover the same machine acquisition and maintenance activities, and the preparation. Ah, I know, it’s because we have medical equipment and they don’t. So, for example, we have sterilisation activities.” “Right first time.” “But we don’t have the same computer systems. Does that affect it?” “Perhaps a little, but not a lot. I saw you have different ERP systems, but they work with similar types of data.” “I understand. So even though we have different CAD systems we both have models. And although the CAM systems are different, they have to produce the same type of NC programs. Very interesting!” “It seems a great theory, but we should test it some more. There’s one thing I don’t understand. Mr. Pfeiffer has four people reporting to him, but Frau Schuler has six. Why’s that?” “Let’s say it’s for historical reasons. There’s no direct equivalence for Connie Flieg, Johan Buss and Karla Tontsch in Mayer. They’re here for special reasons. Are you going to interview them?” “Yes, tomorrow.” “Probably best if you hear it from them.” “OK. Thanks for the new fingerprint theory! My next interview is with Anders Raschke. It’s in this building. Can I wait somewhere? It’s at 15:30.” “I’ll see if I can find him. I’ll tell him you’re waiting.” * Jane thought about her next interview. From everything she’d heard and seen, she understood Mr. Raschke’s activities and documents. Rather than waste time, she’d keep it short with him, then go back to the meeting room to try to understand what the others were doing. * “Hello, I’m Anders Raschke. I’m here for the interview. I’m the Planning Group Leader.” “Hello, Mr. Raschke. It’s not my office, it’s not my chair, but please sit down! I’ve just finished my MPL interview with Mr. Stelzer. I’ve already met several Production people here and in Mayer. And I’ve read the documents you sent me. Thank you for that. Putting it all together, I don’t have many questions for you, so this interview shouldn’t take long.” “That’s good. I have a lot of work to do!” “First question, do you participate in the Engineering Department’s phase gate approach?”

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“No. You just said Engineering Department. We’re Operations here.” “So that only leaves two questions. What are the main product-related issues you have? And when I say product, that could also mean parts, components, materials.” “I don’t know. Usually when we do an analysis, like in Ishikawa or root cause, it’s not the part or the material that’s the problem. It’s suppliers not keeping to the rules. Another problem is Engineering Changes from the Engineering Department. They change things without telling us, and we only find out weeks later after we’ve produced the wrong part.” “Thank you. Last question. What would be your main suggestion for a productrelated improvement? And again, the product could mean part or material. And in the context of your activities.” “Again, it’s not strictly product-related. You probably don’t want me to say improve supplier behaviour. Instead, I’ll suggest a better Engineering Change Management system. One that works. And works for everybody.” “Thank you, Mr. Raschke. I have no more questions.” * Jane went back to the meeting room. She’d been a bit short with Mr. Raschke, but she guessed he had other worries to keep him busy. She took a last look at the interview list for the following week. If all went well, she should finish on Thursday. In the meantime, though, she was going to forget about interviews and focus on the weekend.

Chapter 12

Wednesday 3 July

Jane had set the alarm for 6 am. After her relaxing long weekend in England, she had to get back to her usual rhythm. Breakfast at 6:45. Then in the taxi at 7:15. Then in the meeting room by 7:45 to look at the documents of the people she’d be meeting that morning. * The first interview was at 8:30. It was with Henning Jensen, the Material and Logistics Group Leader. “Hello, Mr Jensen. Thank you for agreeing to this interview. And thank you for sending me all the documents. That was very helpful. So helpful in fact that I don’t have many questions for you. As you may know, I’ve met Frau Schuler, Mr Stelzer, and Mr Raschke. I also met the Production Group Leaders in Mayer including Mr Egli. I’m getting a good picture of what’s going on and how data and documents are flowing. I just have four questions for you.” “OK, fire away.” “First, do you participate in the Engineering Department’s phase gate approach?” “No.” “Second, do you know how part data gets from the Engineering Department’s computer systems to the ERP system?” “Oh, that’s a good question! That’s something that needs to be fixed. It’s just not clear today. It’s one of my biggest problems.” “Well, my next question was to ask you about your product-related issues. It sounds as if that’s one. What’s the problem?” “It’s totally disorganised. It hasn’t always been like that. Two years ago, it was fine. The data went from the PDM system to the ERP system. You may have heard that there are now two PDM systems. Two years ago, there was only one PDM system. It was a simple automated data transfer. Now it’s chaos. Sometimes it comes from one of the PDM systems, other times from the other PDM system. Sometimes they send it in a spreadsheet. About a month ago, we even got it handwritten on paper!”.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. Stark, Product Lifecycle Management (Volume 5), Decision Engineering, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46887-2_12

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“So, if I asked you for a product-related improvement suggestion, what would that be?” “To fix that problem.” “That’s what I thought. Well, again, thank you for sending me the data. And thank you for telling me about your problem. It helps me build a picture of what’s happening with products from their beginning to their end.” * Jane went back to her meeting room. Sometimes she thought about trying to find solutions for the problems she heard about. But that wasn’t her job. She had to focus on interviewing, listening, and documenting. And then explain to Dr. Bender what was happening with products from the beginning to the end. And most importantly, write her research report. For the moment, the most important thing was to make sure she’d included everything from her interview of Mr Jensen in her notes. If she didn’t do it now, she’d either forget it or be unable to remember who said it. The next interviews were all scheduled to be held in the meeting room. Jane didn’t know why; she hadn’t seen Anja since she’d changed her lunch order. There was a knock at the door. Anja, perhaps? * “Come in,” said Jane. “Hello, I’m Connie. Constance Flieg, QA Group Leader. I’m here for the interview. Am I too early?” “No, it’s 9:30. You’re 100% on time. Hello Connie, come in please. I’m Jane. Thank you for the documents you sent to me. I’ve been looking at them and it seems your objective is to improve quality in Operations?” “Yes, that’s right.” “As the mail said, I’m working for a project called MPL. It’s for Dr. Bender. He wants me to find out what happens to Mayer’s products from the beginning through to the end.” “Yes, I know. He told me about it once. It’s a great idea, a great project. Your results will help us a lot.” “I usually start the interview by asking about activities. What are yours?” “I have a lot. For example: managing risks; managing issues; Quality Control; quality planning; Quality Assurance; monitoring quality; doing gap analysis; developing procedures; holding review meetings; identifying new processes; training internal auditors; carrying out internal audits; carrying out external audits; developing a Quality Manual; maintaining the Quality Manual; defining non-conformance procedures; training employees on quality issues; assisting employees on quality issues; and establishing appropriate measures and tools.” “I don’t have time to ask you about all that! One question though, I’ve heard several times about issues between the Engineering Department and the Operations Department. Your job seems to be to eliminate the effects of the problems. Or at least reduce them.”

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“That’s one way of putting it. Sorry, perhaps I didn’t say that properly. It was just meant as a statement, nothing else. Yes, what you said is correct. That still doesn’t sound right, sorry.” “I understand. I’m just trying in my mind to position your activities in the beginning to end line of the products. I can see where they fit. It just seems a pity that the problems aren’t fixed at the root.” “Yes, but we can’t do that from the Operations side. It’s like when there’s a broken pipe in the upstairs apartment leaking on to your television. The problem needs to be fixed at the source.” “I understand. OK, so my last question to you. What would you propose to really improve the situation?” “Get the Engineering Department to work with us. The underlying issue is that they’re totally independent in their castle. When they’ve finished their work, they just throw their results over the wall to the peasants outside. Then we waste time and effort to understand it and get it into a shape that our people, machines and systems understand.” “I understand. Thank you again for all the documents and for meeting me today.” “I hope it will be useful for you. I’m looking forward to your report.” * With Connie gone, Jane sighed. Why couldn’t this company work properly? If it did, she wouldn’t have so much work. Shouldn’t it be obvious and clear what happens with products in a company? * Johan Buss arrived on time for his interview at 10:30. “Hello, I’m Johan. Johan Buss. I’m the Process Improvement Group Leader. I’m here for the interview. I sent you the documents that you asked for. Did you get them? Are they useful? Have you been able to draw any conclusions?” Jane struggled to look professional. This was about her thirtieth interview since Monday morning. How could this guy have so much energy? She eventually got back in the groove.”Hello, Johan, I’m Jane. Thank you for coming to the interview. As the mail said, I’m working for the MPL project. It’s for Dr. Bender, to find out what happens to Mayer’s products from the beginning through to the end. Thank you for sending me the documents. I’ve been looking at them. They’re very illuminating. Actually, they’ve been so helpful that I don’t have any more questions for you. I can see what you’re doing, and I can see where that fits with the products. Is there anything else you think I should know?” “I could tell you about the approach we’re taking. We started by doing a survey to identify possible improvement opportunities. Then we scored them, using a weighted approach. With weights depending on the different types of business improvement. And then we started with the highest-scoring opportunities.” “Yes, that’s what I assumed from your documents. And how are the first improvement projects progressing?”

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“Very well, they’re all on track so far.” “Good. I’m only going to be in Mayer for another few weeks, but I hope they succeed. Well, thank you for the documents and thank you for coming to the interview. I expect you want to get back to your projects now.” “Yes, that’s right. But, if you need anything else, just let me know.” “Thank you, Johan, I will. And thanks again for the documents.” * A few seconds after Johan had left, the next interviewee arrived. Erich Gruenig introduced himself, saying he was the Packaging Section Leader. Jane explained about the MPL project and asked him to tell her about his activities. “Our main activity is the packaging and labelling of finished goods and spare parts ready for shipping. Another important activity is our involvement in developing the primary, secondary, and tertiary packaging that meets the specific requirements of each part or product, taking account of a host of parameters such as product identification needs, transportation methods, customer appeal, available packaging techniques and technologies, legal requirements and cost considerations. We’re responsible for the appropriate and correct packaging and labelling of everything that goes out the door. We set up, operate, and maintain both manual and automated labelling and packaging machines. We’re responsible for housekeeping duties including cleaning, sanitising, and sterilising our packaging equipment and areas. Personally, I plan and direct our packaging activities, ensuring our processes are in conformance with company, industry, national and international policies and procedures. I develop annual goals and strategic direction for the packaging organisation. I manage employees and suppliers who design, develop, and use our packaging systems and processes. I’m responsible for timely completion and provision of packaging records and KPIs, and for reporting any packaging-related safety and quality issues that may arise to management. Looking ahead, I’m responsible for continuous improvement for the packaging process.” “Thank you, Erich, that was very clear. My next question is about documents. Which product-related documents do you create and use?” “We have dimensioned drawings of every label type, and the accompanying technical documents. We have CAD models and drawings of all our packaging. And associated documents. We have technical documentation, such as for use and maintenance, for all our equipment. Plus, the usual administrative documents such as procedures, standards, process descriptions, reports and plans.” “Thank you. The next question is about computer systems. Which product-related systems do you use?” “We use the usual word processing, spreadsheet and ERP systems. And we have special software for developing and producing cardboard and corrugated packaging, and for crating and palletising. We also have special software for label design and printing. Also, we have a 3D CAD system to create, change and approve models, drawings and documents.”

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“Next question, what’s the biggest problem with your product-related activities?” “Keeping track of all the changes. There are changes here all the time. Changes to products, changes to parts, changes to regulations, changes to materials, changes to suppliers, changes to packaging texts. It’s really difficult to keep track of all the changes.” “Final question, do you have any improvement suggestions for your activities?” “We’re looking to improve sustainability in packaging. Also, we’re investigating further digitalisation of packaging activities. And then we need a better way to manage the changes.” “Good. No more questions. I see that it’s lunchtime, so I won’t keep you any longer. Thank you for participating, Erich.” * After Erich had gone, Jane relaxed and waited for Gizem to bring lunch. * The next interviewee on the list was Karla Tontsch. She arrived on time at 13:30. She seemed as enthusiastic and full of energy as Johan. Without any encouragement, she told Jane about her job, and the various documents she’d sent. Jane couldn’t remember which group she led, so looked down at the interview list. The EHS Group apparently. Jane couldn’t remember seeing that acronym before so decided to listen and write her notes. It seemed as if Karla didn’t need questions. She’d started by saying that EHS stands for Environment, Health and Safety. Now she was telling Jane how each of these was addressed in Operations in Hanover. She started with Environment.”We have to comply with environmental regulations. We have targets such as reducing waste and energy use. And reducing our carbon footprint.” Then Karla continued with Health.”We need to ensure a healthy environment for everyone here.” And then she addressed Safety.”Our targets include preventing accidents and preventing exposure to harmful substances.” Karla explained that her Group followed guidelines such as ISO 14001 and ISO 45001, and took a systematic approach, developing and implementing appropriate policies and procedures. Then she explained where the documents she’d sent Jane fitted in, and the systems they used in the Group. Karla paused,”I think that’s about everything. Is there anything else you’d like to know?” “No, that was perfect. Now I have everything. Thank you for coming. And thank you for the documents.” “I hope I’ve been helpful. If you need anything else, just let me know.” * After Karla left, Jane read and improved her notes. Then it was 14:30, and she heard someone at the door. Probably Renata Albrecht. *

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“Hello, come in. I’m Jane. Are you Renata? Patrik Meyer told me you’re the Customer Support Manager, and could give me the details about Service for medical equipment.” “Yes, I’m Renata Albrecht. I’m the Customer Support Manager, so I have overall responsibility for field service for our medical equipment. That means I’m responsible for staffing assignments and for certifications, safety, training and advancement of our field service personnel. And I lead, direct and review their work. I also oversee assignment scheduling, and supervise assignments to ensure timely completion of assigned work. I review and approve timesheets. Sometimes I visit customer sites to ensure service quality. I support new employees, and coach less-experienced personnel. What else? I’m responsible for our working procedures. I manage recruitment and interviews. I manage personnel evaluations, disciplinary action and career development. I develop materials for our training programs. I give some training courses on processes, procedures and technologies. I think that’s all. Do you have any questions for me?” “Thanks Renata, that was very useful. And thanks for sending me copies of your documents. Now I can see where you fit in with Mayer’s product-related activities. As you probably know, I’m trying to find out what happens with Mayer’s products from their beginning to their end. It’s a project for Dr. Bender. I don’t have any more questions. Thank you for participating.” * After Renata left, Jane poured herself another coffee and finished the biscuits. Then she started reviewing her notes of the interview. Before she could finish, she was interrupted by a knock at the door. * “Hello, I’m Jens Feuerbach, I’m the Training Centre Manager. I’m here for the interview.” “Come in. I’m Jane. Patrik Meyer told me about you. I think you’re responsible for training both customers and field service people.” “Yes, that’s right. I hope you received the documents I sent you. You’ll see from them that we offer training to both Mayer customers and Mayer field service people on three subjects. Installation, maintenance and repair of our machines. We offer both shop-floor and online courses. Today, we can’t do everything online, but we’ve found online courses have many advantages such as being available on a 365/24 basis, enabling self-paced progress and enabling participation from anywhere at any time. I expect we’ll be doing more and more training online in the coming years. Here, onsite at the Training Centre, we give some courses, coordinate training events and maintain the Training Calendar. Our role includes identifying needs for training courses, and overseeing their development and delivery. We monitor trainer and trainee performance, and ensure that training meets expected quality standards and expectations. As Training Centre Manager, I manage the Training Centre Team, including hiring, mentoring and performance reviews. I don’t know if this is important

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for you, but we have an old LMS, learning management system, that we need to replace. That’s all.” “Thank you, Jens. That’s a very enlightening description of your role. And thanks for sending me copies of your documents. I don’t have any other questions, so I suggest we stop the interview now. Thanks for coming.” * The taxi wasn’t due until 17:00, so Jane had time to improve her notes from the interview with Jens and review some of the documents she’d received. There was a lot to do. At 16.55 she left the meeting room. For once she’d be on time for the taxi. * Back at the hotel, Jane prepared her things for her departure the next day, then went down to the restaurant and relaxed.

12.1 Thursday 4 July Jane woke up at 6:10 am. She had a good breakfast and was at the factory by 8:00. The first interview was with Julia Moritz in the meeting room at 8:30. “Hello Julia, I’m Jane. I’m working on the MPL project. Thanks for sending me copies of your documents. Patrik Meyer told me you’re the Product Support Group Leader and could tell me about Service for machine tools.” “Yes, that’s right. I lead Mayer’s team of Field Service Technicians for its machine tools. We have several activities, we do on-site installation, maintenance, and repair. We install and start up machines. To do that, we have to know how to assemble the machines. We ensure effective system installation through Pre-Install Planning and Installation Coordination. Concerning maintenance and repair, we go out on field service calls to inspect, maintain and repair our machines on customer sites. We resolve incidents and implement changes and improvements required by customers. For maintenance and repair, we have to know how to disassemble machines, inspect disassembled parts, determine causes of problems, report on failed parts, suggest replacement parts, and re-assemble the working machine. There’s a lot to do. We don’t sit around all day in endless meetings in comfortable offices. We’re usually out working on customer sites.” “Thank you, Julia, that’s a good description. I just have one other question for you. What’s the biggest product-related issue you face?” “Technology is changing fast and keeping up-to-date with all the changes is a big challenge! And another problem is that often we don’t know the exact configuration of our machines on customer sites. And that creates extra work and costs for us.” “I understand, but then I have another question for you. What can you do to overcome these challenges?” “For the changing technology, a mix of education, training and coaching. But that all takes up working time if it’s done in a classroom. So online training will be

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important. Concerning knowledge of machines on customer sites, we’re developing a new database which we hope will solve that issue.” “Thanks Julia, that gives me a good understanding. And thanks for sending me copies of your documents. I don’t have any other questions, so I suggest we stop the interview now.” * After Julia left, Jane had a coffee and a biscuit. She started reviewing her notes but, before she could finish, there was a knock at the door. * “Hello, I’m Franziska Huber, from the Bids and Proposals Group.” “Hi Franziska, come in. I’m Jane. Thanks for coming to this interview for the MPL project. And thanks for sending me all those documents. Would you like to start by telling me about your Group’s activities?” “Of course. We’re a customer-facing group. Our job is to manage the bids and proposals that the company makes. At all times, the Bids and Proposals Group ensures compliance with all policies, procedures, and timelines to develop a highquality proposal that’s technically sound and responsive. We have many activities. We gather and capture requirements. We analyse and interpret RFP documents. That’s Request for Proposal. We research RFP/RFI questions and issues. That’s Request for Information. We coordinate the distribution of proposal questions to appropriate company experts. We assess the costs. We work with cross-functional teams, which may include internal staff, sub-contractors, partners and consultants, to develop a proposal that meets the customer’s requirements. Our Group writes, edits, and proofs the proposal. We prepare any associated required documentation and make sure we’ve accurately presented the offer and answered all the questions. We develop well-structured and strategically focused responses that align with customer-specific themes. We manage the proposal response schedule and provide proposal status reports to executives. I think that’s all!”. “Thank you, Franziska. I’ve looked at the documents you sent me. There were a few things I wasn’t sure about, but your explanation fills in the gaps. I don’t have any more questions, so we can stop now. Thanks for coming today.” * Once Franziska had left, Jane had another coffee and another biscuit. And then she reviewed her notes. Just before 10:30, there was a knock at the door. * “Hello, I’m Pia Rudiger, from the BI Group.” “Hello Pia, come on in. I’m Jane. I’m working on the MPL project. It’s for Dr. Bender. He wants to find out what happens with the machines from their beginning to their end. Thank you for sending me copies of your Group’s documents. I’ve looked at them, but there were a few I didn’t understand. Perhaps they’ll become clearer if you tell me about your Group’s activities.”

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“OK, I’ll do my best. I lead a team of Business Intelligence professionals who facilitate data analysis for Mayer. We support functional experts in the various departments by researching, gathering, compiling, organising, formatting, analysing and reporting various forms of data in response to their requirements and best practice guidelines. We work with stakeholder groups to create business tools, dashboards and other visualisations for use, for example, to draw insight, and identify and assess trends. We leverage our analytic problem-solving competencies in working with large and disparate datasets to identify and report operational performance and opportunities, for example, to gain insight into new markets, and to assess demand for products. We work closely with functional experts, providing thought and discipline leadership, to ensure best in class service.” “Thanks for the explanation, Pia. I think that answers my questions. I’ll have another look at your documents and, if I still have any questions, will get back to you. That’s all for today. Thank you for coming to the interview.” * After Pia had left, Jane worked on her notes. But not for long, as there was a knock on the door. It was the next interviewee.”Hi. I’m Daria Kaufmann, the Complaints Team Leader.” “Come in, Daria. I’m Jane. Thanks for coming to this MPL project interview. Could you start by telling me what you and your Team do?” “I manage the Complaints Team. The complaints are from customers of our products and services. There’s a really wide range of complaints. For example, a complaint about a machine not meeting specifications, or a complaint about a part not working, or about an error in a manual, or a service person not turning up. We’re responsible for receiving, investigating, resolving, and responding to all complaints. The objective is to handle complaints promptly and efficiently, keeping customers informed of progress and then of resolution. There are three main tasks in what we do. One task is to receive, categorise and register all incoming complaints. Another task is to find the underlying issue and the solution. And the third task is to reply to the customer and keep them informed. In the first task, when we receive the incoming complaint, we review it. Often some information is missing, so we contact the customer to get that. We categorise the complaint so that, for example, if it’s safety-related or businesscritical, it has top priority. Once we have all the complaint information, we review it and decide who should address it, and if necessary, who should investigate it. If it could take a long time to solve the underlying issue, we may send the customer a quick fix so they can keep working. Depending on the complaint, different people may be involved in the analysis. For example, based on our Team’s knowledge, we may select specific people from Operations, Sales, Engineering, Quality, or Legal to investigate a particular complaint. For other complaints, we can do the resolution ourselves. That might be, for example, because we know the same complaint has already been answered for another customer. Whoever investigates and resolves the complaint fills in the complaint investigation and resolution form, describing how they resolved it, what to tell the customer, and how to prevent the problem recurring. The third task is to send the response, the answer, to the customer. At the same

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time, we send the problem resolution suggestion to the appropriate person. We have a database for the complaints. That generates weekly statistics and aged analysis. It has workflow functionality, so we can see the status of each complaint. I manage dayto-day Team activity including complaint allocation, as well as providing support and expert assistance to Team members. I’m responsible for our complaint handling procedures. I strive to continuously improve our processes and techniques in areas such as categorisation, prioritisation, investigation, resolution and communication with customers.” “Thanks, Daria, that was extremely helpful. My next question is about documents. Which product-related documents do you create and use?” “We have three main complaint documents. That’s the customer complaint form, the complaint investigation and resolution form, and the complaint reply form. But apart from that, reviewing a complaint can require making reference to nearly any other document in the company.” “I understand. The next question is about computer systems. Which productrelated systems do you use?” “We have our complaint management system and database. But again, reviewing a complaint could involve use of nearly any system in the company. ERP, PDM, CAD, word processing, spreadsheet and so on.” “Next question, what are the big issues with complaint-related activities?” “One issue is that often we don’t get enough information about the complaint from the customer. All the relevant information. Another is that many people in the company take too long to review a complaint. They probably think it’s not important. They’ll leave it lying on their desk for days without taking action. And all the time the clock’s ticking, and the customer’s getting madder and madder.” “Last question, do you have any improvement suggestions for complaint activities?” “The best improvement for everyone would be to have fewer complaints. Apart from that, we’re trying to improve our complaints training so that people understand what to do from Day One. Another, somewhat related to that, is to make it easier for our customers to complain. Another improvement would be to include, in the annual review of our procedures, some thought about updating them to adapt to changing customer environments, behaviour and needs. Another improvement would be to get faster resolution of what isn’t working. Sometimes we see the same complaint time and time again over an extremely long period. Perhaps we need to get more involvement from the management team, for example, include narration of individual complaint stories in Board meetings. And it would be good to have a Frequently Asked Questions page on our website. That would help reduce some of the complaints workload.” “Great, Daria. No more questions. If you don’t have any questions for me, let’s stop now. Thank you for participating.” *

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Gizem brought the lunch trolley at 11:45. Lunch looked good today. Soup, buns and yogurt. Jane sat down and enjoyed her last lunch in Hanover. That reminded her of a visit to Milan. * The first interview of the afternoon was with Sascha Vogele. He didn’t arrive until 13:35, and started by apologising for being late. Then he launched into a description of his activities.”My title is Product Manager, but to me the role is more of Product Owner. I was hired to address a new market segment. I started by researching and understanding the overall market, the laws and regulations, and the buying preferences and behaviours of our potential customers. Then I developed the Roadmap as Product Owner to meet upcoming customer needs. I achieved executive buy-in and agreement for the first products in the family. I designed and implemented a project monitoring framework to support fast agile project execution. Then we started the first project. It fits smoothly into Industry 4.0, integrating product and service development. The projects all involve people from many functions. I pick the best. I don’t interfere with them. I bring out the best in them. For each project, there’s a project manager who manages the projects on a day-to-day basis from Ideation to Commercialisation. That’s not my role. I provide effective and timely communication on project progress to executives. I track results in the market, translating them into insights to steer the Roadmap. It’s been the fastest-growing product family in the company’s history.” “Thank you, Sascha. I understand. And thank you for sending me copies of your documents. They’re very beneficial for me. I don’t have any questions, so we can end the interview now. Thank you for participating.” * After Sascha had left, Jane had her first coffee and biscuit of the afternoon. She reviewed her notes, and then looked to see which documents Anton Weiss, the next interviewee, had sent her. At 14:30 there was a knock at the door. * “Come in.” “Hello, I’m Anton Weiss. I’ve read about your MPL project, but I don’t think I can help you much. You see, I manage the Finance IT landscape. My job’s not about products. I’m responsible for the proper functioning of our Finance IT systems, and I manage the team supporting the Finance IT applications. I’m involved in hiring and annual assessments. What else do I do? I participate in IT planning, such as for version upgrades for our applications. And new applications. It doesn’t sound very product-related to me. What do you think?” ”I agree, Anton. But thank you for coming to the interview. Now that we’ve met it will be easier for me to get back to you if any questions come to mind.” *

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Once Anton had departed, Jane poured herself a coffee and ate the remaining biscuits. Only one more interview. Karsten Zumstein at 15:30. He arrived on time. * “Hello, I’m Karsten Zumstein. I’m here for the MPL interview. I work in the Finance Department.” “Yes, come in please, Karsten. My name is Jane. I’m here to interview you for the MPL project. Mr Schmidt suggested I interview you about Product Costing. Perhaps you could start by telling me about your activities.” “I’m not a Product Costing specialist. I’m a Cost Controller, often controlling the Engineering Department, in particular NPD projects, New Product Development projects. I work with NPD project managers in two main ways. I manage the financial costs of the projects. And I take the lead on preparation of the business case. That’s never simple as we have to involve people from many functions. Sales, Engineering, Manufacturing, Finance, Quality and so on. And we do various calculations such as Payback, NPV, Net Present Value, and ROI, Return on Investment. Apart from those two main activities there are some minor ones as well. Probably the most important of these is to prepare and present the monthly financial KPIs for the project. Another is the estimation of target product costs, but we work with a very wide range. There are so many variables it’s not possible to be precise at the beginning of a project. There’s no way we could come up with a spot-on figure.” “Thanks, Karsten. Thanks for that description of your activities. You’re right, there’s not a lot about Product Costing in there. However, it’s still useful because the aim of the MPL project is to show what happens to a product from beginning to end. And now I can see where your activities fit. I don’t have any questions for you, so we can stop the interview. Thank you for attending and thank you for sending me your documents.” * Once Karsten had left, Jane congratulated herself on finishing the Hanover interviews. She collected her things, tidied the meeting room and stepped out into the corridor, where she saw Dr. Koch. He wanted to know how she’d been getting on. Had she achieved everything she wanted to? What was she going to do next? When would she be coming back? And so on. It was twenty minutes before she could ask the receptionist to call a taxi. By the time the taxi had come, and she’d picked her things up from the hotel, she’d missed her train. That meant she’d be too late for dinner at Gasthaus Adler. She bought something to eat at the station and waited for the next train.

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12.2 Friday 5 July Jane lay in bed for a while, thinking how pleasant it was to be back in Gasthaus Adler. It almost felt like being at home, everything looked friendly and familiar. As she didn’t need to rush to make sure she was on time for an early morning interview, she didn’t get down to breakfast until 7:15 am. There was nobody in the dining room. Presumably, everyone else had finished long ago. She went over to the buffet and collected an orange juice and some bread and cheese. Frau Adler came in, welcomed her back, and asked if everything was in order. Jane replied she was delighted to be back. Everything was fine, she’d be leaving in thirty minutes and would be back at about 6 pm. She was looking forward to tasting Frau Adler’s evening cooking again.”But there’s one other thing,” Jane said.”May I work in the dining room on Saturday?” “No problem,” replied Frau Adler.”There’ll be nobody else here.” “And Frau Adler, would it be possible to have a coffee about 10:30 and to have lunch when you do? I’ll go down to the village about 5 pm I expect.” “Of course, no problem.” “There’s one other thing. On Sunday I have to leave again. This time to France. I’ll have a three-hour journey by car. I was thinking of working in the morning in the dining room, and then leaving in the afternoon. Would that be possible?” “Yes, of course.” “And could I have a thermos of coffee to take with me?” “Yes, that’s no problem. I can make you a sandwich or two as well. I’ll prepare everything on Sunday morning and leave it on the buffet. You can take it when you want.” “I plan to be back on Thursday evening. This time I should be back in time for dinner.” “That’s good. Enjoy your breakfast.” * Jane was in the Container by 8 am. She had a lot to do. Starting with downloading documents, labelling them and putting them in their place. That took until early afternoon. Then she listed all her interviews. And then listed all the Hanover computer systems, and then all the Hanover working procedures. And then all the Hanover product-related data and documents. That didn’t leave any time for thinking about her report for Dr. Bender or her research report. So she left that for the weekend. The last thing she did was to get a Mayer car for her journey to France.

Chapter 13

Saturday 6 July

Jane woke up at 7 am on Saturday morning. She felt great. She’d finished all the interviews in Hanover. She’d organised all the paper in the Container. Now it was time to start thinking seriously about her research report. By 8:00, she’d finished breakfast, and was back in the dining room sitting at her table with a second cup of coffee. She told herself this was going to be a creative day. She’d sit here and think and, by the end of the day, would have made tremendous progress. She’d start by making a to-do list, and then decide on the timing. * First, it was clear there should be some kind of Big Picture which showed everything that was happening with the products from beginning to end. That could be on the whiteboard in the container. The kind of picture Achim Klein had sent her, showing a timeline of activities and documents. It wasn’t just Achim. Lots of people had shown similar pictures. Now she had to make an overview out of the individual pictures. Everybody she’d spoken to just saw what happened with their own activities. She was the only one who was looking at the whole thing. She wasn’t sure how to get it all to fit on the whiteboard. Perhaps she’d photograph the documents so they were smaller and would fit. When she got back from France, she’d try some different approaches to see what worked. * The next thing she had to work on was her three-line model. She took a sheet and drew it again. The upper line started on the left in the Market and ended in the middle of the page. It was some kind of theoretical representation of the product. The middle line started just below where the upper line stopped. It represented some kind of flow of the physical product. It started when the product was made and continued to its end. The lower line was just below the middle line. It started where the middle line started, and ended where the middle line ended. It was some kind of informational representation about the product when it was in production and after it had been

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. Stark, Product Lifecycle Management (Volume 5), Decision Engineering, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46887-2_13

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made. This could include, for example, its performance, or changes to parts, or maintenance activities. This three-line model was meant to be an abstract and very concise summary of the whiteboard overview. She decided to call it the One-Pager. This was the elevator picture. If she found herself in an elevator with Dr. Bender, she couldn’t show him the whiteboard! She’d show him the One-Pager, something he could understand in a few seconds. That looked good. Time for a break! * Jane finished her coffee. Then went over to the window and looked out. Then told herself to get back to work. * Back at her table, Jane realised that, when she was in the elevator with Dr. Bender, she’d need to say something. She’d need a script, otherwise she might forget something important. She noted a few sentences. Dr. Bender, you asked me to find out what happens to Mayer products from beginning to end. This One-Pager will help you understand. In practice, several things can happen, there are several Product Happenings. One example is the development of a new model of a machine, for example a 6000 Series. You can see on the One-Pager that it starts on the upper line, with the Marketing Department analysing the Market, then giving the requirements to the Engineering Department. When Engineering has finished its work, and all the design documents are ready, they give them to Mr. Bauer in the Production Department. He makes process plans and NC programs from which Mr. Egli plans production. Next, on the middle line, which represents the physical product, Mr. Haerdle makes the parts on his machines. Then, there’s some assembly of parts, again on the middle line. This machine is going to the Exhibition Centre. Mr. Niemann’s Group installs it there and gets it working. Dr. Wimmer shows it to customers. Mr. Polat’s Group maintains the machine, changing parts and changing the oil. That’s still on the middle line, Dr. Bender. But, in parallel, the information about the parts and the oil goes to the lower line. As we move along the lower line, we’re adding information to keep our information package about the machine up to date. Much later, the machine is no longer needed. Tarzan collects it and takes it to the Returns facility where some parts are reworked, and others are sent for scrap. And then, Jane thought, Dr. Bender would probably reply that he’s not interested in making new machines to put in the Exhibition Centre. He’d rather know what happens when they’re sold to customers. * Fortunately, Frau Adler then came in with coffee and biscuits, and asked Jane if everything was in order. “Yes, Frau Adler, it’s hard going but I’m making good progress. It’s time for a break. You’ve brought the coffee at just the right time. The garden’s looking wonderful!” That got Frau Adler talking about her garden. Jane was soon hearing all the details of what was happening with the different plants. That was good because it stopped her thinking about non-existent elevator discussions.

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After a while, Frau Adler said she had to go back downstairs again, and would leave Jane to her work. “I’m thinking of having lunch about 12:15. Would that be suitable for you?” “Perfect,” replied Jane. “Soup, cheese and mushroom omelette, and strawberries.” “Perfect,” repeated Jane. Left alone, Jane continued to look out the window and enjoy the garden. * After a while, Jane returned to her table, and wondered what to do next. She felt she’d made progress, but it was progress of the one step forward, two steps back type. Now she had to work out what to do with the example of the sale of the machine that Dr. Bender had requested in the elevator. That was important. She knew there were different types of sales situation but couldn’t remember much about them. She’d have to go back to her interview notes and read them all again. That would take time. There were more than seventy interview reports. However, if she could skim through them at one interview per minute, she’d be ready for lunch at 12:15. * By 11:45, Jane had reread the interviews. She’d found three different types of sales situation. Maybe there were more, but she’d read fast and just seen those three. This was going to make things more difficult. There wouldn’t be just one situation to address, there’d be several. The first one she’d seen was the sale of an existing machine. She’d call that an off-the-shelf sale. Then there was a sale of a special machine to meet the special requirements of a specific customer. That needed Engineering Department work. She’d call that a customised sale. And third was the resale of a machine after it had been in use for a while. That seemed to happen, but she had no idea how. So now she had work for the afternoon. Trying to describe those three situations. Fortunately, though, Frau Adler would bring her lunch soon and she’d be able to relax for a while. * At 12:15, Frau Adler came in with a tray containing Jane’s lunch. As promised, soup, omelette and strawberries. “Thank you, Frau Adler. That looks delicious. Shall I bring the tray downstairs to you when I’ve finished?” “No, you stay here. I’ll bring you some coffee and biscuits for the afternoon and take the tray back with me then. Now what about tomorrow? What time are you leaving?” “I’ve not decided on an exact time. About 3 pm probably.” “I’m going out in the morning after breakfast. I’ll prepare you a snack for lunch and put something in a box for the evening. That way you won’t have to worry about going to a restaurant.”

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“Thank you, Frau Adler. That will be really helpful.” “Good. I’ll leave it on the buffet table about 8 am. There’ll be nobody else here, so you’ll know it’s for you.” * After Frau Adler had brought the coffee and biscuits, Jane decided to look at the garden again. She didn’t want to go down to the village before 5 pm, so had four hours ahead of her. There were two things to do now. She needed to write the script for another Product Happening. And she had to decide how to show the sale of a machine on the three-line model. Was she completely mad to be stuck in here on a beautiful Saturday afternoon? Of course not, she told herself. She was here to make progress with her research report. In a few months, she’d have graduated and started a new phase of her life. Now, how could she show the point of sale of the machine on the three-line model? She couldn’t see how to do it. There wasn’t just one point. The sale could happen at different points. So why not draw another horizontal line lower down the page, and call that the sales line? Then she could point to somewhere on that line and say, look Dr. Bender, this is where the sale of your machine takes place. And she could point to different places on the line depending on whether it was an off-the-shelf sale, a customised sale or a resale. Now she had a four-line model, not a three-line model. That seemed like progress. Next, she’d work on a script. * So, the script for an off-the-shelf sale. Jane started writing some notes. Dr. Bender, a customer has just ordered one of your standard machines. You can deliver off the shelf. But immediately she saw two possibilities. Perhaps the machine already exists and is sitting somewhere in the finished goods store. Or perhaps it’s not yet been produced, so has to be produced. In both cases it’s a standard machine. Perhaps ‘off-the-shelf’ is the wrong term. ‘Sale of standard machine’ could be better. There are still the two possibilities. But, in both cases, there’s nothing for the Engineering Department to do, since they’ve already done their stuff. They’ve produced all those files and documents. However, in the first case, the machine already exists, it’s already been produced. That means we’re not starting at the beginning of the middle line, we’re already some way along the middle line. In the second case, we have to produce, so we are starting at the beginning of the middle line. And, on the sales line, we can show the two corresponding positions for the sale. One being a bit further to the right than the other. Now, what about the lower line, the information line? In the first case, the machine already exists, so it’s probably been given a special identifying number by Production to distinguish it from all the other machines. And they’ve probably produced a lot of paperwork showing when it was made and assembled. And that’s already on the lower line. In the second case, the machine doesn’t exist. That means Production will give it a special identifying number, and produce the paperwork. And that’s at the start of the lower line. That’s good because, again, we have two separate positions on the lower line. Just as we did on the sales line and on the middle line. Jane, you’re doing well, keep going! Look at that other sales situation while you’re so productive. What was it? The sale of a customised machine. This might

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be easier, because there’s no way it can be off the shelf. Engineering has to design special things for this machine, which means we start towards the left side of the upper line. That’s where the sale takes place on the sales line as well. Towards the left side. And the salesperson is getting the requirements from the customer. Jane felt she’d made a big step forward, a giant leap for her report. As far as she could see, it made sense. It was probably best to leave it now and do something else. She’d finish the coffee and biscuits, and then go down to the village.

Chapter 14

Monday 8 July

All was quiet when Jane woke up. She looked at her watch. 7:30 am. Why was it so quiet? She listened intently. No, it wasn’t completely quiet, she could hear some birds singing in the distance. Anyway, it was time to get up and get ready. She was due in the breakfast room on the first floor at 8:00. And had a meeting planned at 9:00 with Christophe Laurent, the site executive. Time to get moving! * Jane went down to the breakfast room and inspected the buffet. Not much to see. Just a croissant and half a baguette, some butter and some jam. Nothing else. She put them on a plate and sat down at the nearest table, deliberating whether to start with the baguette or the croissant. “Good Morning.” The woman she’d seen when she arrived came in with some coffee. “Good Morning, thank you,” said Jane. “Let me know if you need anything else,” said the woman, leaving. This wasn’t much like the hotel in Hanover. The buffet there was always full with a variety of hot and cold food and drinks. And there was always someone there to look after the breakfaster. When Jane had arrived at the Cheval Blanc on Sunday evening, it had been the same. It had taken five minutes for the woman to come to the Reception. When Jane had asked if the restaurant was open, she’d replied that it was closed. Jane had realised she needed to adapt. She was in France, not Hanover. When she left for the factory, there was nobody at Reception, so she went over to the door opposite the Reception desk. This was the restaurant, and it was open every day, except Sundays, between 11:30 and 14:30 and between 19:00 and 23:00. * Jane arrived ten minutes early for the 9:00 meeting with Christophe Laurent. The plant wasn’t far from the Cheval Blanc, but without the GPS she’d never have found it. It seemed they hadn’t heard of signposts and road signs in this part of France. Or

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maybe they thought they were no longer needed. It had been the same coming to the Cheval Blanc. No doubt everybody local knew where it was, and everyone else was expected to have a GPS. Jane went in and told the woman at Reception she had a meeting with Christophe Laurent. The receptionist leaned over the desk and looked down the corridor, “Hey, Mr. Laurent. She’s here!” Jane saw someone down the corridor raise a hand and come towards her. “Hello, I’m Christophe Laurent. Let’s go down to my office. Thanks Bernadette. Jane, we were expecting you. Bernadette saw your car at the Cheval Blanc on her way in. Come in, sit down. Dr. Bender has told me about your mission. There’s not much I can tell you, I’m not in the details, so I asked Catherine, my secretary, to set up interviews with the people who can help you most. There’ll be six interviews each day, Monday to Thursday. Twenty-four in all. I have to leave now, but why don’t you look through the list and see if we’ve got all the product-related areas covered. Nearly all the interviews are at people’s working places. The others are in a little room by the Reception desk. We call it the Visitor Room.” Mr. Laurent stopped for a moment, then said, “Catherine told me you speak French well. Everything OK so far?” “Yes,” said Jane. “Just getting my brain into French mode again after five weeks in Germany.” “Good, well if you have any problems quite a few people here speak some English and others speak German. We’re only two hours from the border. What else can I tell you? Very briefly, our strategy has always been to work for the automotive industry in France. We make machine tools, machining centres, and Flexible Manufacturing Systems for the OEMs and for suppliers. That’s what we do. We’re majority-owned by Mayer, but as long as we’re profitable, they don’t interfere in the business. We’ve never had any technical collaboration with them. Perhaps that will change with Dr. Bender’s arrival. This morning you’ll see Philippe Dubois, our Finance VP, at 10:00. Then Thierry Girard, our Operations VP, at 11:00. We’ve reserved a room for you, I’ll ask Catherine to show you. The canteen is open from 11:45 to 13:15. This afternoon, you’ll meet Roger de Brouckere at 2 pm and Edouard de Neuve-Eglise at 3 pm. They’re our two Business Unit Managers. Then, at 4 pm, you’ll meet Jean Martinez, the Services Group Leader, as he’ll be out for the rest of the week. Then tomorrow morning, at 9 am, you’ll meet Didier Fournier, our Engineering VP. When you’ve seen Didier, you’ll have seen all my direct reports. I reminded everyone this morning they should send you the documents you asked for in the mail. Most said they had already sent them. Have you had a chance to look at any?” “Yes, I spent a few hours looking at them yesterday when I got to the Cheval Blanc. Four or five were missing, all the others had replied. I’ve got similar documents from Mayer and Hanover so I’m building a good overview. Sometimes, I can even tell what a person does from the documents they send me.” “Dr. Bender said you’re looking at what happens to our products from beginning to end. But in our case, our machines don’t come back to us, so I don’t know where you’ll position their end. Perhaps we should take them back now that everything environmental is becoming more important, but years ago, nobody cared. We sold the machine and, once it was out on the road, we more or less forgot about it. It

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will be interesting to see what the other plants do. Another thing I should tell you is that we’re an important company for many people in the town. If anything happened to us, it would be a big hole in the economic fabric. A lot of local people work here, and many have been here for many years. People around here haven’t heard of commuting. Nobody would drive an hour to work. There’s little public transport, so we’re an attractive employer. The lifestyle here is incredibly good, people don’t want to move away. I spend a lot of time with public officials, the town, the department, the region. We all pull together for the common good. Come on, I have to go, but first I’ll introduce you to Catherine.” * Jane didn’t get much from the 10:00 meeting with Philippe Dubois. He started off by saying he was a numbers person, and knew very little about machine tools. He said he didn’t understand economics either, and couldn’t understand why the English had abandoned their automotive industry and their aircraft industry, while France now had two global leaders. He said he reported quarterly with Mr. Laurent to Mayer, and there were no problems as long as the figures weren’t red. Jane asked if anyone in his Department was more involved with products, but he said they only worked on the figures, not on products. * Jane hoped her 11:00 meeting with Thierry Girard would be more useful than the previous one. When she got to his office, he invited her in and suggested they sit at a round table, not face-to-face across his desk. “I suggest I show you around the plant,” he said. “And then we’ll go for lunch, but first I want to show you this.” He opened a trade magazine on the table, and she saw his picture at the top of an article. “I don’t mean I want to show you my photo, I mean the article. I’ll tell you the story. One day a few months ago, a journalist called and said he was writing a series of articles about the way French small and medium companies were responding to Industry 4.0, digitalisation, and digital transformation. He asked if he could interview me. I said OK. He came, and here’s the result. He says we’re in the top three companies in our category in the whole country. What do you think of that? I hope you haven’t been thinking that we’re some backward little company lost somewhere in the French countryside!” Jane laughed, “No, but without my GPS I’d easily get lost around here. But what he writes is really impressive. What happened? Did he come here with a scorecard and then go around the plant to see what you had.” “Yes. Though to be honest, it wasn’t a completely random visit. I’d replied to a survey on Industry 4.0 a few issues before. Apparently, we rated extremely high, so when he came here, he had an idea of what he would see. He had a list of about twenty Industry 4.0 technologies. As we’ll do later, I showed him around the plant and explained each time we came to something on his list. By the way, this is a journalist who understands manufacturing industry and technology. He didn’t just swallow what I said. He asked good questions to check on me. I found it unbelievable

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that we rated so high. Now I wonder what the other companies are doing. It seems they’re all asleep.” Jane was reading the article and looking at the list of Industry 4.0 technologies. “Do you have all these here?” “Not all. We don’t have blockchain technology yet. We’ve had most of the other technologies for a long time. I don’t see why companies wouldn’t have them. Or perhaps it’s because we’re so focused on the automotive industry. The automotive companies are leaders in technology, perhaps they pull us along, or push us along, with them. We’re in constant close contact with the automotive industry leaders. When they do something, we follow soon after, just to keep ourselves in the game. We’re not a leader, but a close follower of the leaders.” Jane was nearing the end of the article. “It’s surprising that some of the other companies score so low. I’m not surprised he doesn’t mention their names!” “I don’t know if you know, but there are many foreign-owned companies that would like to pull out of France and move to low-cost locations. In that kind of situation, they probably don’t invest in modern technology in France. And at the other end of the scale, really small companies here are hit by heavy taxes and social charges. Banks see them as a risk, and don’t want to lend them money to invest in Industry 4.0 technology. Fortunately for us, we’re somewhere in the middle between the two extremes. We’re strong enough to invest, and we want to stay here. But enough of this, let’s go and see the plant.” When they got to the plant door, Thierry told Jane to badge herself in and then watch carefully through the window. The door opened, she went in, and the door closed. Through the window, she saw Thierry put his head towards the door and it opened again. He came in and said, “Retinal identification, top security. Also for security, but you can’t see it from here, we have an uninterruptible power supply. We can keep running whatever happens outside. Something else that’s difficult to see is the plant communication network. Everything’s connected to the network, all the equipment and machines. Strictly speaking we don’t have Internet of Things, we have all our things on our own communication network, not on the Internet. Security again.” As they walked through the plant, Thierry pointed out Industry 4.0 technologies. There was AI-augmented support of shop floor machines, and Augmented Reality supporting wiring activities. He said there was a huge amount of data analysis going on, for example to monitor product quality and launch preventive maintenance. “We’re a digital factory,” he said. “With all the real-time data we collect, we have a clear data picture of the factory. And our computer systems are all connected and integrated. That includes the shop floor systems, MES and ERP. Most of the machines are smart, they’re equipped with a range of sensors. And look down there, there are some of our robots and automatically guided vehicles. I think you’ve seen everything now. Shall we go and have lunch?” “That’s a good idea, but before we go, I have a quick question. You’ve shown me a lot of Industry 4.0 technologies, but I don’t think we’ve seen anything about Digital Twin and Digital Thread.”

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“Well, this is Operations here. We can’t do Digital Twin on our own. It needs the involvement of the Engineering Department. They make the CAD models. It’s the same for Digital Thread. At the moment we don’t have a Digital Thread because we have to manually re-enter, restructure and reformat a lot of data that we get from the Engineering Department.” “I understand. Thank you for showing me around. It’s been very instructive. It’s really impressive. And it’s made me hungry!” * Lunch was light. Quiche Lorraine with salad. Jane took the opportunity to ask Thierry a lot of questions about the systems and data behind his Industry 4.0 environment. She took notes as she didn’t want to lose any of this wisdom. Eventually she got to her question about product-related issues. “Changes from outside,” he answered. “We do everything we can to get everything in the plant running smoothly and efficiently. Then pow, boom, we have to change everything because someone in the Engineering Department changes their mind. That’s something you could think about. An Engineering Change Management system that works for products from their beginning to their end. It would help us a lot. Let’s have a coffee.” Jane took note, but wondered how she could show the lack of something, like this system, in her overview. But for the moment, she had to focus on getting a coffee and listening to Thierry. * Jane’s 14:00 meeting with Roger de Brouckere, Business Area 1 Manager, was in the Visitor Room, a room near Reception. They got there at the same time, and he ushered her in. “It’s a pleasure for me to meet an English lady, a rare opportunity for me to use my English. It’s got very rusty over the years. It’s been a long time since I was at school in Canterbury. What should we start with? My official title is Business Area 1 Manager. Business Area 1 is everything related to the lion and the two rafters, and all their suppliers. I replied to your email, so I didn’t send you any documents. I don’t believe in them. My customers don’t want documents, they want working machines. I have to explain that. This is France. In France everything is network. It’s not what documents you have, not what you know, but who you know. Everything important for me is up here.” He tapped his head. “And here,” he touched his heart. “In France, you can only sell to your friends. My customers are my friends. We went to the same schools, we eat together, we have fun together. I know everything about them, they know everything about me. I trust them, they trust me. I don’t have an office here, I’m only here two Mondays each month. The rest of the time, I’m on the move. The East, Sochaux, Lyon, Clermont-Ferrand, Paris, the North. I have to keep in touch with my network, and extend my network. Over lunch or dinner in a good restaurant, someone will say, ‘Roger, dear friend, we’re looking for a new machine or a new machining line, you’ll see the official document, but what we’re really looking for is this particular new function, and we have a limit of x euros.’ That’s it. Because I know what they really want, we can make a particularly

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good offer, and most of the time we get the job. You see, it’s not about documents, or what computers you have. It’s about having deep relationships, the network.” Jane didn’t say anything for a moment. She wasn’t sure what to say. Roger continued, “The people here aren’t stupid. They’ve been making machines for decades. Didier Fournier may not be a Polytechnician, but he knows how to develop a new machine. He’s been doing it for more than thirty years.” As Jane didn’t say anything, he went on, “For the customers, each new machine is incredibly special, very advanced. When I’m discussing it with them, I agree with them. But when I tell Didier about the machine, he usually says that we’ve done 95% of it before. We just need to look at a few new functions.” For a moment, Jane didn’t say anything, then she thanked him for the explanation. “I’m just trying to think about how what you’re saying fits with my objectives. I’m meant to show Dr. Bender what happens to products from the beginning to the end. The more people I talk to, the more I see that there are different ways of doing things with products and different ways of organising activities. I just have one question for you now. What are the main issues you have in your work?” It was now Roger’s turn not to say anything. “That’s difficult. You’ve asked me a difficult one there. What are my main issues?” He thought about it for a while. “I can’t think of any issues, I don’t think I have any at the moment. There is one I can think of, but I don’t have it at the moment. It’s when the automotive market goes down. It’s a cyclical market. At the moment the market is good. But when it’s bad, it’s very bad. The number of new orders drops sharply. That’s not good. That’s the only issue I can think of. I’d better leave you now, I have to hit the road. I have a tight schedule this week. July and August are always quiet in France because of the holidays, so it’s a good opportunity for me to meet new people and build the network. It’s been a pleasure to talk to you. And all the best with your mission!” * Jane’s next interview, scheduled for 15:00, was with Edouard de Neuve-Eglise, the manager of Business Area 2. He arrived on time in the Visitor Room, but was in a hurry. “I’m Edouard de Neuve-Eglise. Can we get this over quickly? I’m due at the Cathedral for the baptism of my sister-in-law’s fifth child.” Jane hesitated. She didn’t know how to address him. Was it Mr. de Neuve-Eglise or just Mr. Neuve-Eglise? She decided not to take the risk and just said, “Of course, I’ll try to be quick.” “They said you spoke French well. Obviously not! Let’s use English. My father was a diplomat, and I went to all the best schools. I probably speak English better than you do. I’ve already replied to your email. What else?” “Thank you for replying. I saw that you only sent me two documents. A Request For Proposal and a Quotation Letter.” “That was a Request For Quotation not a Request For Proposal, can’t you read? Or don’t you know the difference?”

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“Do you have just those two documents?” “For the third time, I just use those two documents. Why do you think I’d send you two documents if I didn’t use two documents? Have you any more questions? I saw you’ll be interviewing Céline Meunier. I’m sure she can answer your questions.” “I haven’t been informed of your position here. What is it?” “I’m BA 2 Manager.” “What’s the scope of BA 2?” “Anything that’s not BA 1 of course. And now, I really must go.” * That was quick, Jane thought, probably the shortest interview yet. Being positive though, it left her plenty of time to clean up her notes. But first she asked Catherine where she could get something to drink. * Jane was scheduled to meet Jean Martinez at 16:00. She didn’t know where to find him, so asked Bernadette Bloch at Reception. Bernadette gave her detailed instructions, “You go outside, round to the left, round to the left again, and it’s the white building in front of you. The door is on the right-hand side.” Jane followed the instructions, knocked on the door and went in. “Hello,” said a man at a desk. “You must be Jane, for the interview. I was waiting for you. I’m Jean Martinez, Services Group Leader. I work for Christophe Laurent.” “Hello, Mr. Martinez. Yes, I’m Jane for the interview. Thanks for sending me the documents. Just what I wanted. I’ve already interviewed the Service people in Mayer and Hanover, so from what I saw I have a good idea of what you do. I’ve no questions on Installation, that looks clear. And I have no questions on Maintenance and Spare Parts supply. But I do have a couple of questions though on Refurbishment and Returns. How do they work? And another question. Your part documents don’t look identical to those from the Engineering Department. Why’s that?” “Listen Jane, I’ll tell you. But first, in case you’re wondering why I’m in here on my own, it’s because everyone else is out. Either with a customer, or on the way to a customer. And I’ll be leaving for a customer this evening. What you need to know is that our customers do their installation and maintenance work themselves. We just provide them expert, specialist assistance. We do that on their sites because that’s where the machines are. It’s the same with refurbishment. We have to do that on their sites as well. It wouldn’t make sense to bring the machine back here and then send it back, and then reinstall. A Refurbishment is much more than a big service, or an overhaul. We add new parts and equipment. As for Returns, we don’t get involved. It’s a whole business of its own. It has its own rules. It’s like a parallel market. We have enough to do with new machines without getting involved with old machines. We know that sometimes a customer will ship our machines to another country, usually low-cost, and use them on a line there. Other times, who knows? In any case, Returns isn’t part of our business.”

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“And your documents?” “As for our documents, what we get from the Engineering Department isn’t good enough for us. They just put basic information on documents. We need lots of other information, different views, how to disassemble, how to reassemble, how to change a part. We have people who work full-time developing our documents. It’s important, because it saves us time when we’re on the customer site. The less time we spend there the better for everyone.” “Thank you, Mr. Martinez, that’s all clear, but I have another question. You know my mission is to find out what happens to products from beginning to end. What you’ve just said there, about Refurbishment, how does that work? What’s on the invoice to the customer? Are you selling a service, or a product?” “I’m not sure I understand the question. I can tell you about other cases to compare it with. A pure Maintenance job is a service. A pure spare part sale is a product sale. Refurbishment has them both.” “I understand. One last question, what are the main product-related issues you have?” “What do you mean? Do you want to know which of our machines breaks down most often?” “No, I’m thinking broader, it could be anything problematic. Documents, parts, time, people, any problem in your job as long as it’s somehow related to products.” “Well, in that case I’d say electronic components and software for the controllers. They change so fast it’s almost impossible to keep up. Unfortunately, there have been a few cases when we’ve messed up the PCBs and the software versions. We need a better system to manage them.” “No more questions. Thank you, Mr. Martinez. You’ve been highly informative. Goodbye.” “Good, if you need anything else, just let me know. Bernadette and Catherine always know where I am.” * Great. The end of the day’s interviewing. Jane went to Reception and asked if she should keep her badge. “No,” said Bernadette. “Give it to me. I’ll give it back to you tomorrow. That way it won’t get lost.” “Fair enough,” said Jane. “Have a pleasant evening, see you tomorrow.” * Jane drove back to the Cheval Blanc and parked. There was nobody at Reception when she went in, so she went up to her room. She had a couple of hours before the restaurant opened, and she wanted to reread her notes from the day and add anything she’d forgotten. She sensed she was hearing a lot of important information, but couldn’t do much with it during the interviews. She had to be listening and noting what someone was saying, not thinking deeply about what they’d just said. *

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Jane went down to the restaurant at 7 pm. She’d worked since getting back, tidying up interview notes and looking at the documents she’d received for Tuesday’s interviews. Now she could switch off. The restaurant door was open, so Jane went in. A waiter came across and said, “Hello, I’m Bruno.” In English. “Hello, I’m Jane,” she replied in English. “I know, Lucette told me. And Frau Mueller said we were to give you very special treatment. May I show you to your table? It’s over here.” “You speak very good English,” Jane said. “I spent two years in Bray on Thames. Now what would you like this evening? Today we have Andouillette du Val d’Ajol. It’s a local speciality. Served on a bed of vegetables.” “I’d like a soup first, please.” “I recommend the mushroom soup. Local mushrooms. And with the Andouillette? Today I recommend a small bottle of Fixin. It’s about two glasses. And to finish, a blueberry tart.” “OK, Bruno. I’ll try your recommendation today. And a small bottle of mineral water please, no bubbles, and no Thames water. I’m from Somerset.”

14.1 Tuesday 9 July Jane woke up at about 7:30 am. She’d slept well. It was very quiet. Her room was at the back of the Cheval Blanc, away from the road. She’d made good progress yesterday and had heard many important things. She needed time to put it all together, but that could wait until Friday when she was back in the Container. While she was here, she had to find out as much as possible and make sure it was documented. Otherwise she’d never be able to remember it all. It was time to get up and get ready. Breakfast, if it could be called that, was at 8:00. And the first interview was at 9:00. She had to get going. * Jane wasn’t sure where to find Didier Fournier, the Engineering VP, so she asked Catherine Mégevand. Even then, she managed to get lost on the way and had to ask for help. It seemed there was the same unwillingness here to guide visitors as out on the road. Eventually she found him, “Hello, Mr. Fournier, I’m Jane. I’m here for the interview.” “Hello Jane, come on in, sit down. How can I help? By the way, I didn’t send you any documents. I saw that you’re interviewing a lot of my Group Leaders. They’ll send you their documents and you don’t want duplicates. I printed out these for you. They’re the only ones that are special to me. You can have these copies. The annual plan, quarterly reports, monthly reports, the usual kind of thing. My job these days is mainly about managing people. That doesn’t result in much product-related data, although they’re much more complex than our machines. My objective is to get everyone in the Engineering Department to work together as a team. The whole is

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larger than the sum of the parts! United we stand, divided we fall! They’re all good people individually, but I have to make sure they work together well. Technically, everyone is well-educated, most are graduates from local universities. It’s the nontechnical side that’s more difficult. On one hand, they’re competitive, they want to do better than the others. But as I say to them, they can’t succeed without the others. No one can invent and build a new machine on their own. On the other hand, they’re often defensive. They don’t want other people to know what they’re doing. Most of my work is trying to get them to work better together.” “How do you do that?” “For example, we have a mix of open-plan and individual offices, and meeting rooms. And each week, we have a departmental meeting which everyone has to attend. I speak for five minutes, then the four main Group Leaders each speak for five minutes. Then someone from the department explains what they do for thirtyfive minutes. We recycle through the whole team in alphabetical order. It’s very useful, everyone gets to know what the others are doing. Anyway, it’s a bit like you and me, it shows how everyone’s work in the Engineering Department fits together. Whereas for you, you’re looking at how everything with the product fits together, from beginning to end.” “On average my interviews take about thirty minutes,” said Jane. “It’s amazing how informative they are. I expect those presentations from your people are the same. Changing the subject, what’s your main product-related issue?” “Apart from people issues, my main issue is project-related. When we get a new order, we set up a project and the project team. The issue is to resource that team. It needs people. But the people are already working on other projects. We have to prioritise projects. I may need to take people off one project to work on another. But that slows down the first project, and often reduces the efficiency of other people on the first project. As a result, the first project takes even longer than planned. Managing a project is a mighty task. Managing many projects together is a nightmare. I’d love to find a good solution. Perhaps your work will help us find one!” “That’s not the objective of the MPL project. But perhaps my results will be useful for you in the future. I don’t have any more questions, so I should leave you now. I have to prepare for my next interview. It’s with Dominique Renard. Thank you for your help.” * Jane’s 10:00 interview was with Dominique Renard, the Mechanical Engineering Group Leader. She found him in a cubicle not far from Mr. Fournier. He seemed to be expecting her as he had a large pile of documents on his desk. “Hello, is that for me? I’m Jane.” “You guessed right, sit down, I’m Dominique. I thought you’d like these! I did send you the files, but I feel that to really understand a document you have to touch it. It’s something physical.” “I understand. Back in Mayer, I’ve printed everything out. It’s a first step to putting things together. Having them on paper makes it easier for me to visualise how things fit together. As you have your stack here, why don’t you go through these quickly and

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show me each one. I can tell you which ones I’m aware of from Mayer and Hanover, and which ones are new to me. Then we can come back and look at the new ones in more detail.” “That sounds good. One, two, three, go!” By the time Mr. Renard got to the last document, he’d shown Jane more than fifty. “That was fast work,” she said. “I’ve seen many of these before, either in Mayer or Hanover, but there are quite a few I haven’t seen. They seem to be in four or five main areas, simulation, test, analysis and parameters. Does that say something to you?” “It doesn’t surprise me. A lot of what we do here must be similar to the others. I don’t know much about them, but I think they have mainly standard machines. Here, every machine is different. That means we have to do a lot of new calculations, analysis, simulation and tests for every order. The other sites probably don’t do so much in those areas. We have to do it all the time which would explain why we have so much of it. It wouldn’t surprise me if we apply more advanced techniques as well. But the basics are the same, applying physics and Engineering calculations to our machines.” “Good, I can see how that fits. One more question, what are the main issues you face in your Engineering work?” “That’s an interesting question. It’s not the applications, we have all we need. Computing power we have as well. We have good people. We have enough office space. I’m not being very helpful, am I?” “That’s fine, keep going.” “You probably don’t want me to suggest raising everyone’s salary. In general, I find the overall company culture here is good. And the company is very forwardlooking. It’s dynamic, that’s good. But now I’ve found an issue, the organisation of projects. I don’t know how to put it, but we have so many projects, and the priorities keep changing, so no sooner does someone get involved in a project than I have to take them off and put them on another. That’s time-wasting. We could do that better. Another thing, maybe people don’t understand the knock-on effects, the interrelationships, on this type of machine. I’ll always remember one machine for which the customer wanted a slightly larger table, that’s where the part is positioned on the machine. Just a small change, one or two percent. We calculated how much it would cost to make the machine with the larger table and the customer said that was far too much. They gave the work to another company that had proposed a much lower price. However, a few months later the customer came back to us and asked us to make the machine. Our calculations had been good. It was only a small change, but there was a huge amount of work to make that change possible.” “Thank you. That’s very helpful. Well, Mr. Renard, thank for your help. Now I have to prepare to meet Mr. Lelouch.” *

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Jane’s 11:00 meeting with Olivier Lelouch, the Electrical Engineering Group Leader, was in a meeting room in the Engineering area where she’d been earlier. “Come on in, Jane, I thought it would be best to meet in here. It’s quieter and we won’t disturb other people. Did you get the documents I sent you? Have you had a chance to review them? Do you have any questions?” “Yes, I’ve reviewed your documents. Thank you for sending them. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but I’ve also looked at documents in Mayer and Hanover, and yours are similar to their Electrical Department documents. From the viewpoint of my mission, I don’t have any questions. My project, MPL, is for Dr. Bender. He’s the boss of Mayer. He tasked me with finding out what happened with products, from beginning to end. In your case I presume you come after Mr. Fournier in the flow?” “That’s right. He’ll get something from one of our Business Areas, and then it comes to us.” “That’s what I thought. So really, I only have one other question for you. What’s your biggest product-related issue? What type of problem keeps coming up?” “To be honest, we don’t think much about problems. We’re under so much pressure we just do our work. If there’s a problem, we solve it or bypass it. We don’t think a lot about it. That said, for each new machine it seems we have more work to do, but we have less time to do the work. These days we have to check everything in a 3D mechanical CAD system to be sure of positioning. But I don’t know if you can call that a problem. We can do it, so in a way it’s a competitive advantage for us against competitors that aren’t so well-equipped.” “Thank you, Mr. Lelouch, that’s a good point. I don’t have any more questions. Is there anything that you’d like to ask me?” “I’d really like to see your report. It’s never been clear to me how our products progress from their beginning to their end. It would be very useful to understand that. I’d also like to use it in our annual training sessions. Do you think the report will be distributed widely?” “I don’t know. I expect Dr. Bender will decide that. But I agree, it will be a very informative report. I’ve not met anyone who has a good overview of the whole product flow from beginning to end. But first I have to finish the report! And the next activity on my plan for today is lunch.” “Mine too. Do you have anything planned, or shall we go together? I can tell you more about everything electrical, from power drives to PLCs and machine wiring.” “How could I refuse such an offer?” “On Tuesday, there’s usually flammekueche. It’s very good. It’s quite light but keeps me going through the afternoon.” “That sounds good. Please lead on, Mr. Lelouch.” * Jane’s first interview of the afternoon was scheduled for 14:00. It was with Thomas Lopez, the Electronic Engineering Group Leader. After her light lunch she’d looked again at the documents Mr. Lopez had sent her. From his document fingerprint she could see that he was doing similar work to the Electronic Groups in Mayer and Hanover. Perhaps this was obvious, but she preferred to be sure. And it was only by

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looking at his documents that she could be sure. The interview went quickly. Mr. Lopez wasn’t unfriendly, but he wasn’t particularly talkative either. Jane asked if she could have a quick look round to see what his people were doing. Mr. Lopez looked a bit surprised, so she added, “I mean look at the screens to see the systems they’re using and what components they’re working on. It’s just to help me build up my picture of what happens with products from beginning to end.” Thomas looked dubious, so Jane added, “Five minutes maximum, and then I’ll leave you in peace. I promise!” “OK, agreed.” As they walked around, Thomas explained which system each person was using, what they were doing, and what was on the screen. Jane was delighted, it helped her build her picture. When Thomas had finished his explanations, Jane apologised, “Sorry Thomas, that was eleven minutes. But it was very helpful for me, and now I’m going.” “That’s OK Jane, I can see now how that helped you. Let me know if you need anything else!” * After the interview with Mr. Lopez, Jane had thirty minutes free. She asked Bernadette if the Visitor Room was available. She wanted to look at her material. Bernadette looked at her screen and said that would be fine. The next interviewee was Denise Masson. Jane looked at the documents that Denise had sent her. Usual software stuff, she thought to herself. Hopefully, I’ll be able to keep this short. * Jane was at Denise Masson’s desk at precisely 3 pm. Denise wasn’t there, but soon arrived from a neighbouring cubicle. “Hello, you must be Jane. Sorry I wasn’t here to greet you. I was just discussing with someone on the team. I don’t want to sound rude but, from what I’ve heard, you’ve spoken to the Software Groups in Germany. We do exactly the same type of work here, so I don’t think you need to interview me for long.” “Oh,” said Jane. “Do you know them? I didn’t realise you were in contact.” “Yes, developing software for machine controllers is a small world. We all know each other. There are many European projects, and we often work together.” “When I looked at your documents, I saw they were similar to those from Mayer and Hanover, but I didn’t realise you knew each other.” “Yes, we all know each other, and it wouldn’t make sense to try to be independent and do something different. If we work together, we can help each other. For example, we’re currently working with them on a big European Digital Twin project.” “I’m doing these interviews in the context of the MPL project for Dr. Bender. I’m trying to find out what happens to products from the beginning to the end. For your Group, it seems you develop software for the controllers. And you maintain it. You fix bugs. You develop new versions. I can see where that fits in the product’s life. And I have all your documents, so I guess I should stop now and let you get back to work. Do you have anything to add?”

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“We’d like an ALM. It would help us a lot. At the moment, we have files all over the place.” Jane struggled to remember, ALM? Someone had mentioned that, but she wasn’t sure who it was. What was it? Oh yes, she remembered. An Application Lifecycle Management system. “Right, I’ve noted that. It’s helpful for me as it implies something is missing from today’s picture. Anything else? No? Thank you for your help.” * The final interview of the day was with Henri Anciaux, the leader of the Technical Documentation Group. Jane didn’t know how to get to his office, so had to ask. “Round to the left, continue past the office where you were earlier, down the stairs on the left to the basement, along the corridor to the end,” said Bernadette. “Thank you, Bernadette, see you later.” * Jane followed Bernadette’s instructions and reached a door at the end of the corridor. As this was the only door in sight, she presumed this was Mr. Anciaux’s office. She knocked and went in. Surprisingly, she found herself in a huge room. Several people turned to look at her. One came over, “Hello, I’m Henri. You must be Jane. Welcome to Document Headquarters. Come over here, and I’ll explain.” Jane had never seen anything like this. The entire room was full of cabinets, wall racks and cupboards, apparently all full of paper documents. Mr. Anciaux took her on tour, opening and closing doors and drawers to show what was inside. “We have every technical document that the company has ever produced here. Some people say it’s our Intellectual Property Vault, others our Technical Information Warehouse. It’s very valuable, so we keep two copies of everything outside the company in secure locations. That way, if there’s a flood or a fire we can keep working. Everything is also available electronically, but these are the originals down here. We also have the electronic archive here, for example 3D CAD models. And, as you see, we have a Technical Documentation Team managing everything. I’ve been talking to you about information, but we also have a few parts down here as well. In the cupboard over there, there are some prototypes that people have asked us to keep. So now you see why I didn’t send you a copy of all our documents, just a list of the document types that we’re using today.” Jane was silent for a while, overcome by the size of the room, the volume of information. “Yes, thank you, that will be very useful. I think that’s what I need for the project. But I don’t know what to say. I never realised you could have so much paper.” “I know. When people work with electronic files they don’t think much about the size. The file is on a disk somewhere, they probably don’t even visualise it. It’s only when they see the paper equivalent, or the electronic storage devices we need to store the files, that they understand the volume. I always remember hearing that the paper documentation for a helicopter weighed more than the helicopter. An A0 sheet of paper weighs one hundred gm, so the weight adds up quickly.”

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“My MPL project aims to show what happens to a product from beginning to end. To start with, I thought that was just the physical product. But I’ve come to understand that there’s a parallel digital representation of the physical product that I also have to understand from beginning to end. If I understand right, you don’t create any documents, you just manage other people’s technical documents.” “That’s right.” “I’ve one more question for you. What are the main issues managing all this information?” “Good. I thought you might ask that, so I made you a list! Here it is, quite short you see, only twenty-two issues.” Jane read the list. “I see, I understand. And how can all this be improved?” “I could have made you another list to answer that. Probably the most important item would be to get the Department Leaders to understand the value of all this information, and the importance of managing it. If we were managing hundred euro notes, they’d understand soon enough. But because we’re managing technical documents, the message just doesn’t seem to get through.” “Thank you for telling me this, it seems very important. I’ll be careful what I write, how I phrase this. Is there anything else you’d like to say to me?” “I think I’ve said enough!” “It’s been very instructive. Thank you.” * With her day of interviews complete, Jane handed in her badge to Bernadette and went back to the Cheval Blanc. As usual, there was nobody at Reception, so she went straight up to her room. The restaurant wouldn’t be open for almost two hours, so she had time to tidy up her notes and review the documents she’d received from Wednesday’s interviewees. * Jane went down to the restaurant at 7 pm. Bruno was there waiting for her, “Good evening, will we have the pleasure of your company this evening? May I show you to your table?” “Good evening Bruno, how are you today?” “Tip-top. Tell me, on reflection did you enjoy yesterday evening’s gastronomic experience?” “Yes, Bruno, it was excellent.” “In that case, may I make some suggestions for this evening? If you would like soup, today we have a Lorraine soup with local vegetables from the Perrin family farm. Then I recommend the cancoillotte with Morteau sausage and potatoes. With that I suggest a Chateau-Chalon. And then perhaps a clafoutis aux mirabelles. That’s a local delicacy. How does that sound?” “Bruno, I don’t understand all of that, but it sounds very good. I’ll follow your advice again and hope for the best.”

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14.2 Wednesday 10 July Jane woke up and looked at her watch. 7:30 am and July 10. July 10? July 19 was her last day in Mayer, so she could begin the countdown. Ten days to go. And only two more days here in France. Time to get moving. She’d have a quick breakfast. That would leave her time to look at today’s documents again before the interviews. * The first interview of the day, scheduled for 9 am, was with Julien Colin, the leader of the Engineering Department’s Project Management Group. Jane had looked several times at the documents he’d sent her. His project management approach was detailed in a manual referred to as the Blue Book. It included a mix of phases and milestones and weekly deliverables. Jane didn’t want to get into the details. Her focus was products not projects. It was clear to her where in the life of the product the Engineering projects were run and managed. Julien showed her a lot of project management documents: schedules; lists of deliverables; lists of phase activities; risk management reports; issue management lists; to-do lists; meeting invitations; meeting reports; and so on. There was nothing she hadn’t seen in Mayer and Hanover. She thanked him for taking the time to send her the documents and participate in the interview. * The 10 am interview was with Kevin Nguyen from the Systems Engineering Group. He explained he’d recently been hired from University after completing his doctorate. His job was to bring a Systems Engineering approach into the Engineering Department, but he was only at the beginning of the project. Jane asked if Systems Engineering had been applied for any machines that were with customers. Or were being developed. As the answer to both questions was negative, Jane decided not to go into the details. It was going to be difficult enough to explain to Dr. Bender what happened with products from beginning to end without addressing what hadn’t happened yet. She’d leave that for another student to work on. * Jane felt she was making good progress. Not surprising, she thought, I’ve already interviewed more than fifty people, there can’t be much I haven’t covered. The 11 am interview was with Virginie Arnaud, leader of the Analysis Group. Jane had looked at the documents that Virginie had sent her. The document fingerprint was clear, Virginie’s area was the computer-based analysis of mechanical, electrical and electronic designs. She was working with about twenty different programs and had dozens of product-related documents. Since she’d woken up in the morning, Jane had felt she was on the downward slope. Now she had to focus on finishing the project on time. Was there anything Virginie could tell her that she didn’t already know? If not, she’d do better to keep the interview short and prepare for lunch. *

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However, it didn’t turn out like that. Virginie wanted to be helpful, so went through all the documents she had, explaining which system they related to, where the input came from, and what happened to the output. Virginie explained well, so it was useful for Jane to listen and watch. The explanation confirmed what she’d suspected from her review of the documents. And it filled in a few missing details. When Virginie had explained the last document, Jane looked at her watch. Time for lunch! “Virginie, shall we go for lunch? That way we can continue the discussion.” * Jane was pleased to have a lunch companion as, although she spoke French reasonably well, she didn’t recognise many of the words on the canteen menu. Today, Virginia suggested she take quenelle, rice and salad. Jane didn’t know what quenelle translated to in English, but it looked like a dumpling, so she went with that. The lunchtime discussion was useful, and Jane learnt more about Virginie’s work. It was all good background material for the whiteboard overview. * After lunch, Jane asked Bernadette if she could sit in the Visitor Room until her next interview. The room wouldn’t be used by anyone else that afternoon, so she worked there. She looked again at the documents for the afternoon’s interviews. It looked like plain sailing, starting with meetings with a CAD specialist and the Test Department. But then Nathalie Brun, from Lean Project, what was that? She’d cross that bridge when she got to it. First, she had an interview with Roland Moreau. At 12:55, Bernadette explained where to find him, almost in the main Engineering open plan office, but in an office in the far-left corner. * When Jane eventually found the right office, Roland was looking intently at some figures on a CAD screen. “Hello, Roland. Sorry to disturb you. I’m Jane. It’s for the interview.” “Oh sorry, come on in. Please sit down. How can I help? Did you get the documents I sent you?” “Yes, thank you. I looked at them and it seems you’re responsible for several CAD systems.” “Yes, that’s right. It’s quite complex here with the CAD systems. That’s because of our company’s approach to working with our customers. We use whatever CAD system the customer is using, and since our customers use several different CAD systems that means we also have several different CAD systems. It’s a strategy that, unfortunately, gives us more Systems Administration work. Another disadvantage is it means we need to have designers who can work well in each system. Most of the designers only like to work with one CAD system, so we have separate teams for each system. And just a few other individuals who are able to work with more than one system. That means we also have multiple CAD training programs. And multiple interfaces between CAD and PDM and ERP systems. But those are all technical disadvantages that we overcome. The main advantage of having multiple

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CAD systems is a business advantage. We can work closely with any automotive company or supplier, whatever system they use. And often in their contracts they say we must use the same CAD system as they do. So, if we didn’t have that system, we wouldn’t get the contract.” “I understand now,” said Jane. “I couldn’t see all that just by looking at your documents. My objective with the MPL project is to understand what happens with products from the beginning through to the end. But if I understand right, you don’t personally work directly with the company’s products, or create or use any productrelated documents. It seems to me your job is to make the CAD systems available for the people who create the company’s products and use product-related documents.” “Yes, that’s right.” “One last question. You haven’t mentioned anything about Digital Twin or Digital Thread. Are you doing anything on them?” “No. I hear about them from our CAD system vendors, but we’re already overloaded just keeping our current systems afloat.” “Good. From my side, I don’t have any more questions. Do you have any questions for me? No? In that case, we can stop the interview here. Thank you for your help.” * Jane went back to the Visitor Room, and worked there until it was time for her interview with Angélique Dupont. Five minutes before the interview with Angélique was due to start, Jane asked how to find her office. “Go outside, turn left, then left again, past the Service building, and it’s the next building on your right. Go in by the door on the left, and you’ll see Angélique’s laboratory,” replied Bernadette. Jane followed the instructions and found herself at Angélique’s laboratory door. She rang the bell, and after a while someone opened the door. “Hello, I’m Angélique. You must be Jane. Come on in. What do you want to ask me?” “I don’t have many questions. I’ve looked at the documents you sent to me. Thanks for sending them. By the way, I’ve been in the Test labs in Mayer and Hanover. From what I’ve seen, if I understand right, you do tests here on physical parts and products. Not like Virginie Arnaud who analyses computer models.” “That’s right. This is a Test lab. We do real-world tests, not virtual-world tests.” “One thing I wasn’t sure about from your documents. Do you just do tests on prototypes, before the machine goes to a customer?” “No, people often think that. Probably because we’re in the Engineering Department. Of course, we do a lot of tests on prototypes, but we also do tests on parts that have been used by customers. Maybe that testing should be in another department or group, I don’t know which one, but in this company we do it here.” Jane thought about the answer. What did that mean for her whiteboard overview? “Hold on Angélique, I need to get this clear. As you know, my MPL project aims to understand what happens with products from the beginning through to the end. I’m developing an overview and I was thinking that the test documents would fit in with the design documents before a product or part first goes to a customer. But if

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I understand correctly, you’re saying that’s not completely true. Some of your tests, and the documents, do come before the machine is released. But others come much later, after the machine has been installed at the customer site and has been used.” “That’s right. Often, it’s the Maintenance people who bring parts to us after they’ve been out to see a customer.” “OK, I understand. I hadn’t realised that before.” “Well, I guess you have quite a task trying to understand where everything fits. There must be hundreds of different documents if you include Mayer and Hanover. I know very well what happens in the Lab here, but I’ve only a vague idea of what goes on in the other Groups and Departments here in France, and an even vaguer idea about what happens in Germany.” Jane wondered if she should ask any more questions. She couldn’t think of anything relevant to her project, but then another question came to mind. “Angélique, I’ve one more question. You sent me many files by mail. Where do you store your files? Do they go in a PDM system?” “No, we have our own database system. All our files go in there. When we put them in, the system creates a header block which has the same format for all types of files. It contains information like document name, test number, test person, test description, part name, test date and so on. Afterwards we can search on those attributes to find a document quickly later if we need it again.” “And is it the same database if the test is on a prototype part or a part that has come back from a customer?” “Yes, for us they’re all tests. It’s the Test Database.” “Thank you, no more questions. Do you have any questions for me?” “I wonder what the result of your report will be, and how it will affect me.” “A lot of people ask me that question, but I don’t know the answer. My report is only meant to show what happens today with a product from its beginning to its end. My project isn’t an audit. My project isn’t a performance review. And don’t forget, my project is only the work of one person for seven weeks. It won’t have much detail, and to be honest, there’ll probably be whole areas that I miss. And I don’t know if the report will ever be circulated. I expect Dr. Bender will decide about that. I’m sorry not to be able to tell you more. Do you have any other questions for me?” “No, that’s all. Thank you for explaining.” “And thank you for explaining everything to me.” * Jane’s final interview of the day was at 4 pm with Nathalie Brun, the Lean Project Leader. Jane found her in the Engineering Department’s open plan office area. “Hello Nathalie, sorry to disturb you. I’m Jane. It’s for the interview.” “Hello, so you’re Jane. I reserved an office for us. It’s over there. I received your mail, but I didn’t send you any documents as I don’t have any. Let’s sit down. How can I help you?” Jane explained about the MPL project, and how she was going to report to Dr. Bender in a week about what happened to products from the beginning to the end. Then she asked Nathalie, “And what about you? What do you do?”

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“I’m leading the Lean Project.” “What’s that exactly?” “It’s a project that Mr. Fournier started. He wants to find out if we can slim down, and be faster and more reactive.” “And how do you do that? Value Stream Mapping?” “No, we hired some consultants and they’re looking for waste.” “And have they found any?” “Already a lot. For example, they found that most engineers spend 15% of their time looking for information. That’s wasted time. And engineers spend another 10% of their time in meetings where they don’t need to be. That’s also waste. We’ve also found that there are duplicate applications. That’s waste again. And there are too many applications, which means too many interfaces between applications. Developing interfaces is waste, that’s not what we’re here for. We’re here to develop machines. Another big area, but we haven’t quantified it yet, is the continual switching from one project to another. That wastes time because people take time to shut one project down and then start up another. What else? We’ve found many examples where people keep creating a new version of a document, but it would be easier and better if they used a template. Another big one, but we haven’t quantified this yet, is all the time that people spend finding and fixing errors and bugs in machines that we’ve developed for customers. For software, it looks as if that could be as much as 30% of their time. Then there’s creating part numbers but not using them. And creating a new part even though the part already exists. Another one is having too many sign-offs for a design. And waiting for something that’s in a bottleneck. Those are just a few of the examples we’ve found so far. Is that helpful for you?” “Yes, thank you,” replied Jane, although she wasn’t sure if it was, or how it was. “By the way, have you made any drawings of how activities work or how they fit together?” “No, the consultants said that wasn’t useful at this time in the project. They didn’t want us to copy existing workflows. There are some in the operating procedures, but the consultants said there was no way of knowing if they were accurate or not.” Jane was trying to understand if Nathalie was telling her something useful for MPL, or if it was out of scope. Nathalie was saying things were wrong, but was that useful for Jane? Possibly not, Jane’s current target was to show what was happening, not to highlight things that were wrong. “I understand. Well, thanks for participating in the interview, Nathalie. You’ve been very helpful. And if you think of anything else that might be useful, do let me know.” * At 16:30, Jane handed in her badge to Bernadette and left. She had a couple of hours in front of her in which she’d tidy up her interview notes and look at the documents for Thursday’s interviews. And then she’d have dinner. *

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Jane went downstairs to the restaurant at 19:00 just as Bruno was opening the doors. “Hello,” he said. “How are you today? Are you eating with us? That’s good, we have something special today! And did you enjoy yesterday’s dinner? I didn’t even have time to ask you. I was rushed off my feet. It’s going to be the same this evening. Lots of reservations, so it’s good you’re here before all the others come. Tonight, we have a choice, local trout or Gratin Vosgien au Munster. They’re both local specialities. Do you like fish?” “Yesterday was wonderful. I don’t know how you do it. At home I like some fish, like bream, but I don’t like trout.” “OK, so gratin. Would you like to know about today’s soup and dessert? It’s a leek and potato soup, all local produce. And a Gâteau Vosgien aux Cerises. Freshly picked today. I’ll bring you a red Arbois to taste. I think you’ll like it.” “Bruno, I’ve another question. I live in London now, but I’m originally from the countryside. When I was young, in summer we always had fresh food from the garden. When I’m in London, almost nothing tastes fresh. But everything you have tastes fresh. How do you do that?” “Thank you, I’m pleased to hear you say that. We aim to serve fresh food whenever possible. But it’s not easy, it takes a lot of organising. Each day we’re delivered the food that we need for that day. Jules, the cook, he has a very well-equipped kitchen and team and they prepare lunch and dinner. With great ingredients, great equipment, and Jules’ know-how and flair, they create these great meals of the day. But in the background of all their daily work, I’m out every day looking for more good suppliers for the future, local farmers, butchers, vineyards, dairies and cheese-makers. We pay our suppliers good prices, and we pay on time. In return, they must deliver top quality fresh produce on time. If they don’t, we stop working with them. It’s the same with the vineyards. I visit lots of them and taste their wine. But I only select a few, only the ones who are top quality and will fit with our menus. But now I must leave you, I see some other diners arriving.”

14.3 Thursday 11 July Jane woke up early. She looked at her watch. Great, the last day of interviews. She decided to get up early and hope that her rations were already in the breakfast room. It turned out they were, so she took them over to her usual table. Lucette came in with the coffee. “Thank you, and excuse me, could you prepare my bill for me please?” “No, I’ll send it to Catherine, she’ll pay it.” That was more good news for this beautiful day. *

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By 8:15, Jane was at Reception, getting her badge from Bernadette. “Your first meeting today is in the Visitor Room. You can go there now.” * Jane’s 9:00 interview on her last day of interviews was with Céline Meunier, apparently a Big Data and Analytics specialist who worked for Edouard de Neuve-Eglise. Jane hoped Céline wouldn’t be as obnoxious as her boss. Céline arrived on time, “I’m sorry, but I’ve not slept a wink and haven’t breakfasted. Do you mind if we talk in the canteen? I need a coffee and something to eat.” Jane didn’t object and they went to the canteen. After Céline had drunk some coffee and started eating what seemed to be a jam-covered half of a baguette sliced horizontally, Jane thought she could get started, “I’m doing a project to understand what happens to the company’s products from their beginning to their end. I’m finding out by interviewing people and looking at their data, documents and systems. Thank you for replying to my mail and sending me some documents. Are those two documents all you work with?” Céline shook her head from side to side, and continued eating. Jane’s mother had always told her not to speak with her mouth full, so she decided to wait until Céline had finished her jammed baguette. But no sooner had Céline finished, then she got up and said she was going to get another coffee. “Would you like another one too, Jane?” “No, thank you.” Céline came back with her coffee, “Sorry about that, but I was near to collapse. Let me explain what I do. I saw you had an interview with my boss. He’s the Business Area 2 leader. He gets RFQs from customers. I sent you one, did you see it?” “Yes.” “Good. I developed an Artificial Intelligence system that reads the RFQ, then produces the reply that Eduardo sends to the customer.” “That’s impressive. The AI system makes a proposal? How can it do that?” Céline looked at her. “It’s AI, Artificial Intelligence. If a human can do something with human intelligence, then a system can do it with AI, artificial intelligence.” “But how?” “Like a human, by reasoning. It reads the quotation to see what the customer wants. Say it’s a single machine, not a line. The customer will specify their requirements. Sizes, speeds, material removal rate and the like. The AI program reads that, then it goes and looks in its memory, follows its reasoning, and decides what to propose.” “What’s in its memory?” “All the information it might need: technical specifications; design specifications; part characteristics; process and technology characteristics; production phase conditions. Information on all the machines we’ve ever made, all their details. The program thinks about which of those machines might have something helpful for the new machine. It keeps on thinking until it comes up with the proposal.”

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“And that works?” “I print the document, give it to Eddy, and he reads it. If he likes it, he signs it, and it’s on its way. If he doesn’t like it, he tells me what’s wrong. I tell the program. And we try again.” “And that works?” “Sometimes it’s right first-time, sometimes we need several tries. But it always gets there. It’s nothing special. Did you interview Roger de Brouckere from Business Area 1? He’s just the same. It’s just different in that he’s got all the machine information stored in his head. He thinks it through until he can see what to propose. You could say that’s Brouckere Intelligence, BI. But in Business Area 2, it’s slightly different, we use AI.” “Céline, this is all new to me, so let’s take it slowly. I hear you saying five things. First, you have input, the RFQ. Second, the program has a memory of all the machines made here, that’s all the design and technical specifications. Third, the program has its way of reasoning. Fourth, the program produces an offer. Fifth, you give the program feedback. So, if it makes a mistake it learns and doesn’t make the same mistake again. Is that about right?” “Good enough for a beginner.” “Thank you. Going back to my mail. You only sent me two documents. In theory, you could also have sent me the design and technical specification documents for all the machines. You use them as well, don’t you?” “You could say that, but can you imagine how much data that represents? You would never have received my reply. Just one other thing before you ask. As well as all the data on all the machines, we also have all the data on all of the individual parts that we’ve made.” “That’s amazing,” said Jane. “Thank you for telling me about that. Do you have any other startling revelations for me?” “No, only that I’ve finished my coffee and am now in great shape. Unless you have any other questions, I’d better get back to my cubicle and my work.” “No more questions. Thank you once again.” * Jane went back to the Reception Desk and asked Bernadette where she could find Michel Perec for the 10:00 interview. “Hold on, I’ll call him.” Bernadette tried a few numbers. Eventually she found him. “He says he’ll be waiting for you at the Production Department door. I think you know where that is?” “Yes,” said Jane. “I was there with someone. I’m sorry, but sometimes I can’t remember everybody’s name. I was there with the Production Department VP.” “That’s Mr. Giraud. Who will you see after Michel Perec?” Jane looked at her list, “Claude Milhaud.” “He has an office not far from Mr. Perec.” *

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At 10:00, Jane met Michel Perec, the Logistics Group Leader at the Production Department door. “Hello Mr. Perec, I’m Jane, I’m here for the interview. Thank you for sending me the documents. They give me a good understanding of what you do. Mr. Giraud showed me round the plant, perhaps you could show me around again from a logistics viewpoint.” “OK, let’s start with the Incoming Goods area. That’s where everything comes in from suppliers. Then we can follow some materials and parts as they move from one machine to another. We try to make sure they go directly from one machine to another. But sometimes that doesn’t work out. Then the part goes temporarily into a work-in-progress store. When the part finishes its journey through the machines, it may go directly for assembly, or it may go to the finished part store, or to the spare parts store. In my Group, we plan that flow in the plant. We also plan the flow outside the plant. On one side, we plan all the materials coming in from suppliers and on the other side we plan the flow out to customers. We’re also responsible for selecting suppliers. But not for selecting customers!” “When I listen to you, it reminds me of a conversation I had yesterday evening in the Cheval Blanc with Bruno. Do you know him?” “Yes, but I’ve never been compared to him before!” “He was telling me about the way the fresh food comes into the restaurant. He also selects the suppliers, plans deliveries, and checks incoming food quality.” “Yes, that sounds similar to what we do here. However, I doubt that the Cheval Blanc plans their flows in such detail as we plan the material flows around the plant. Jules is an artist. I don’t see him having the flow planned in such detail between each activity. But I may be wrong, I’ve never worked in a kitchen. He probably tries to be very well-organised as well. So now you’ve seen everything in the plant. Is there anything else I can help you with?” “No thanks, Mr. Perec. That logistics tour was particularly useful. My next interview is with Mr. Milhaud. Which way is his office?” “I’ll show you, it’s not far away. Come this way.” Mr. Perec stopped by an open office door and knocked, “Hi Claude, I’ve a visitor for you.” “Thanks, Michel. Come on in,” said Mr. Milhaud. “You must be Jane.” * “Hello, Mr. Milhaud. Sorry to disturb you. I’m Jane, for the interview. I’m sorry I’m a bit early but I finished early with Mr. Perec. I thought it would be useful to check if you were available.” “Be careful, Claude. She’s compared me to Bruno at the Cheval Blanc. I wouldn’t be surprised if she calls you Jules!” Mr. Milhaud looked from one to the other. “I’m sorry, Mr. Milhaud, it’s my fault,” said Jane. “Mr. Perec showed me the flow of materials in the factory, and it reminded me of Bruno telling me about the flow of produce to the restaurant.”

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“So if I’m Bruno,” said Mr. Perec. “I organise the flow of produce, and you Claude must be Jules! You receive the produce and then work on it. Jules has his kitchen equipment and you have your factory equipment.” “That’s good thinking, Mr. Perec,” said Jane. “Jules must have a lot of machines like ovens and refrigerators. And maybe washing machines and sausage-slicing machines. And Mr. Milhaud has his machines in the factory.” “I don’t understand this at all,” said Mr. Milhaud. “Jane, why don’t I show you the machines in the plant? These are real industrial machines, not toys for slicing sausages. Come on Jane. We’ll leave Mr. Perec to think about managing his onions. Now Jane, where shall we start? Let’s start over there at Incoming Goods. That may not sound too exciting, but we have some interesting machines there. Actually, we have interesting machines everywhere in the plant. My Group is called Factory Management and Automation. We manage all the machines and the other equipment. Michel Perec manages the flow of material coming into the plant and between the machines. Have you heard of Numerical Control programs?” “Yes.” “As well as managing the machines themselves, my Group also develops and manages the NC programs for parts made on the machines. In a nutshell, that’s what we do.” “OK, I understand. It’s like if Jules has microwave ovens, he might program them for five minutes on High for beef, but three minutes on Medium for fish. And if he has a robot turner, he could program that to turn the meat or fish halfway through.” “I’m sorry, I’m not really with you. I didn’t understand what you and Michel were talking about. Let me show you some of our Incoming Goods machines. This one here is a barcode scanner. It reads the barcodes on an incoming box, and suggests what the operator should do with it. That machine over there is similar, but it’s reading RFID chips on incoming goods to identify them. Boxes are also weighed automatically. All the information goes in a database, with a timestamp so we know exactly what comes in, and when. And then we track things through the plant. Over here we have an AGV, that’s an Automatically Guided Vehicle. It can take incoming material over to the machine where it’s needed. You can see it follows that track on the floor.” Jane was always interested in seeing things happening to products so enjoyed the explanation from Mr. Milhaud. He seemed proud of his machines and gave her plenty of details of what they were doing and why. After they’d finished the plant tour, Jane saw it was 12:00. “I’d better go for lunch now,” she said. “Where are you going?” “To the canteen.” “That’s good, let’s go together. That way we can talk some more about the machines. I don’t have time to go to the Cheval Blanc at lunch time. The service can be slow when they’re busy. I blame that on Michel Perec, there must be something wrong with the logistics!” “Mr. Milhaud, it’s lunch time. No more talk of logistics please. Now we must concentrate on what the canteen will produce.” When they arrived at the canteen, Mr. Milhaud asked if Jane recognised the main dish prepared by the canteen’s Jules.

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“No, but I can see it looks good. What is it?” “It’s a Tourte Lorraine. It’s a local dish. I’m not a Bruno, but I think you’ll like it. It comes with a salad, so it’s healthy.” * Mr. Milhaud had to be back in his office for a one o’clock call, so Jane had an hour before her next interview. She worked on cleaning up her interview notes from the morning, then asked Bernadette where she could find Marie-Cécile Rousseau for the two o’clock interview. “She’s in the Production Department. I’ll call her and see where she is. Oh! Here she comes.” Marie-Cécile came over to Bernadette’s desk, “Sorry to be late, I was out for lunch.” “That’s OK, you’re not late. We were just looking for you.” “Well I’m here now. Let’s go through to my office.” Jane remembered that she’d seen Marie-Cécile’s office before. She’d passed it on the way to her interview with Mr. Perec. She remembered it had a lot of graphs on the walls. “Welcome to my office, what can I help you with? I hope you received the documents I sent you.” “Yes, thank you. As I wrote in the mail, I’m trying to find out what happens to products from beginning to end. From the documents you sent me, it seems you have some product-related activities.” “Yes, quite a lot. They take up too much of my time. When I joined the company, I was meant to work on both Quality in the Production Department and Total Quality at the level of the company. Total Quality describes the attitude, culture and organisation of a company that aims to provide customers with products and services that satisfy their needs. Without that company-level Total Quality, it’s difficult to achieve Quality at lower levels. Because the overall culture, attitude and organisation is missing. This company doesn’t do Total Quality because the top managers don’t believe in it, they’re always fighting each other and trying to be Top Dog. As a result, I can only implement Quality tools at the level of the Production Department. For example, control charts like that one over there, and risk matrices like that one. And Ishikawa diagrams, there’s one over there. And there’s a Pareto chart. And a root cause analysis. We also do insitu inspections, with sensors automatically measuring part parameters. And we have 3D scanners to measure parts and check if they meet targets. As you can see, we have lots of product-related, or part-related, activities and documents. That’s what I sent you.” “Just to be clear,” Jane said. “You do all this in the Production Department? You don’t, for example, get involved with tests done by people from the Engineering Department?” “No, but that’s a good example of why you have to run Quality from the top of the organisation. There’s overlap with what we do with people in other departments, but because we’re in different departments, we have to work separately. I sent you examples of some horizontal swimlane documents I made. They show that,

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in reality, people in the Production Department are often involved together with people from Engineering and Service and other departments in their activities. But for some unknown reason, I’m not allowed to release those swimlane documents. There’s a lot of duplication of effort. It’s waste. Everybody knows what we should do. We should have a company-wide Quality Manual and define our cross-functional business processes.” “Why don’t the top managers want Quality from the top? What reason do they give?” “Don’t write this down please, but they all say they do want Total Quality. But then they go and do the opposite. They’re always fighting each other and trying to show that they’re the best and can become the boss when Mr. Laurent leaves. Have you seen de Brouckere and de Neuve-Eglise?” “Yes.” “Those two fight continually. They agree about nothing. Each one is prepared to do anything to get new customers. There was even a case when they separately sent proposals to the same potential customer. Nobody here knew about it until the customer called Mr. Laurent to find out what was happening. It’s the same with Mr. Fournier and Mr. Girard. Mr. Fournier is always saying we make the greatest machines because of our great Engineering. He says that Production should be outsourced to China. Mr. Girard says that anyone can design a machine these days, but what is difficult is to produce a reliable and high-performing product. An industry magazine published an article recently saying our production is among the best in the country. With a photo of Mr. Girard! Mr. Fournier was furious. So was de Neuve-Eglise because Mr. Girard told the journalist that the Production Department is a leader in Artificial Intelligence. But de Neuve-Eglise claims that he’s a leading Artificial Intelligence pioneer and specialist in France. With all that going on, you can’t introduce Total Quality.” “Another question. I thought that Continuous Improvement was a feature of Total Quality. But yesterday I spoke to someone who’s running a Lean Project. That sounded as if it could fit with Continuous Improvement and so with Quality activities.” “Oh yes. That’s another example of the competitive nature of our top managers. I’ve shown how useful Total Quality can be in the Production Department, so now Mr. Fournier has to appoint someone to do something similar in the Engineering Department.” “It sounds frustrating.” “Yes, but when I came here, I told myself I’d stay five years. That looks good on a CV. If you stay less than five years, the HR recruiters think you’re unstable, and your CV is thrown out by their filtering programs. Five years is a good time. I’ve learned a lot here. It’s a great experience because Mr. Girard is so forward-looking. In parallel I’ve taken several very useful courses. And apart from that, on the personal side, it’s a pleasant place to live. I like sports and there are plenty of clubs here. Skiing, cycling, swimming, judo. I also do some voluntary work with elderly people. That’s important on the CV. There’s also a great pension fund here. For my generation that’s important. By the time I retire, there won’t be enough people working for the state’s

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pension to have any value. But I seem to have gone off the subject of your interview. What’s your next product-related question?” “I don’t have any more. My mission is to show what’s happening with products from beginning to end. Thanks to your explanation and documents, I see where your activities fit with my mission. So, no more questions. Thank you for your help.” * Only two more interviews! And the first, at 3 pm, was with Nicole Martin, the IT manager. Bernadette said her office was just past Mr. Dubois’ office. Jane went looking for Nicole with a spring in her step. “Hello, my name is Jane, I’m here for the MPL interview. I sent you an email, I don’t know if you received it?” “Hello. Yes, I received it, but I don’t think I’m of interest to you.” “Why’s that?” “Well, you asked about product-related documents. I don’t have anything to do with products. I’m the IT Manager for the Finance and Administration Department.” “Oh, I didn’t realise that.” “That’s strange. Didn’t anyone tell you that the Management Committee decided that each department would manage its own IT?” “No, I didn’t know that.” “Yes, it’s like that. I just manage IT for F&A.” “I didn’t know that. And I’m going back to Mayer this afternoon. Do you know who manages IT for product-related activities?” “I’m not 100% sure, but I think it’s Céline Meunier for Marketing. And Mr. Moreau for Engineering. For the Production Department, I think it’s Mr. Girard, but I’m not sure. I’m not sure exactly how long IT has been organised like this, but I think the reason was that the Management Committee decided that each department understood best what it needed.” “Well, in that case, I won’t waste any more of your time. Thanks for letting me know.” * Jane went back to the Reception area. “That was quick,” said Bernadette. “Yes, that might be a new record. Is there anybody in the Visitor Room?” “No.” “Good. I’ll work there until the next interview. Louise Tatin at 16:00. But I’m not sure now if that was the shortest interview. Mr. de Neuve-Eglise’s was short as well. It’s difficult to remember, there have been so many. Louise Tatin will be interview number twenty-four, I think. Where’s her office?” “Down the corridor just after Nicole’s.” “Thank you.” *

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At 16:00, Jane knocked at Louise Tatin’s door. “Come in. Hello, you must be Jane. I’m Louise, please sit down.” “Hello, yes I’m Jane. I’m here for the MPL interview. I sent you an email, I hope you got it.” “Yes, no problem, but from what I understood, I think you don’t need to interview me. I’ve nothing to do with products.” “Really? What kind of things do you do?” “The usual HR activities. Hiring, departures, vacations, illnesses, promotions, family allowances, pension fund contributions. What else? Social Security, badges, tax, health insurance. It’s a long list! I don’t have time for anything related to our products!” “Well, in that case it doesn’t make sense to continue the interview. Thank you for telling me what you do. Apologies for disturbing you.” * Two minutes later, Jane handed Bernadette her badge. “Thanks Bernadette, you’ve been a great help. Without you, I wouldn’t have been able to find most of the people, and I’d still be wandering round trying to find a way out of the basement or the attic!” “It’s easy when you know how. Are you leaving now? How long does it take?” “It’s about three hours. I should be at Gasthof Adler at about 19:30. Goodbye!” “Bye! Take care!” * It was raining. Jane ran out to her car, looked at her watch and saw it was 16:15. The road looked slippery. She waited for two cars to go past, then drove slowly out of the car park and onto the main road. She wasn’t in a hurry. Top priority now was getting back to Gasthof Adler safely. She had to forget all about interviews and concentrate on the road.

Chapter 15

Friday 12 July

The alarm woke Jane at 6:15 am. She knew she had a lot of bureaucratic work ahead of her, and she wanted to get it all finished today if possible. When Frau Adler came in with the coffee, Jane asked about the weekend, “Frau Adler I’m getting near to the end of my work with Mayer. I should present my report next Friday. I still have a lot to do. May I work in here tomorrow and Sunday?” “No problem, there won’t be anyone else here this weekend.” “Thank you, that helps a lot. And will you be cooking this evening?” “Yes. I cook every weekday evening.” “Good, I expect I’ll be back about 6 pm. I’ve a lot to do today.” * Jane was in the Container by 7:40. It looked just like the last time she’d seen it. Not surprising she thought, there’s nobody else on this project, you’re on your own, get to work! The first thing she had to do was to make plans for the day and for her last week in Mayer. She wrote down some important tasks. Labelling all the interview notes from France. Making a list of the 24 interviewees. Printing and labelling all the documents the French had mailed her. Labelling the documents that the French had given her during the interviews. Finding a place for all the paper once it had been labelled. Looking to see if she’d received any more documents from Hanover or from people in Mayer. Printing those documents, labelling them, putting them in the right place. Once she’d done all that, she’d have her knowledge base, everything that was relevant for her work. Something else for today, if she had enough time, would be to create a flow of activities and documents on the whiteboard. And put lists of interviewees, lists of documents and lists of systems on the Container walls. And work on her model. And make a list of the Product Happenings. And prepare a presentation for Dr. Bender for Friday 19. She doubted she’d be able to do all that in a day, but that was the plan. However, first she should see if Frau Mueller was in her office. Perhaps Fritz would be there as well. * © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. Stark, Product Lifecycle Management (Volume 5), Decision Engineering, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46887-2_15

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“Hello Frau Mueller, I’m here again.” “Hello Jane, welcome back. I was just going to have a coffee. Would you like one?” “Yes, please. No sign of Fritz?” “No, he’s in meetings with Dr. Bender all morning. But they should be back at the end of the morning.” “Frau Mueller, next week will be my last week here. Could you arrange a meeting for me with Dr. Bender on Friday 19?” “I’ll ask him later, Jane, and will let you know by the end of the day.” With that out of the way, Jane started telling Frau Mueller about her days in France. Once that was finished, she went back to the Container and started on her first task of the day, downloading, printing, labelling and positioning documents. * By midday, the first task was complete. She’d printed and labelled all the documents from the three sites and positioned them on the three tables. The layout on each table was the same, so she could easily find anything she needed. But now it was lunchtime. The canteen smelt of fish, but apparently that was because of Line 2. She preferred Line 1. * After lunch, Jane went back to the Container via Frau Mueller’s office. “I told Dr. Bender about your progress. He said he’d go over and see you in the Container at 4 pm. Can I confirm that you’ll be there?” “Yes,” replied Jane. “I’ll be there. I’ve a lot to do today.” * By 1 pm, Jane was back in the Container and working on the second task of the day, making lists to display on the Container walls. Lists of people interviewed on the three sites. Lists of applications used on the three sites. Lists of procedures and work instructions. Lists of product-related drawings and other documents. After a while, she began wondering who had done all this work. It seemed amazing. “Stop daydreaming, just keep going,” she said out loud. “Try to finish all this Container work today, then you’ll be free to do the brain work.” By 3 pm, Jane had finished the lists and had started on the overview for the whiteboard. This was difficult, she didn’t know how to create this overview. She couldn’t use the full-size documents, there wasn’t enough space. She decided to try with sticky yellow notes. She wrote the document names on them. But why not a yellow note for a procedure document, and a blue note for a product-related document? And a pink note for an application. By 4 pm, she’d almost completed the picture for one machine. She saw immediately that it was wrong. It gave the impression of being a straight-through linear flow, but that wasn’t the reality. She found some pieces of wool in the box that Fritz had given her and, starting from the left, positioned the wool to show the flow. It wasn’t pretty, she was obliged to keep cutting the wool because of breaks in the flow. And sometimes the flow went backwards? How could she show that? Another colour of

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wool. She used blue wool for the flow going from left to right. And red wool for when the flow went backwards. Suddenly she realised she was working with threads of wool. She remembered the concept of Digital Thread. She realised her threads of wool were showing the flow of work or information. It was like they were physical representations of Digital Threads. So her overview was showing where there were breaks in the Digital Thread. Great progress! * At 16:15, there was a knock on the Container door. Dr. Bender came in with Fritz. “Hello Jane, Frau Mueller told me that you’ve been making good progress, so I thought I’d come and see what you’ve been up to!” “Hello, Dr. Bender. Things aren’t finalised yet. I’ve another few days here to get everything ready. That’s why I asked Frau Mueller about a meeting with you for next Friday.” “Yes, she told me. I understand everything’s not finished. But I thought it would be good to see what you’ve been doing.” “Right. Let me show you very quickly what’s happening. We agreed that I’d interview people here, in Hanover and in France. On these three lists you can see the names of the people I’ve interviewed. In total, more than one hundred. I wrote notes for each interview. The notes are in the first left-hand stack of documents on each of the three tables. The first table is for here, the second table is for Hanover, and the third is for France. I always asked the interviewees what they did, what product-related activity. That information is in the interview notes. I also asked about their productrelated documents. The product-related documents are in the right-hand piles on the desks. They’re also listed on these three sheets on the wall. The other three sheets on the wall are the applications used at each site.” Dr. Bender went over and read some of the lists on the walls. Then he looked at some of the documents on the tables. Then he looked at Jane. “This is really impressive. I never expected you’d do all this.” “It’s not finished yet,” said Jane. “There are two more things to explain. You asked me to find out what happens to products from beginning to end. Here, on the whiteboard, I’m working on a first example. I call this the Big Picture. This is for a Mayer product. It starts here on the left side of the whiteboard and ends there on the right. These blue notes represent documents related to the product, the yellow notes are procedural documents. The pink notes represent the applications being used. Before you came in, I was trying to show, with this blue wool, which Fritz kindly gave me, a sort of flow of activities from beginning to end, but as you see, it doesn’t flow continuously. Now and again there are these pieces of red wool which represent a flow going backwards. I need to spend more time on this because it doesn’t make sense to me. This is just what happens with one product in one situation, one Product Happening. I want to do the same kind of picture for other Product Happenings. But already you can imagine that the whiteboard will be overloaded with different coloured sticky notes and pieces of wool. It’ll be impossible to see the forest for the trees. As a result, I’ll be making another picture, just one standard size sheet of paper that summarises the overview. I call it the One-Pager.”

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“Yes. But Jane, let’s come back to the overview, the Big Picture. This is what I was hoping for, it really shows what happens to a product from beginning to end. I thought a lot happened, but here you’ve got dozens of yellow notes and blue notes, and more than twenty pink notes by the look of it. And you say this is just one Product Happening. How many are there?” “At the moment, I don’t know. But I should do by next Friday. My current thinking is between ten and fifteen.” “And what about the three sites. You said this is a machine from here. Will the flow be the same for Hanover and for France?” “No. The three sites have similar activities, but do things differently. The exact details will depend on the Happening, but will always be different for the three sites. I don’t know if I’ll have time to show that. The pink notes are fairly different for the three sites. And the yellows, the procedures, are very different. I’m not sure about the blues, many of them are the same, but some are different.” “On a different subject, how did people react in the interviews? Were they interested? Were they helpful?” “About 95% were helpful and interested. When I had time, I also asked the interviewee about product-related issues and their suggestions for product-related improvements. They had lots of good ideas.” “OK Jane, I don’t want to take up any more of your time. You’ve done a great job here. I wasn’t expecting this. You’ve given me a lot to think about. We can talk again next week. In the meantime, enjoy the weekend.” “Thanks, Dr. Bender. You too. And you as well, Fritz.” * After they’d gone, Jane looked round the Container. What did she need to do before going back to Gasthaus Adler? She looked at the documents on the tables. They looked in good shape. And the lists on the walls? They seemed complete. The whiteboard overview wasn’t quite right and was only for one Product Happening. But she didn’t want to start another now. It would take at least another hour. She could do some others next week. No, what was really missing was the One-Pager, the summary of the overview. But that was brain work, not Container work. She’d work on that at the Adler. It was time to leave! “OK, Container, time to go. See you on Monday!” * Fortunately, the rain had stopped, so Jane detoured to the village on her way back. A weissbeer would help her relax after a hard week’s work. She got back to the Gasthaus at 18:50 and was down in the dining room at 7 pm. “Hello, Sonja.” “Hello, here’s the menu.” “Thank you, Sonja, but I know that by heart. What’s today’s special?” “Potato soup, onion pie, and Black Forest cherry cake.” “That sounds good. I’ll have that please.”

Chapter 16

Saturday 13 July

Jane woke up feeling good at 7 am. She was on the downslope now, only six days to go. After a quick breakfast, she was back at her table by 8:00. She had a clear run in front of her now until 10:00 when Frau Adler would bring coffee and biscuits. So, what were today’s subjects? First, the four-line model. Then, she should read the interview reports from France. That was probably an hour’s work. Then, she wanted to list the different Product Happenings for the overview. And also, she wanted to show why and where the Marketing to Engineering to Production to Service flow didn’t work. She’d start with that, the M—E—P—S flow, then read the interview write-ups, and then have coffee. So, starting with the flow, the first thing that was wrong with the M—E—P—S approach was that the Finance Department wasn’t there. Yet there were many activities in which Finance got involved, such as product costing. And then, this idea of Marketing defining the product requirements, or the customer requirements, often didn’t apply. She’d seen Engineering defining the requirements, and Finance, Legal, Quality, Production and Service had input. Next, the Engineering Department didn’t limit itself to developing whatever Marketing suggested. She’d seen Engineering defining the requirements, carrying out market intelligence activities, talking to customers and making prototypes. Surely, making prototypes should be a Production activity? Production. Produce. Produce prototypes. And then, why were people in Production developing NC programs? That’s not producing a part, it’s development work. Shouldn’t it be in Engineering? And then the whole Quality question. Shouldn’t it be reporting to the boss, not to various different places in the Engineering and Production Departments? And another issue with the M—E—P—S approach, different people were responsible for the product at different times, but no-one had overall responsibility. And no-one had an overview of what was happening to the product from beginning to end. That’s a good start, she thought, next she’d reread the interview reports. *

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. Stark, Product Lifecycle Management (Volume 5), Decision Engineering, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46887-2_16

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Before Jane had finished reading the interview reports, Frau Adler came in with coffee and biscuits. Jane immediately stopped reading, got up and went over to talk to Frau Adler and admire the garden. “Do you think it will rain again today?” Jane asked. “The forecast shows sunshine for the next few days.” “That’s good. That means I can go down to the village this evening without getting wet.” “I expect so. But the garden would like some more rain. The earth is very dry.” “Does it usually rain here in July?” “Yes, it’s one of our wettest months.” “That’s strange, we get most rain in winter. And snow as well. I was born during a snowstorm!” “We don’t get a lot of snow here. It’s usually rain. I’ll leave you now. I’m having lunch about 12:00. Soup, omelette and strawberries. Will you join me?” “Yes please, Frau Adler. Now I must get back to work, but I look forward to seeing you again at lunchtime.” * Jane finished reading the interview reports, then thought again about her plan for the day. She had to work on the four-line model. And the different Product Happenings. Better perhaps to start with the Happenings. That should be easier. There would be Happenings with entire products and others with individual parts. But she hoped they’d all be explainable with the four-line model. For the products, there’d be totally new standard machines, new models. And there’d be customer-specific machines. Some of these were really special and required a lot of Engineering work. Others were just slightly modified standard machines and reused a lot of existing parts, so didn’t require much development work from Engineering. Whereas new standard machines required a lot of development work. Then there was the Happening of the big modularisation project. Another was Mr. Becker identifying the need for a new product through a gap in the portfolio. And Dr. Gersten’s new technologies could lead to new products. Meanwhile, Mr. Nyffenegger, in Engineering, developed from customer desires. Then there was the resale of a machine, although Jane still wasn’t sure if that ever happened. There were refurbishment projects as well. And there was Mr. Beck and his outsourced Engineering. All these Product Happenings were different examples of things happening to machines somewhere between their beginning and their end. And then there were the parts. There were development projects for parts for standard machines. And for customer-specific parts. And Bettina Mangels had mentioned a parts standardisation project. And then there were parts that had problems on customer sites, were brought back and tested. Were they then modified? How many Happenings was that? Ten? Twelve? Not a bad start. They’d all have different ways of going from beginning to end, so different positioning of Fritz’s wool. Jane felt pleased with that. She deserved to eat the final biscuit now. And then she’d look at the four-line model. *

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Jane broke the biscuit into four pieces and ate the first three pieces slowly. Then broke the last piece into two and ate one of them. Now there was just a small piece of biscuit to eat before thinking about the four-line model. She decided though, that before eating it, she’d read the interviews of Roger de Brouckere and Céline Meunier again. By the time she’d read them, she realised there was no escape. Céline was using the product portfolio in her AI program, while Roger seemed to use it in his head. Céline’s AI program was looking in its memory of all the existing products in the portfolio before making its proposal. No turning back! Jane ate the last piece of biscuit. It seemed it wasn’t a four-line model, but a five-line model. She’d have to include a line for the product portfolio. But where? And how? And how was she ever going to finish her report if the number of lines kept changing? She went over and looked out the window. Maybe there was some help out there? None that she could see. A beautiful garden but nothing inspiring about five-line models. Maybe if she looked for longer? * Jane was still looking when Frau Adler came in with a tray, “Lunchtime!” “Oh, that’s wonderful, I hadn’t realised it’s already lunchtime. Time goes by so fast.” “That’s good. They say time goes by fast when you’re enjoying yourself,” replied Frau Adler. “So you must be enjoying yourself! And now enjoy your lunch please!” “Thank you, Frau Adler. Before you go, I’ll be here tomorrow as well.” “Yes, that’s no problem.” “It would be very kind if you could leave something on the buffet for me for lunch.” “That’s no problem. Something like last week when you went to France?” “Yes, that would be perfect. Thank you.” “Very good, I’ll leave it on the buffet tomorrow morning about 8 am. With a flask of coffee.” * Jane decided to forget about five-line models until after lunch. For the moment she was going to relax.

16.1 Sunday 14 July Jane woke about 7 am. She wasn’t feeling as good as on Saturday morning. Then she remembered she’d spent the whole of Saturday afternoon thinking about the change from a four-line model to a five-line model. Yesterday, she’d realised she needed to include a fifth line, a product portfolio line, in the model. But if she was going to do that, then she had to decide how to position the fifth line relative to the other four lines. In the four-line model, there’d been the sales line and the three other lines,

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upper, middle and lower. She was beginning to think of the upper line as a preProduction product description information line and the middle line as the physical product line. The lower line was a post-Production product description information line. That had seemed relatively simple, but now she needed to add a fifth line, a product portfolio line, to be able to explain what was happening with products from beginning to end. Jane had spent Saturday afternoon trying different ways of drawing the model, but none of them seemed quite right when applied to real-life examples. At 5 pm, she’d decided to stop working and had gone down to the village. After walking around and enjoying the sunshine for a while, she’d headed for the village restaurant. She’d selected a good table, partly in the sun, partly in the shade, and ordered a weissbeer. Then she’d thought again about the five-line model, looking at it from different viewpoints. At 6 pm, she’d ordered dinner and another weissbeer. She’d remembered that Sherlock Holmes had sometimes been faced with two-pipe problems. Perhaps this was a two-weissbeer problem. After finishing her soup, an idea had appeared. The product portfolio line should actually be a long rectangle, positioned above the three lines. That had seemed a good idea. Although now it would be a five-form model, not a five-line model. She’d decided to investigate it further on Sunday. * Now it was Sunday. So now she had to carry out that investigation. Not surprisingly, she wasn’t feeling as good as on Saturday morning. She decided to get up and be at breakfast by 7:35. Hopefully, she’d see Frau Adler before she went out. * Jane was down for breakfast at 7:30. Frau Adler came in a little later, “Good morning. All is good? This is your lunch. I’ll leave it on the buffet!” “Thank you, Frau Adler. All’s good this morning. Thank you for the lunch. And I see you’ve also brought another thermos of coffee and biscuits. I won’t have any excuses for not working hard today!” “Don’t work too hard. Relax and go down to the village later. Breathe some fresh air and see the sun.” “Thank you, Frau Adler, I will. Have a good day, and I’ll see you tomorrow.” * After finishing her breakfast, Jane went upstairs to her room. But she was back downstairs and at her table by 8:15. This was the moment of truth. She was going to test her new model with some real-life cases. To start with, she drew the model. At the top, a long thin rectangle that ran across the page from left to right. That represented the product portfolio and the parts in the products. Then came the upper line, the pre-Production product description information line. The middle line was the physical product line. The lower line was a post-Production product description information line. And down at the bottom of the page was the sales line. Like the product portfolio rectangle, it ran across the page.

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* The first case to test was Céline Meunier’s AI approach. This example of a product started on the far left on the sales line with a RFQ. Now what had Céline said? The program reads the RFQ, the requirements, sizes, specs and the like. Then the program goes and looks in its memory and decides what to propose. That meant the program goes up to the top of the model, the product portfolio rectangle, and looks through the portfolio of existing machines and parts. It looks for requirements, sizes, specs that correspond to the new request for quotation. The program finds the most appropriate examples in the portfolio and puts them together. Probably it tries to make a product structure with existing modules and parts, then it comes up with the offer. If Mr. de Neuve-Eglise agrees, then the offer goes to the customer. If the customer accepts the offer, then the expected product structure goes to Mr. Fournier, the Engineering Department leader. This is on the upper line, the pre-Production product description line. He makes work orders for the Mechanical, Electrical, Electronics and Software Engineering Groups. They design any new parts that are needed. When it’s all ready, that information goes to Mr. Milhaud. He develops the process plans and the NC programs. Then Mr. Perec develops the manufacturing plan for the plant. This is at the end of the upper line. Then, on the middle line, the modules and parts are physically produced, and that’s all sent to the customer site where it’s installed. Then the customer pays, Dr. Bender! Then the customer uses the machine. After a while, there’s a maintenance visit, and a part is replaced, still on the middle line. But there’s also something happening on the lower line, the post-Production product description line. There’s information being added there about machine performance parameters, and about the part that was replaced. On the middle line, the machine continues to be used and to send performance parameters to the lower line. Then, one day, the customer decides to scrap the machine. Against all environmental principles, but because Jane needed a coffee, it’s taken, still on the middle line, to a scrap yard. Meanwhile, information is sent to the lower line to say the machine has been scrapped. So, there you are Dr. Bender, thought Jane. You asked what happens to products from beginning to end. You have your answer for one example, for one Product Happening. Next Dr. Bender, it’s time for coffee and biscuits. And then, another Product Happening. By midday, Jane had worked through three more Happenings. The five-form model had worked for all of them. Excellent! Time for lunch. * Jane needed a break from all this intellectual work. How could people do this all day? It was exhausting. As a reward for an excellent morning’s work, she allowed herself thirty minutes for lunch. * After lunch, Jane continued with more Happenings. The five-form model worked every time. At 3 pm, she decided to change subject and think about the whiteboard. If she put everything on the whiteboard, it would be swamped by sticky notes. Perhaps she should have just one Happening on the whiteboard. And another Happening on

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another whiteboard? How long is the whiteboard? Two meters? Three meters? And how long is the Container? She wasn’t sure, maybe eight meters, maybe ten meters. If she was lucky, she could have three whiteboards on the Container wall, and each one would show a different Product Happening. With a One-Pager at the top of each whiteboard. Jane thought about that for a while. It seemed to make sense. On Monday morning, she’d ask Fritz to get her another two whiteboards. But now it was time to stop thinking about MPL. It was time to go down to the village.

Chapter 17

Monday 15 July

The alarm woke Jane at 6:30 am. She’d set it to make sure she’d be in the Container by 7:45 and in Frau Mueller’s office by 7:55. She wanted to see Fritz first thing about the two new whiteboards. He’d been so slow getting her PC organised. She didn’t want a repeat of that. * Jane got to Frau Mueller’s office as planned. She could hear Fritz talking to Dr. Bender. Great! Strike while the iron is hot! “Good morning, Frau Mueller. Did you have a good weekend?” “Hello, Jane. Yes, lovely. Would you like a coffee?” “Yes, please. I’d also like to talk to Fritz when he’s finished with Dr. Bender. I’d like him to get me another two whiteboards for the Container.” “OK. Let me discuss that with Fritz. Dr. Bender told me he wanted to speak to you this morning. Ah, here he is.” “Good morning, Jane.” “Good morning, Dr. Bender.” “Jane, come into my office please. I’d like to talk to you. Fritz, I’ll be with you in a couple of minutes.” Dr. Bender closed the door. “Jane, sit down please. After our little discussion on Friday, I’ve been thinking about MPL over the weekend. I also spoke to Rolf and Christophe. They’re both very positive about MPL. You’ve done a great job.” “Thank you, Dr. Bender. I’m aiming to complete everything and give you a final report at the end of this week. And after that I need to start thinking about my research report.” “Good. But Jane, I’d really appreciate it if you could help us a little more.” “Of course. As long as I’m here, I’ll do what I can. But after Hanover and France I think the picture is becoming clear.”

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. Stark, Product Lifecycle Management (Volume 5), Decision Engineering, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46887-2_17

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“Yes Jane, you’ve done a great job here. But you’re the only person who knows what you’ve done and how to do it. I’d thought that Fritz might be able to take over, but I see that won’t be possible. So Jane, I came to the conclusion that, as we need to get all Mayer sites on board, you should also interview our North American sites. Cleveland and Atlanta.” “I can try, but there’s quite a time difference, isn’t there? By the time they start work, everyone here has gone home.” “No Jane, I don’t mean over the Web. I mean you going to their sites and interviewing them there.” “Me? But I’m finishing at the end of this week. That’s the end of my contract, Friday July 19. Then I need to go home and write my research report.” “I understand. But here’s my proposal. We hire you as a consultant at e1500 per day. It’s a lot of travel in a short time, so you can’t go economy class. You’ll fly business class, or whatever they call it, and we’ll pay your hotel and other expenses.” Jane thought about it for a moment. It would be great to visit the US, but she’d be cooped up in airports and offices all day, just like here. She was currently paid e1300 per month so e1500 was a bit better, but she had to write her report. Finally she replied, “I’m sorry Dr. Bender, but it’s really a question of time pressure for my report. I need to write it in September. My final courses start again in October. And I need to present the report in October as well.” “I understand, but it may not take long. If you agree, we could try to estimate how long it would take for you to visit the two American sites. We could do as we did with Fritz when you first came here. Let me get him in.” Dr. Bender opened the door to Frau Mueller’s office. “Fritz, please come in.” Something clicked in Jane’s brain. Hold on! Had he said e1500 per month or per day? “Fritz, let’s start with Cleveland. Of course, Jane, it’s not directly in Cleveland, just as our Hanover site isn’t directly in Hanover. But it’s nearby. Fritz, how many people report to Chuck Marek?” Fritz looked at the organisation chart on the Intranet, “Five. Proposals, Marketing, Sales, Finance, Operations.” Dr. Bender asked, “Jane with your experience from Hanover and France, how much time do you need for a top management interview?” Jane wasn’t sure what he’d asked her. She was trying to remember what he’d said about e1500. Was it per day or per month? “I’m sorry Dr. Bender, could you say that again please? I was thinking how long I need to write my research report.” “Jane, with your experience from Hanover and France, how much time do you need for a top management interview?” “Perhaps I could do six top management interviews in a day. I did seven interviews in a day once. It was too much.” “Fritz, let’s look to see how many interviews might make sense at the next level down. And Jane, you estimate how long you’d need to interview them.” “Dr. Bender, it looks like twelve people at that level.” “Thank you, Fritz. And Jane, how long would you need? How many could you interview per day at that level?”

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“It’s probably a maximum of six a day again.” “Next Jane,” said Dr. Bender. “Do you want to see people at the next level down?” “Oh, yes. That’s important. From my experience they give very useful information.” “Fritz, how many could there be at the next level down?” “It looks as if it might be ten or fifteen.” “Dr. Bender, perhaps I could try to do eight interviews in a day sometimes. But, from my experience, six is probably the best. And don’t forget I would be suffering from jet lag. But, to make it easier, we could ask all of the interviewees to send me all of the information about their procedures and documents and systems beforehand with some examples.” “So, Fritz, what does that look like?” “It’s about thirty people altogether, Dr. Bender.” “So that would be five days at six people per day.” “Yes, something like that.” “OK. Last one coming up Jane. Atlanta. This one is the smallest. Let’s go, Fritz. How many people report to Larry? Atlanta is small. I think this shouldn’t take long.” “I see a total of five.” “Atlanta is small. Probably if you interview the direct reports of Larry that will be enough. And if it’s only five people you could probably do that in a day. So, there you are Jane. Five days perhaps plus one day. So if you left here on a Saturday, you could do Cleveland first in a week. Then fly to Atlanta for the Monday. Let’s say you left on July 20. You could be back by July 30.” Jane was silent. She still didn’t know if it was per day or per month. No-one had ever paid her e1500 per day! But she felt that was what Dr. Bender had said. “What do you say Jane? It’s only another two weeks. You could make your final presentation here on Friday August 2. So there we are. An extra ten days work, business class flight, all expenses paid, e1500 per day. Would that work? It leaves you all of August and September for your research report.” “Dr. Bender, if I do it, I want to do a good job, not something rushed and half baked. I’ll need some time to update my report to you with the North American results. Can I look at the interview schedule again with Fritz? It sounded very tight. And you’re right, I need to finish my reporting to you on a Friday. With everything in the Container. So that it’s a clean end to the project.” “That makes sense. Yes, take another look together with Fritz. And Fritz, ask Frau Mueller to check with Ulla Rosen on Jane’s new contract and her flights. And with Frau Adler. What else will you need? From memory, Cleveland to Atlanta is about a two-hour flight. And it’s about thirty minutes from the airport to Chuck. And about thirty minutes to Larry Loeffel. Nobody is far from the airport. Thanks a lot Jane, I really appreciate this. Come on Fritz, we have to be at a meeting in four minutes.” “Frau Mueller,” said Jane. “It seems I’m going to be here another two weeks.” “That’s good. Don’t forget your coffee. If it’s cold, I’ll make you another one. I talked to Fritz. You should have the whiteboards by the end of the day.”

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“Thank you, Frau Mueller. I don’t know what I’d do without you!” * After finishing her coffee, Jane went back to the Container. e1500 per day for 10 days! e15,000! That will be useful! But what do I need to do today? The three whiteboards. And she needed to look at the interviews again with Fritz. She decided to start by thinking about the contents of a second whiteboard. If all went well, she’d have made good progress with that by lunchtime. * After lunch, Jane went to Frau Mueller’s office to see if Fritz was making progress. Surprisingly, he was. He said that she should have the two extra whiteboards in the Container on Tuesday morning at the latest. And he needed her help on finalising her travel arrangements and the list of interviews. “Are we going to do that here?” “Yes, it’s easier. Frau Mueller has lots of information over here.” “Very well, then. Let’s start with travel.” “I’ve looked at flights for you to Cleveland, but it’s probably best to fly to Detroit. That way you won’t have to change. You’ll need to drive a while whichever you choose, but it looks as if via Detroit you’ll get to the hotel an hour or two earlier. And you can have a direct flight back from Atlanta on Monday 29. The hotel is not far from the road from Detroit Airport. It’s got a swimming pool and a fitness centre. Your room has a tea maker, and a refrigerator. Maybe even a microwave. There’s a restaurant in the hotel, so in theory you’ll have everything you need. As for interviews, for Atlanta I’ve organised interviews on Monday 29 with Dick Schlotzhauer, Hank Johnson, Mark Levine, Mary Webster and Larry Loeffel. You can see them in the morning, then go to the airport for your flight. Now I must go to a meeting with Dr. Bender. When I get back, I’ll look at Cleveland. Then I’ll come over to the Container about 4 pm.” “That sounds great, Fritz. I’m going to think about the example for the third whiteboard now. See you later.” * At 4 pm, Fritz came back with his first draft for the next interviews. “I think what we can propose for the first day is that you meet with Chuck Marek, Nate Miller, Jared Johnson, Megan Smith, Sue Estadt, and Bill Dixon. You can start at 8 am. Due to jet lag, you’ll be wide awake by then. And then you can do interviews at 9 am, 10 am and 11 am. And then, in the afternoon, 1 pm and 2 pm. By then, with jet lag, you’ll be ready to go back to the hotel.” * Jane went back to Gasthaus Adler thinking that anything can happen in this world. A few hours earlier, she’d been thinking that she’d be finishing up here on Friday, and heading back to London on Saturday. Yet now she’d be flying to Detroit on Saturday. She thought she deserved a quiet evening enjoying Frau Adler’s cooking.

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17.1 Tuesday 16 July The alarm woke Jane at 6:30 am. She wanted to be in the Container early and start working on the overview before Fritz arrived. * Jane got to the Container at 7:45. She’d been thinking about trying to tidy up the mass of sticky notes on the whiteboard. She looked at the whiteboard. What stood out? What could she see? Unfortunately, she couldn’t see much as Fritz arrived and started talking before she could concentrate. “Jane, how does this look for your second day in Cleveland? Steve Zielinski, VP Operations. And then Brenda Weaver, Proposals Group. And then Rich Rand, Project Management. And then Karen Sarkissian, Marketing. And then Pamela Berejik, Finance. And then Anna Maria Hochstettler, Sales. You’ll arrive on Saturday. By Tuesday you should have recovered from jet lag, but just to be on the safe side, I only put two interviews in the afternoon.” “Thank you Fritz, that sounds good, but they’re just names to me. Any news about the whiteboards?” “Yes, you should have them this morning. I’ll go and see where they are.” Left alone, Jane returned to looking at the papers on her whiteboard. Perhaps she could make it a bit easier to understand? Why had she put the yellow stickies, the procedures, at different levels? They could all be at the same level. That would make a horizontal group of yellow procedures. And if she could do that with the procedures, what about the applications? All the applications were on pink stickies, and the PDM system was there several times. Maybe she’d give the PDM system another colour. She looked in Fritz’s box. There were some red sticky notes. She’d use them to make a long horizontal bar representing the PDM system. And she’d arrange the other applications horizontally. And she’d change them from pink sticky notes to the pink roundels she’d seen in Fritz’s box of tricks. She stepped back to have a broader view. She thought that looked better. Now the procedures were all at the same level. And so were the applications. The PDM system bar ran along the bottom. That’s where data was stored. She could have an ALM bar there as well. That only left all the other product-related documents looking disorganised. For the moment, she couldn’t see a better way to organise them, so decided to take a break and have a coffee. Her coffee break was disturbed by the reappearance of Fritz. This time with two people she’d never seen before. They were carrying two whiteboards. “Hello,” said one of them. “Where would you like these?” “Hello,” said Jane. “On the wall to the left of the whiteboard please. And at the same level. Equally spaced if possible.” “OK, will do.” After they’d left, Jane noticed that Fritz was studying the overview on the first whiteboard. “Everything OK, Fritz?” “Yes. I was just looking at your overview. I see you’ve made some changes. It’s looking clearer.”

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“That was the intention. But I haven’t made any changes in the position of anything going from left to right. I just changed some positions on the vertical axis. That made it possible to align the yellows, they’re the procedures. And I replaced the multiple PDM and ALM stickies with the two red bars at the bottom. Those are special systems that store product data. The other change was to replace the pink stickies representing the other applications with pink roundels.” “That’s nice. Now I start to see the applications that are used for the product at a particular time being grouped. For example, you’ve got Mechanical CAD, CAE, Electrical CAD and Electronic CAD all fairly close.” “That’s the reality,” she said. “They’re all used by the Engineering Department while the product is being defined.” “What about the blue stickers? They don’t look organised.” “That’s right. For now, I haven’t found a way to organise them. I’m not sure what to do with them. Maybe something will come to mind later. They all represent product-related data and documents.” “I expect you’ll find a good solution. But perhaps you need a break. Shall we go for lunch now?” “Already lunchtime? How time flies! OK, good idea, let’s go!” * During lunch, Fritz asked Jane about hotels for her second weekend in the US. At the end of her first week, she’d have the final Cleveland interviews on the Friday afternoon, so could either fly to Atlanta on Saturday or on Sunday. Did she have a preference? She’d have arrived at the Cleveland hotel on the first Saturday afternoon, so would have been in Cleveland on a Sunday. Perhaps it would be best to fly to Atlanta on the second Saturday and have the second Sunday in Atlanta? “That sounds good, Fritz. Thank you for looking after it for me.” “I’ll get it reserved this afternoon. That way we can fix the car reservations as well. I’ll also organise the Wednesday interviews this afternoon. I have to go to some meetings with Dr. Bender, but will be back here at about 4 pm.” “Great, Fritz. Thanks again.” * At 12:45, Jane went back to the Container and wondered what to do next. Should she work on the two examples for the two new whiteboards? Or should she keep working with the first whiteboard and see if she could make the overview clearer? Jane spent the afternoon trying to bring more order to the first whiteboard. She didn’t seem to be making much progress. That got her thinking about why she’d started this overview. What was it meant to represent? That got her thinking about when she’d started it. Wasn’t it after she’d been to Hanover? Achim had shown her something similar. But then something struck her. The overview was showing documents and applications. Perhaps it could also show parts and machines? Perhaps that would be helpful? People would see when the physical parts and products appeared along the line from beginning to end. And that would link to her model, which distinguished between product description lines and the physical product line. However, Jane couldn’t make

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more progress with the idea because Fritz reappeared and wanted to talk about the US schedule. “Hold on please, Fritz. First of all, please look at the overview,” she said, pointing. “I’ve just had an idea. What do you think of showing physical parts from here onwards? Would that be helpful? People would see that here we have the physical product, while there and there it’s all data and documents describing the product?” “Very good! I like that!” replied Fritz. “Would you like some photos? I can find you some in the online catalogue. Look, here’s a Series 1000, and here’s an injection molding machine. And here are some parts!” “That’s just what I was thinking. Can you print some out? It would be good if you can print a picture of a customer-specific machine as well. And can you find one with the machine being serviced?” “I’ll look. But won’t they be too big for the whiteboard?” “Yes, but we can reduce them to about 10% of that size.” “Very good. They’re on their way! Now, about your Wednesday in Cleveland. This is what I’ve pencilled in. In the morning, starting at 8:30 am, are one-hour interviews with Kimberley Williams from Legal, Jim Kozak from Mechanical Engineering, and Joe Yurkovich from Electrical Engineering. In the afternoon, starting at 13:30, are one-hour interviews with Cheryl Carroll from Electronic Engineering, Jerry Troyer from Software Engineering and Art Braun from Manufacturing Engineering. By Wednesday, you should have recovered from jet lag so you can start later and finish later.” “Thanks, Fritz. It seems that when I’m in Cleveland, I’ll be getting another good overview of what happens with products from their beginning to their end! But for the moment, as we’re both here, can you help me make some room for these machine pictures? Each of the blue stickies can only move up or down, you can’t move them left or right. That would be changing their position in the timeline of the product going from its beginning to its end.” Fritz came over and helped. After fifteen minutes, Jane was happy with the new layout. “Thanks, Fritz. That looks better to me than before. What do you think?” “I like it more because now I can see the machine in production, during installation, being serviced, and then being disassembled. That’s really clear. Anyone who looks at that will understand what’s happening from the pictures. And below each picture are the corresponding documents being created or used. And the systems being used. Very clear!” “It’s a good start, Fritz. You know how it is, you do something, you think it’s finished. But then, a little later, after you’ve been thinking about something else, you see you can improve it. Step-by-step improvement. But it’s great progress. And there’s something else I can see now. It’s beginning to look as if there are five separate blocks of activities appearing. Can you see them?” “Where?” “Look, it’s like there are two blocks up to where design ends. And another two over there. One at the end with Returns, and one just before it with maintenance. Do you see them?”

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“Yes, I see what you mean. But they’re not 100% clear or 100% correct, are they? At the borders there’s some overlap.” “You’re right, but perhaps that’s because we weren’t aware of the borders when we rearranged. Let’s look again tomorrow. Now it’s time to stop for today. If you’re going back to Dr. Bender’s office, I’ll come with you. I need to see Frau Mueller.”

17.2 Wednesday 17 July Jane woke at 7 am. She hadn’t set the alarm. She felt she could relax a bit. She didn’t have any meetings planned, but wanted to be in the Container by 8:00. And then she’d think some more about the overall overview, the Big Picture, before starting with the other two whiteboards. * Jane went over to Frau Mueller’s office at 8:15 and found Fritz there discussing her travel to the US. He said they were making good progress with everything, but they needed Jane to fill in an ESTA form on the USA’s Electronic System for Travel Authorisation website. He went down his checklist. “Make sure that everything’s OK with your passport. And that you have two credit cards for which you remember the PIN, and which aren’t over their limits. And make sure your phone works in the US, and you know its PINs. You should be one of the first off the plane as you’re business class, so should be among the first at Immigration Control. And then, it would be best to go with just carry-on luggage. You don’t want to be waiting hours to collect your bags. We’ll get you some dollar bills, so that you can tip appropriately. And some coins for vending machines. You’ll get your tickets by e-mail, they’re electronic.” “Thank you, Fritz. That’s very helpful. On another subject, you know I have three tables in the Container. One for material from Mayer, one for Hanover and one for France. Would you organise another two tables for the Container please? One for material from Cleveland. And one for material from Atlanta.” “Yes. Next point, I’ve been looking at the interviews for Thursday and Friday. Here’s the provisional plan. On Thursday morning, starting at 8:30, one-hour interviews with Lisa Francioli from Supply Chain, Dale Ingram from Installation, and Bob Lewandowski from Maintenance. On Thursday afternoon, starting at 13:30, onehour interviews with Donna Zimmermann and Vijay Narayan from IT. On Friday morning, starting at 8:30, one-hour interviews with Brad Unger from Technical Documentation, Debra Kowalski from Configuration Management, and Al Lewis from Advanced Engineering. On Friday afternoon, starting at 13:30, one-hour interviews with Ashley Novak of the IIOT Project, Newt Thomson from Quality, and Sandy Stone from Project Management.” “If you say so,” said Jane. “For the moment, all those people are just names to me.”

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“Everything’s organised now,” said Fritz. “All you have to do is get to the airport on Saturday morning.” “Thanks, Fritz. Don’t worry, I’ll be there. I’m not going anywhere else before then. I’m going to concentrate on my examples for the whiteboards.”

Chapter 18

Saturday 20 July

The alarm woke Jane at 6:30 am. By 7:15, she was down at breakfast. Her taxi was due at 7:45. Frau Adler asked if she’d like to take a sandwich with her. “That’s a good idea,” replied Jane. “I expect it will be several hours before I see lunch.” The taxi arrived and Jane thanked Frau Adler for everything and said she’d see her on Tuesday week. “Very good. Have a good flight. Enjoy yourself!” The taxi took Jane to the station, from where she got a train to the airport. Her business class status got her through the various controls quickly, and before long she was relaxing in the airline lounge with a coffee and her sandwich. * The plane took off on time. The pilot said the flight to Detroit should take nine hours. Jane wondered how she’d get through those nine hours. She could watch some films, read some magazines, eat lunch, and read her interview notes. And as her seat was really comfortable, perhaps she’d sleep a while. * Nine hours later, the plane landed. Jane counted that she was the seventh passenger to get off the plane. She walked quickly towards the Exit signs. There weren’t many people waiting in the immigration queue, so she got through relatively quickly. Then she followed the Rental Car signs. Before long, she was in her car and selecting her hotel’s address on the GPS. In theory, she should be there in about two hours. * Jane checked in just before 5 pm. There weren’t many people in sight. The receptionist, who told Jane that her name was Erin, said it looked like a quiet weekend. She gave Jane her room card and wished her a great stay.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. Stark, Product Lifecycle Management (Volume 5), Decision Engineering, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46887-2_18

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“Thank you. I saw you have a pool. Can I use it?” “Sure, it’s over there, behind you.” “Sorry, I didn’t see it coming in. I’ll take my things upstairs and be back in a while for a swim.” “You’re welcome. I haven’t seen anyone there this afternoon. I expect most folks are outside enjoying the sunshine.” Jane went up to her room. Wow, what a room! At least three times bigger than her room at Gasthaus Adler. Two huge beds. Several chairs. A sofa. A big desk. An equally big screen. A teamaker. A fridge. A microwave. A huge bathroom which appeared to be larger than her entire room at Gasthaus Adler. Well, thank you Fritz, or Frau Mueller, whoever reserved this room did a good job. Jane decided on a quick shower, and then a swim. Back downstairs, she thanked Erin for giving her a great room, and asked if it was OK to use the pool now. “Sure, all yours. Nobody else there.” As Jane slid into the water, she wondered if it was recommended to go swimming after a nine-hour flight. She decided to limit herself to widths in the shallow end. By 5:45, she was back in her room. Next up was a reconnaissance mission to see how long it would take to get to the plant on Monday. Ten minutes according to the GPS. It took her fourteen minutes. Maybe with practice she’d be able to do it quicker. * Back at the hotel, the next activity was dinner. On her way to the restaurant, she picked up some tourist guides that she’d noticed at Reception. She’d look at them while eating and decide what to do on Sunday. The hotel restaurant seemed empty, so she picked a table and read her tourist guides. After a while, someone appeared with a jug of water and a menu. Jane thought the menu looked strange. There were no prices, and not much to eat. She couldn’t see any real meals, just snacks. Nothing looked particularly interesting. Looking through the menu again, she was relieved to see that at least there seemed to be a normal breakfast. Eggs, bacon, sausage, potatoes, toast. She moved down the menu, but again failed to see anything that looked like an evening meal. There were probably a dozen options possible. But on close inspection, after removing the adjectives and the other unnecessary words, there wasn’t much there. “Hi, my name is Madison and I’m your server today. May I bring you something to drink?” Jane asked for the mushroom soup and Caesar salad. And a beer. Madison reeled off a list of about twenty beers and then gave a price range. Jane asked for a craft beer. Apparently, it was local. She went back to looking at her tourist guides. She selected the Cleveland Museum of Art, but saw it closed at 5:00 pm. That would limit her choices for the morning. Serpent Mound looked interesting. Alternatively, Columbus. If she left at 7:00 am it would be difficult to fit in both Columbus and Serpent Mound. But with either option, she could circle back through Millersburg and Berlin. Her dinner arrived. After two spoonfuls of the soup, she recognised the taste from her student days. Obviously not fresh mushrooms. Bruno wouldn’t like

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this. The salad looked tired. Obviously not selected by Bruno, but she ate it. As for the beer, it seemed to have been produced by some local cats. She declined the offer of a dessert, charged the meal to her room, and left a couple of dollar bills on the table. “Bye,” said Madison. “Have a great one!”

18.1 Sunday 21 July Jane woke up at 3:00 am. She stopped herself trying to calculate what time it was in Germany. It didn’t make sense to get up at 3:00 am, she had to adapt to local conditions. She managed to sleep some more, then woke up again, and dozed for a while. At 4:45, she went over to the window to see what was happening outside. There was no sign of the sun, but it appeared to be getting light. She decided to get up. By 5:15 she was downstairs, but the eatery was closed. There was no point in staying in the hotel, so she decided to head for Columbus. Hopefully, she’d find something to eat on the way. There was little traffic on the road. As she drove, she updated her plan for the day. Eat breakfast around 7 am, see the highlights of Columbus by 8:00, arrive at Serpent Mound at 10:00, hit the road for Millersburg at 10:30, be there at 2:00 pm. Be at the Art Museum by 3:30. Back at the hotel by 6:00 pm, swim by 6:30, and then eat at 7:30. Eat in the hotel? Maybe, that would depend on how the day turned out. * Jane left the Interstate just before 7 am and followed the restaurant signs. She picked one, parked by the front door and went in. There weren’t many people there, and she was served almost immediately. Fortunately, this menu had prices on it. It all looked good, and there was even a good smell to the restaurant. She ordered a stack of hotcakes with butter and syrup, bacon, egg, sausage and hash browns. It was delicious. She would have stayed longer but had a tight schedule for the day. * Back on the Interstate, traffic was still light. The GPS helped Jane see the main sites of Columbus in fifteen minutes. And then, direction Serpent Mound. Two hours later she arrived. She was used to seeing old earthmounds dating back a few thousand years at home in Somerset, but hadn’t expected to see one in Ohio. This one was amazingly long, about a quarter of a mile. Apparently, there were two possibilities for its date of construction. Either 300 BC or 1100 AD. In either case, it was old. By 10:30 it was time to leave for Millersburg and Berlin. By 2:15 pm she’d seen Amish Country and was on the way back to Cleveland. * Jane got to the Art Museum at 3:30. Great planning! And great execution! And just under 500 miles so far. The next stop on the plan was the Museum Cafe. It looked

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much better than the hotel eatery. She chose a homemade soup, a salad and two sandwiches to eat back at the hotel after her swim. After finishing her lunch, or afternoon meal, or dinner, depending on which time zone she applied, she had an hour left. Nowhere near enough time to visit the museum properly. She’d start with Modern European Art, where she didn’t want to miss Monet, Munch, Turner and Van Gogh. After that she’d spend the rest of the time in American Painting and Sculpture. Jane had to leave the museum at 5 pm and regretted not having been able to spend more time there. But it had been a great day. She’d seen a lot of Ohio. On her way back to the hotel, she looked at some of the local eating options. There seemed to be several possibilities for the evening but only one for the morning. But maybe she’d try the hotel eatery for breakfast on Monday. It was 8 pm by the time she’d finished her swim and eaten her museum sandwiches. She decided to stay awake until 9:30. Hopefully, that way she wouldn’t wake up at 3:00 am again.

18.2 Monday 22 July Jane woke up at 5:05 am. That was great progress compared to the day before. Her day on the road seemed to have helped her adjust to the time zone. If she continued making progress like this she should wake up at a normal time on Tuesday. But, first things first. This morning she had the first interview at 8:00. She should leave here at 7:35, which meant she should get up at 6:30. Which meant she could stay in bed for another hour and a half. It was a long hour and a half. She couldn’t get back to sleep again. Not surprising she thought, it’s almost midday back home. * At 7 am, Jane went down to the restaurant eatery. It seemed to be open, but was deserted. Jane checked at the Reception and was told that Laini would serve her in a minute. She went back to her table and looked at the menu again. No sign of pancakes here. Are they really that difficult to make? No, she was wrong, there were some here, but they were so disguised behind adjectives that she’d missed them. Once the adjectives had been deciphered and filtered, she regretted having seen them. What a waste! Why not just have ordinary, traditional pancakes with butter and syrup? Everything on the menu seemed to have unnecessary adjectives. The eggs were cage-free eggs her way. What could just be bacon was griddle-cooked bacon. What could be plain sausage was pinewood-smoked sausage. What could be potatoes was oven-roasted potatoes. And presumably what was toast was presented as a side of multigrain artisan toast. And the tomato was Italian plum tomato. As Jane was working on her translations, Laini came over and took her order, leaving her with ice cold water and boiling hot coffee. While she waited for the coffee to cool, she looked around for something to read. She saw a copy of USA Today by the eatery entrance, and brought it back to her table. Laini reappeared with her breakfast before she had time to start reading it. On the menu, Jane had seen that the eggs were cage-free.

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Wondering what that meant, she asked Laini where they came from. “I don’t know, ma’am, I just work here. I’ll ask my supervisor. Enjoy your meal, ma’am.” * By 7:30, Jane was back downstairs and heading to her car. She’d decided to look for somewhere else to eat breakfast tomorrow morning. Her adjective-strewn breakfast had been just about edible, but not more than that. She arrived at the factory reception desk at 7:45. According to the receptionist’s badge, her name was Dana. “Hi, Dana. I’m here for an 8:00 meeting with Mr. Marek. My name’s Jane. I’m from Mayer in Germany.” “Hi Jane, we’ve been expecting you. Here’s your badge. Let me call Linda. She’ll show you the way. You can sit over there while you’re waiting.” Jane sat on one of the chairs by the window and looked out. She wondered why there was such a huge window when the view was of nothing but industrial wasteland. Maybe they could cover it with a poster of a lake or a forest or the sea? “Hi Jane, I’m Linda Owens, Chuck’s secretary. Wanna come with me?” They went upstairs and Linda led her into Chuck’s office. “Here she is, Chuck.” Chuck got up and came over to welcome her. “Hi Jane, great to see you. Glad to see you made it. No problems, I hope. Would you like a coffee, I’m just going to have one.” “Yes, please,” replied Jane, thinking that she should have replied with a sure. “Would you fix that please, Linda?” “Sure.” “Jane, sit down please. Let’s talk. It’s great to see you. I’ve heard a lot about you. Let’s talk a while, then we’ll go down the corridor to the room Linda’s reserved for you. And I’ll introduce you to the other members of the management team. I’m deeply interested in this study you’re doing to show what happens with our products from beginning to end. I’ve a feeling not many people here know about that. I’ve only met Dr. Bender a couple of times, but he seems to have the right approach. He’s really interested in our products. The last two CEOs we had were chosen by the investment funds. They were just interested in EBITDA and the like. All that was important was increasing EBITDA by a few percent each year. One of the CEOs wanted to move everything to Mexico. The other wanted to set up a company in China that would acquire us. Great ideas perhaps on paper. Fortunately, neither succeeded. But they did us a lot of harm. It’s been tough here these last few years. Coming back to your study, I’ve asked everyone to respond to your mail and send you their documents and lists. I’d like to invite you for dinner on Thursday evening with the rest of the management team. We can leave from here. If you have any special likes or dislikes, just let Linda know. She’s our organiser. Like I was saying Jane, it’s been tough here in recent years. We’ve had to work hard to keep our noses above water. The general economic situation and the CEOs forced us to slim down and be innovative. I hope you don’t pick up any resentment from the people you interview. They’re basically good people here, but times have been tough. Come on, let’s go and see your room and I’ll show you the offices of the folks you’ll meet today. Down my side of the corridor are Sue Estadt from Legal, Pamela Berejik and Megan Smith. Down the

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other side are Nate Miller, Jared Johnson and Bill Dixon. And at the end is your room. I’m going out now. I hope you have everything you need here, but if you need anything else just ask Linda. She’ll go for lunch with you at the cafeteria today to show you the ropes.” So, there you are, Jane said to herself, no more visiting museums and ancient artifacts, now it’s all interviews for the rest of the week. She had about thirty minutes before the first interview, so reviewed the mails that she’d received from the upcoming interviewees. * At 9:00, Jane heard a knock on the door and looked up. “Hi Jane, I’m Nate Miller, VP Marketing. It’s time for the interview. Do you want to do it here, or in my office?” “Hello, yes, I’m Jane. As you’re here, let’s do it here. Come in please, sit down. You probably know I’m doing this MPL project for Dr. Bender. The aim is to see what happens with products from their beginning to their end. I usually start the interview by asking the interviewee to tell me about their activities, in particular their product-related activities. What would yours be?” “I got lots. I create and execute our Marketing strategy with the objective of improving our market position. I prepare the annual Marketing plan and budget. I create and maintain our Marketing Department’s procedures and policies. I staff, train, organise and manage the people in the Marketing Department. We do market research and competitive analysis. We build relationships with key customers and industry groups. I lead the Product Management Team, supporting them to develop product requirements, and to position and price products. OK, so far?” “Yes, please continue.” “Maybe I should tell you about our products. You know we make machine tools. For example, machining centres. We make both standard machines and special machines. Specials are special to a particular customer’s requirement. They need Engineering development effort. We also have some other products such as spare parts, maintenance services and machine upgrades. The Marketing Department is responsible for maintaining brand standards and image. We’re known to be hightech, innovative, reliable and local. That’s HIRL. We work closely with the Sales teams. That’s with Bill Dixon for special machines and Jared Johnson for standard machines. We provide them some limited sales support. And qualified leads from various activities such as marketing campaigns. We’re responsible for Marcom such as Public Relations, advertising, events, our demo centres, online marketing through the website, Twitter, mailing and creative services. There’s a lot of product-related collateral in there. Graphics, product sheets, catalogues, brochures, presentations, posters and so on. I may have forgotten something, but I think that’s most of it.” “Thanks,” said Jane. “That was very informative. I’ve looked quickly at the documents you sent me and the list of systems. Thanks for that too. On another subject, are there any particular product-related issues you face? And do you have some improvement suggestions to overcome them?”

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“Issues? We try to keep a good open environment here. If any issues come up, we discuss them and solve them. One thing that I often hear about is that we get illustrations too late from Engineering, then have to rework them. Which means we’re always late. Another one is that it’s difficult to keep our material in sync with Engineering’s. And then there’s the Software Group. Our future products will be software-heavy. But we’re lacking software resources. As for improvement suggestions, that would be Digital Transformation of the Marketing Department. We’re running behind on that. You’ll see that Sue Estadt has already made a lot of progress with Digital Transformation.” “Thank you. I’ll ask her about that. You mentioned Digital Transformation. Are you doing anything on Digital Twin and Digital Thread?” “Not that I’m aware of. I’ve heard about them, but I’m not in the details. I guess we should do Digital Thread first. It looks easier.” “Thank you. That’s all from my side. Do you have any questions for me?” “Not now, but I probably will have before you go. If you have any questions for me, my office is just up the corridor.” Nate left. Jane looked at her watch, 9:48 am. That’s good, she had a few minutes before the next interview. * Jane knocked on Bill Dixon’s door at 10:00. “Hi, come in. Sit down please. I’m Bill Dixon, I’ve heard all about you. What can I do for you?” “Hi Mr. Dixon, I’m Jane. I’m working on a project for Dr. Bender to find out what happens to Mayer products from beginning to end. Perhaps we could start by you telling me about your product-related activities.” “I lead the Proposals Department. I don’t know if you know this, but we have two types of products, standard products and specials. Standards are standard, out of the box. Specials are all different, they’re tailored to meet specific customer requirements. In other words, they’re customised. The Proposals Department is like the Sales Department for specials. Jared Johnson’s department is called the Sales Department, but they only sell standard products. We do all the specials, and for each special product we have to make a proposal, which is why we’re called the Proposals Department. Our specials are for the automotive industry. OEM’s, Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3. A car may have 25,000 parts. Someone has to make each one of those parts. There are thousands of potential customers just in the Detroit area and Ontario. OK?” “Yes, understood.” “You can think of a proposal document as a word-processed file with a lot of sections. Usually it’ll have a lot of tables, lists, drawings, photos, models and texts. First, we have to understand what the prospective customer wants. Then we work with people in Engineering, Operations, Legal and Finance to work out how we can best meet the prospect’s requirements. Usually we’ll try to use as many existing modules and parts as possible. That makes it easy for Operations, they know how to make them and service them. But there are always a lot of parts that Engineering has to make specially for the particular order, if we get it. That’s more tricky. Engineering

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may see different solutions with different performances and different development times. With Finance we estimate the costs of these new components. Once it’s decided exactly what we’re going to propose, we calculate the price. As you can imagine it can be a lot of work to make a proposal. Over a year, we usually get more than a thousand RFQs, RFPs and RFIs. OK?” “Yes.” “We don’t spend all our time in the office but, when we’re here, we’re often working with people in other departments. Scheduling and running meetings, storyboarding, leading reviews, wordsmithing, coordinating sign-off, production and delivery. And maybe 50% of the time we’re on the road meeting customers and prospects.” “I understand.” “Apart from that, I have the usual Department Leader responsibilities. Developing the Proposals Department strategy. Creating plans and budgets. Controlling expenditure. Creating and updating working procedures and policies. Hiring and training team members. Reporting to Chuck. That’s about it.” “Great! The next question is about your product-related documents. Thanks for sending me a selection. I saw you have some standard templates that you use. And then it looks like a Content Management System with some workflow and other automatic functionality.” “That’s right. Our systems and documents are basic. As I said, a proposal is like a word-processing document with a lot of sections. We start with a template, and then fill in the sections with the relevant text and data.” “Next question,” said Jane. “What are the main product-related issues in the Department’s work?” “Obviously, we’d like to have more winning proposals!” “Last question, do you have any suggestions for achieving that?” “I’ve been reading a lot about Digital Transformation recently. It’s got me thinking that we should use Artificial Intelligence to help us select the modules and parts that make up the machine we’re proposing. Currently we do that manually, which means everyone bases their selection on their knowledge of our components. But we have so many components that nobody knows them all. If we had AI, that would know all our parts in detail, so could make a better selection.” “How much difference could that make?” “I don’t know. We’re looking for a good University partner to work with on this, but we haven’t found one yet. We don’t expect to win every proposal, but if we could improve our win rate by five percentage points it would make a huge difference.” “Thanks, Mr. Dixon. That’s all from my side. Do you have any questions for me? No? Thanks again.” * By 10:45, Jane was back in her room. She had a few minutes before her next interview and felt she needed a coffee. But where was the coffee? Perhaps Linda could help?

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“Let me guide you,” said Linda, showing her the way. “Your nearest coffee station isn’t far, but can be difficult to find for newcomers. It’s along here, and down here. Are you looking for anything special?” “No, just normal. Probably what’s in that jug.” “Yep, that’s regular. Help yourself. See you at about 12:00 for lunch.” * Jane was drinking her coffee and reading through the documents she’d received from the next interviewee when there was a knock at the door. “Hello, I’m Sue Estadt. It’s time for the interview, my room or yours?” “Let’s go to yours. I’ve found with these interviews that it’s often helpful to be in the interviewee’s working environment. That can make it easier for them to show me what they’re talking about.” “OK, let’s go!” They walked a few steps down the corridor. “Here we are. In we go. Please sit down. I’m ready!” “As you know, I’m working on a project for Dr. Bender to find out what happens to products from their beginning to their end. The project is called MPL. Perhaps you could start by telling me about your product-related activities.” “I don’t know how you define product-related. I guess we have a lot of productrelated activity, but I don’t know where the boundaries are. I’ll tell you about some of our activities that may be of interest. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but we’re running the I4LD program, that’s the Industry 4.0 for Legal Department program. You’ll probably see some of that in what I tell you. OK?” “I’m ready.” “First, we have a lot of product-related contracts. Contracts with suppliers of parts. Contracts with customers of our machines. We now have a Contract Management System. We use the CMS across the whole contract lifecycle from beginning to end. It allows us to use our templates, define workflows, and define our sign-off rules. With that system we have a centralised contract repository. That gives us easy access to everything related to a contract. That could be emails, invoices, memos, filings, amendments, terms, renewals, compliance, rules and so on. The system also has task management. That helps us work with other people in the company. OK for CMS?” “Yes.” “We also have an IP, Intellectual Property Management, solution. How’m I doing? Not too fast?” “No, fine.” “Then there’s a system to help with conduct of litigation. We work with digital case files, not paper. That system isn’t related specifically to products. Although there could be a product complaint or a service complaint. There could be warranty issues. And then we have a system to help manage and use our patent portfolio. Then there’s an application to analyse our contracts. And we’re looking at an app to analyse complaints from customers. We often see the same faults appearing. I’m not sure if that’s really our job, but we have all the data to do it.”

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“This all sounds very high-tech,” said Jane. “Thank you. But I haven’t finished yet. There’s also a risk identification and assessment app. And all the Legal Department’s working procedures and policy documents have been digitised and are on the Intranet. More broadly, we get involved in answering questions around Open Innovation and Cooperative Engineering. And questions around data protection and data ownership laws. The rest of the company doesn’t want to get involved in those issues, so we have to help them. Another area is confidentially clauses in employee contracts to protect undisclosed know-how and information. And NDA’s, Non-Disclosure Agreements. And with the Industrial Internet of Things coming, there are many legal issues around Big Data. Like ownership, confidentiality, and sale. Another IIOT issue is autonomous self-learning systems, like for robots. Assigning responsibility is an issue there. I may have forgotten something, but probably most of what we do is in there.” “Great, Sue. Thank you. I need to review my notes and make sure I’ve got everything down. Then I’ll look at your documents again to see where they fit. I’ll need to trawl through all that to be sure I understand what it means in the context of MPL. I have no legal experience, so a lot of it is completely new to me. Can I get back to you if I have any questions?” “Sure. Is that all?” “Yes, so I’ll be leaving you now. Thank you very much for your help.” * At 12:00, Linda came down to Jane’s office. “Hi Jane, if we go now, we’ll avoid the rush. But we before we get there, I thought I should check if you have any special issues.” “Pardon?” “Do you have any special requirements? Any allergies? Diabetic? Vegetarian? Vegan? Kosher? Halal?” “None of those.” “When we get to the cafeteria, you’ll see there’s pizza in one corner and burgers in another corner. And then, in the other corner, there’s the salad bar. The central line is the special of the day. What are you having?” “It’s my first day here. I’ll follow the expert and watch. And probably take the same.” “Good approach. I’m going for the special today. It’s pierogi.” “I’ll have the same, whatever that is.” * Jane’s 13:00 interview was with Megan Smith, the Finance VP. Jane went down to Megan’s office and saw that the door was open. She knocked and said, “Hi, I’m Jane, I’m here for the MPL interview.” “Come on in, I was waiting for you.” “Thanks. As a quick introduction, the MPL project is for Dr. Bender. It’s to find out what happens to products from beginning to end. Perhaps you could start by you telling me about your product-related activities?

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“We’re not close to the products here. We’re financial people here.” “I understand, so perhaps you could tell me about your activities in general.” “We have a lot, but I don’t know which is most oriented to products.” “Why don’t we leave aside the product orientation, and you just tell me about some of your activities?” “I lead the Finance Department. I’m responsible for hiring and training our people.” “Good. What next?” “Maintenance of the Financial Policy Manual. That means maintaining the Finance Department’s working policies and procedures.” “Good. Please continue.” “Then there’s developing our annual strategy. Linked to that are our annual and quarterly plans. And budgeting of course. Related to that is the preparation and presentation of monthly, quarterly and annual reports.” “Good, I see.” “Next, there’s the whole accounting area. First, making sure we’re compliant with generally accepted accounting principles. Then there’s supervising the accounting activities. Accounts Payable, Invoicing, Accounts Receivable, Cash Receipts, General Ledger, Cash Flow, Treasury, budgeting, payroll, monitoring expenditure, financial statements, all the usual accounting activities. Then, making sure we’re audited, and we pass the audit. And then there’s liaising with financial institutions such as banks.” “That sounds a lot. Anything else?” “I forgot a few. Revenue and expenditure variance analysis, fixed asset activities, debt activity. All standard Finance Department functions. I don’t think there’s anything particularly product-related in there. Unless you count making payments to suppliers of parts. And receiving payment from customers of our machines.” “Somebody mentioned product costing to me. They said they worked with Finance on product costing. And once someone mentioned Cost Accounting.” “Right, that’s related to products. What we try to do there is to calculate the cost of a product. That may sound simple, but in a company like this it’s very difficult. However, we do need to know the cost of products for various reasons, for example to know if a product is profitable. Is the product cost less than the product price? The price is clear, it’s what the customer pays for the product. But the product cost is much more difficult to identify. It’s made up of many components such as material costs, personnel costs, energy costs, the costs of machines used to make it, the costs of holding inventory maybe. And whenever you look at any of those you find, in its turn, that it’s also made up of several components. And some of them are direct costs and some are indirect costs. Some of the component costs are related to the number of parts you’re making. Are you making a single part? Or is it one of a batch of 200 parts? We use a mixture of techniques to get to a product cost. The traditional way is to apply standard overhead rates to direct material costs and direct labour costs. Then there’s Activity Based Costing which looks at the cost of the activities used to make the part. Another technique is historical comparison, looking at the cost structures of similar parts made in the past. Product costing is a different activity to

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the corporate accounting I was talking about before. We have one person who does product costing, everyone else is on corporate accounting.” “It sounds a bit like black magic! But if I understand right, product costing would be easier, or at least the result could be more accurate, for a standard machine compared to a special machine.” “It could be, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are exceptions to that. There are usually exceptions.” “But if I understand right, product costing always has to be done.” “Right, it always has to be done. And the earlier you can do it the better.” “Well, thanks a lot Megan, that’s something I’d only heard about from a distance. At least I know now what its objective is. I’ll have to find a way to fit it into the product-related activities somewhere between the beginning of a product and its end. Apologies for rushing, but I have another interview coming up. Thanks again.” * After leaving Megan, Jane reviewed the notes she’d just taken. They didn’t look great, so she tried to add a few of the details that she’d not written down. But she didn’t have much time. The next interview was only a few minutes away, and she wanted to review the documents that Jared Johnson had sent her. She skimmed through them, then went to his office. Fortunately, it wasn’t far, it was next door. “Hi, come in. You’re Jane, I guess. Sit down please. How can I help you? I heard you interviewed Nate and Bill this morning, so I guess you know something about what we do.” “Yes, and I know you lead what’s called the Sales Department. Although to be more precise, that would be the Standard Machines Sales Department.” “That’s right. It’s a totally different world here compared to Bill’s. He sells to people who need and can afford special machines. Here we’re selling to a different type of person. Typically, they don’t need special functionality, and typically they couldn’t pay for it. It’s like Bill’s selling thousand-dollar, custom-made suits, and we’re selling fifty-dollar suits for a supermarket hanger. We have a totally different approach.” “I understand,” said Jane. “I don’t know what Chuck told you about himself. Usually he doesn’t say much, but he started out in the Engineering Department here, then moved into Marketing. He came up with some great ideas there. One thing he saw was that we have a huge installed base of machines. There are thousands of our machines out there. He came up with the idea to sell upgrades to the installed base. Very smart. You see, our competitors don’t know about our machines which are on customer sites. That means it’s difficult for them to propose an upgrade. Sorry, I forgot to tell you, our customer base likes upgrades. They cost much less than new machines. If we can offer an upgrade at 30% of the price of a new machine, there’s no way our competitors can sell the customer a new machine. When Chuck started this, we had a problem. We didn’t know precisely what was on the machine on the customer site. People had made changes, and replaced parts, so we didn’t know exactly what was there. We didn’t know the latest configuration of the machine, that’s like its structure with all

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its parts and components and versions and documents. We worked on that, and at the same time we modularised the machines. Previously, Engineering was changing everything all the time, but we said no, we want well-defined modules and welldefined sub-assemblies and well-defined parts. With clean interfaces. It took time to get that, but now we have it. Now we can say to the customer, here’s an upgrade that will save you 25% of time on this machine. You’ll have a state-of-the-art machine, max performance, and all for next to nothing.” “I understand. Thanks for the explanation,” said Jane. “Another idea Chuck had was cross-selling. We used to have different salespeople selling only machines, or only maintenance, or only spare parts. We changed that, and the result was like we’d doubled the sales force. Another idea is to fit more sensors on the machines. Not all customers are happy to send us the sensor data, but most are once they see it can save them money. Sue Estadt wrote a great contract that gives us the data we need, yet gives the customer the reassurance they need. With that data we can do a lot. Like preventive maintenance and replacing worn parts before they break. The number of breakdowns is down by 90%. Now that customers are getting more into IIOT, we’re trying to get them all on board. For those still reticent, we can even take them to see reference sites. Don’t worry, I’ve nearly finished!” “Keep going.” “And the latest idea is to offer machines for rental. They’re installed on the customer site, but the customer only pays for when the machine is in use, an hourly rate. We have customers who love that. They don’t have to put a pile of dollars on the table upfront. They just pay per use. And then invoice it to their customer. So, all in all, we’re in great shape. Sales and bonuses are heading North. A happy team. But a lot of it is down to Chuck. When he started, everyone was saying machine tools is a dying business, this is the Rust Belt, we should move to a low-cost location. But he looked at it differently, and said we have great people here, a great facility, a great installed base of customers nearby, what can we innovate to make this a great business? And we innovated and made a great business.” “That’s a good story!” said Jane. “It’s great. But it was a lot of hard work! Did you get the documents I sent you? There were the procedures first and then the product-related documents as well. And then a list of the computer systems we use. And some example screens from each system. I hope it’ll all be useful for your project. Seems to me it’s a great project. Could be a game-changer. Like some of the projects we’ve had here. When you start, there’s nothing but a dream, and you’re on your own. Then you make it happen. What a feeling that’ll be for you! Anything else I can help with?” “You mentioned sensors on machines, and customers getting into IIOT. That made me think of Digital Twins. Are you doing anything on them?” “Not today as far as I know. But there may be something in the works that I don’t know about. Anything else?” “No Jared, that was excellent. It’s going to help me a lot.” *

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Jane went back to her room, sat down and cleaned up her notes. It felt like a great day’s interviewing. It had gone in a blur and some of it had seemed off target, but it looked like a successful first day. But, before she could leave, following on from the Jared interview, there were two questions that she’d have to think about. How did the installed base fit with her model? And where did machine rental fit? But she couldn’t think about those questions now, jet lag didn’t allow for that. She tidied up, collected her things and went down to say goodbye to Linda. “Hi Linda. I’m finished for the day. All interviews completed. Jet lag now coming on. Thanks for your help, it’s been a great day. See you tomorrow.” “OK, Jane. Get a good night’s sleep. After work tomorrow, some of us are going bowling. You’re invited to come and see the real world!” “Thanks, Linda. See you tomorrow.” Tomorrow is another day, thought Jane as she walked towards Reception. First, I have to finish this one. “Bye Dana, see you tomorrow.” “Bye Jane, have a great evening!” Evening? thought Jane, it’s only 3 pm. * As Jane drove back to the hotel, she saw a sign from the restaurant chain where she’d eaten on Sunday. On Sunday, this is Monday, that was yesterday? It seemed a long time ago. There were only a few cars in the restaurant car park, and almost as few people inside. A waiter came over, showed her to a table and gave her the menu. Jane turned to the breakfast page first. Yes, pancakes! She’d be here tomorrow morning for breakfast. But for the moment, apple pie looked good. And she’d ask for a takeaway for this evening. Turkey, and a salad. And a soup. Wow, there was a Cheddar soup. It must be fate! * Jane was back at the hotel by 5 pm. Still not many cars. She’d have her swim about 6:15, and then have dinner about 7:30. After that, she’d reply to messages and emails. Hopefully, if she could stay awake until 9:30, she’d have got over the jet lag by the morning.

18.3 Tuesday 23 July Jane woke up at and looked at her watch. It was 6:05 am. Great! She seemed to be synchronising with the time zone. What was the plan today? She’d drive over to the restaurant for breakfast, then be at the factory by 7:50. She’d take some casual clothes with her in case she went bowling after work. * Jane arrived at the factory at 7:50. “Hello, Dana, how are you this morning?”

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“Hi there, great. How you doing?” “I’m in great shape. I’ve recovered from the jet lag. I’m due to see Mr. Zielinski now, but I’d like to see Linda first. Is she in?” “You bet.” * “Hello, Linda. Sorry to disturb you. I’m due to see Mr. Zielinski, VP Operations, at 8:00. Where can I find him?” “Hi Jane, I’ll show you. We don’t want you getting lost! How was the evening?” “Swim, eat, work, sleep.” “Sounds great! Apart from the work. Look, over there is the Operations building. You go through that door, and Steve’s office is on the right. Drop by at 12:00 and we’ll go for lunch.” * Jane got to Mr. Zielinski’s office on time. The door was open, but there was nobody inside. She waited outside for a few minutes until he arrived. “Sorry, I was caught up in a discussion. You’re Jane, I guess. Come on in. Sit down, would you like a coffee?” “I’m fine. Thanks for sending me the documents.” “I didn’t send you many. I could have sent you many more, but you’ll get all the others from other people. I just have minor involvement with all those other documents. The documents I sent you are related to the activities for which I’m the lead participant. Setting the annual Operations strategy, making the plan, getting the budget, reporting progress upwards.” “Thanks for sending them. I did review them, and, from what I saw, I have a good idea of the corresponding activities. I’ve seen similar sets of documents from people on other sites. It seems documents are like a fingerprint from a person’s activity.” “That so? Makes sense, I guess. Why don’t we go for a walk around the building? That way I can show you what we do here.” “Sounds good to me.” “I heard you were in the management building yesterday. That’s where Finance, Legal, HR, Marketing and Sales are. And Chuck, of course. Over here in the Operations building we have what people might call Engineering, Production and AfterSales Services. The factory area is on the right-hand side of the building. The office area is on the left side. It means everyone’s quite close to the factory area and everyone’s quite close to everyone else in Operations. I saw that you’re going to see quite a few Operations people. We have a mix of open spaces and individual offices. It’s all a bit mixed up, so it can be difficult to find people. If you can’t find someone, just ask. You’ll be pointed in the right direction.” “Will do. But that’s not until tomorrow. Today, my other interviews are in the other building. I’ll catch all the details of documents and systems from your people, but there are a couple of questions I’d like to ask you.”

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“Fire away!” “The first one is about issues. What are the main product-related issues you’re faced with?” “The first issue is how to learn better from what other people and companies are doing outside of this building. There’s a tendency to be always looking inwards at ourselves, and at our performance. But there’s a huge amount we can learn from outside. People need to take a look at that. People used to talk about NIH, not invented here. That’s not our problem today. Now it’s broader. It’s more like NLO, not looking outwards. The second issue is about keeping costs to a minimum. We’re always looking for ways to get leaner. We’ve done a good job over the years. But, the better we do, the harder it gets to find any cost reduction areas. Another issue is growing the business. In a way that’s easier to address because we’re mainly limited by ourselves, our imagination, our culture, our way of thinking.” “Thank you for those three issues. And, my final question, what would you suggest as a way to improve product-related performance?” “I’d go back to the first issue, NLO. We need to change that. There’s so much people can learn from outside our organisation. We need to find a way for our people to learn from what’s happening in the outside world.” “Thank you, Mr. Zielinski, for your answers. You’ve been a great interviewee.” “My pleasure, Jane. I’m looking forward to seeing your results. Keep up the good work.” * At 8:50, Jane went back to her room, picking up a coffee on the way. She had a few minutes before her next meeting. She worked on her notes from the Mr. Zielinski interview. Then it was time for the next interview, which was with Brenda Weaver from the Proposals Department. Jane started by giving a quick introduction. “The MPL project is for Dr. Bender, the CEO of Mayer. It’s to find out what happens to products from beginning to end. Perhaps you could start by you telling me about your product-related activities?” “Sure,” said Brenda. “I’m a Salesperson. My activity is to go from a list of a few hundred prospects to closing a sale. I want to move quickly, just like the customer. Most weeks, I’m two days in the office, three days traveling. To make sales, you’ve got to get out and press the flesh. People talk about Digital Transformation, but at the moment you make the sale, it’s person to person, eye to eye, you and the customer have to want the same thing. There’s only so much you can do in the office, replying to e-mails, prioritising lists, calling people you think may be warm, picking up gossip about possible new prospects. Going to internal sales meetings doesn’t get you any customers.” “OK. By the way, thanks for replying to my mail and sending me copies of the documents that you use.” “Sorry about that, but that’s what you asked for. We have a flood of documents here. Did you see I also sent you a list of the systems we use? I don’t know why we have so many. None of them tell me which prospect wants to sign a contract. Endless bureaucracy. I’ve always found it easier to write with a pencil and pad.”

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“Thanks. I have just two other questions. First, what do you see as the main product-related issues?” “You mean, for me, for someone like me selling machines?” “Yes.” “Bureaucracy. 50% of our time here is bureaucracy. Filling in forms, getting clearance to talk to a prospect, making schedules of calls and visits, filling in customer meeting reports, filling in expense claims, going to departmental meetings. You’re an expert, you tell me how any of that adds value. I don’t see how any of that can make it more likely I’ll do a deal today.” “OK, any other issues?” “Computer systems. They waste my time. I have to keep on entering the same data in each system. I thought they were supposed to help me, not hinder me. You’re an expert, which computer system that you know can sell a customised machine line to a customer? I’m not talking about something with a few options. Our customers want things you’ve never heard of before.” “Thanks, Brenda. One last question. Do you have any suggestions for improving the product-related activities?” “You mean for my job? For selling specials?” “Yes.” “Get back to basics. This is about selling. Get rid of bureaucracy and the computers. Get back to talking face to face with potential customers. That’s how you sell.” “Thanks, Brenda. No more questions. I won’t take up any more of your time. Have a great day.” * Jane went back to her room and completed the notes from the interview with Brenda, then looked at the documents that her 10:00 interviewee, Rich Rand, had sent her. He was a Product Manager from the Marketing Department, reporting to Nate Miller. She got to his office on time, but he wasn’t there. She decided to wait. So far, the morning had gone well. After about five minutes, Rich appeared and apologised for his late arrival, “Sorry I was in a development team meeting. It overran. Come on in. How can I help you? Did you get my documents?” “Yes, I got the documents. Thank you. As you may know, the MPL project is for Dr. Bender. It’s to find out what happens to products from beginning to end. Perhaps you could start by telling me about your product-related activities.” “Sure, where should I start? I’m a Product Manager. That means I’m the owner for a segment of our products. I develop the strategy, develop and maintain the product road map, and lead product development and maintenance team meetings. That’s what I was doing just now. And that was what made me late for our meeting. Up front, I’m involved with market research, competitive analysis and customer input. During development, I’m also responsible for communication to executives and other stakeholders. I develop pricing structures and strategies. Further along, I train sales teams to sell the product, and make sure they know about features, benefits and messages. We have great marketing materials and tools to get the message out to

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customers, prospects, industry analysts and media. Like Webinars, blog posts, press releases, tradeshows, advertising, social media and PR campaigns.” “Thanks Rich, that’s a great portrayal. Do you do that on your own or working with other people?” “I could never do all that alone. I work all the time with other people. Up front with Nate Miller, Bill Dixon and Jared Johnson. Then, in the development and maintenance teams, there are folks from Operations. And from Engineering, Production and Service functions. I also work with people from Finance. And on marketing I work with Creative Services. I guess I work with all the departments of the company, but just for my products.” “Thank you for sending me copies of your documents. That was useful. So was the list of computer programs. Now, one more question. What do you see as the main product-related issues you face?” “There are several. One would be onboarding new technologies. Another would be the one-shot sale thinking, we should aim for lifetime customers. Another is managing changes to products. And not being close enough to customers to understand what they’re really thinking.” “Last question, what would you suggest as a way to improve your product-related activities?” “Better understanding of customer needs. Analytics, we’re missing a lot of customer information. We need to capture better customer feedback. And innovation, we need to keep ahead of the competition.” “Thanks Rich, that was great. I have no more questions. Thanks Rich, you’ve been so helpful.” * Jane’s 11:00 interview was with Karen Sarkissian, who was on the list as Marcom, Marketing Department. “Hi Karen, I’m Jane. I’m here to interview you for the MPL project. It’s for Dr. Bender, the CEO of Mayer. It’s to find out what happens to products from their beginning to their end. I usually start by asking the interviewee to tell me about their product-related activities.” “Hi Jane. Well, I’m Karen. I’m Marcom, Marketing Communication Manager. I’m in the Marketing Department. I report to Nate Miller. I lead our Marcom team, and coordinate with PR and other agencies. And with other suppliers. Each year I present Nate a plan of what we’re going to do in the year. Then we do it, and later commission Market Evaluation research to see if we met our targets. What we do usually involves working with several departments such as Operations and Finance. As well as the Creative and Production teams. I report results monthly to Nate. My job is to develop and implement communication programs to promote our company and our products and services. That can be online or offline with graphics, articles, content, brochures, fact sheets, presentations, promotions, adds, emails, electronic newsletters. There’s a lot of Digital Marketing communication now. That includes social media, SEO, search engine optimisation, email campaigns,

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banners and website updates. Everything we do has to meet brand guidelines and be approved by Legal. I guess that’s about it.” “Thanks, Karen. And thanks for the documents you sent me. There were some great examples among them. Sorry, I didn’t mean that some of the examples weren’t great. I thought all the examples were useful. But some of the graphics was outstanding. I didn’t have time to read all the texts, but the graphics was eye-catching.” “Thanks. I hope our potential customers noticed it and liked it too. And the industry analysts.” “Just a couple more questions. First, what are your main product-related issues? By product, I’m referring to the machines that the company sells and everything related to them.” “I’m not sure what you mean by issues.” “What annoys you, what gets you mad?” “Oh, that’s easy. It’s exceedingly difficult to get good graphics from Engineering and good pictures or videos from Production. If we ask them to send us something it looks terrible. If we say we’ll go over and look for something, they immediately go no, no, no. You wouldn’t think we’re in the same company. It’s like they don’t want anyone to see what they’re doing. I don’t know how they think customers can be aware of us like that!” “Anything else in the way of an issue that gets you mad?” “Our Brand guidelines are very traditional. It’s like they’re addressed at Boomers. But our customer base is changing. We have a lot of customers under fifty. We should be projecting a younger image to them. And that would fit our company, we’re very dynamic and high-tech in many ways. Maybe I’ll get Nate to change that next year!” “Last question, do you have any improvement suggestions related to your work with the machines?” “Well, doing something about those issues would be a good start. What else? Maybe focusing more on what we do with our controllers, the software on our machines? We’re market leaders there, and have a great story to tell, but somehow no one wants to tell it. Again, the focus is on the traditional mechanical engineering of the machines.” “Great. Thanks Karen, that was very beneficial for me. I’ll leave you now to get on with your work.” * Just before noon, Jane went to look for Linda Owens. “Hi Linda, are we going to lunch?” “Sure, let’s go.” “What’s your suggestion today?” “On Tuesday I usually go with a special. That way you know you’re getting something freshly cooked. Today I saw it’s stir-fried beef and broccoli.” “Sounds good. I’ll join you.” *

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Jane’s first interview after lunch was at 1 pm, with Pamela Berejik. “Hello, I’m Jane. I’m here to interview you for the MPL project. As you may know, it’s for Dr. Bender, to find out what happens to products from beginning to end. Perhaps you could start by telling me about your product-related activities.” “I’m Head of HR. We don’t have much to do with products, maybe nothing at all.” “So why not tell me what you do in general. Maybe I’ll hear something that could relate to products, and I’ll ask you about that.” “Well, it’s basically all about hiring and keeping good people. We offer a huge package of benefits. That could include a relocation assistance package. Then there’s health care, we offer medical, prescription drug, dental and vision insurance for employee, spouse and children. Similarly, for employee, spouse and children, there’s life and disability insurance, accident and illness. There’s a full 401 (K) program and a wealth builder plan. There’s paid vacation, an on-site cafeteria and an on-site fitness centre. And a Wellness program. Anything product-related so far?” “No, but keep going please.” “We’re trying to digitally transform, so we’ve replaced a lot of paper forms with paperless. For example, travel expenses can be claimed online. And vacation dates proposed. And sickness notification. Then there are employee development programs and a leadership program. We offer tuition reimbursement and service awards. People can sign up for skills improvement courses online.” “Could that be product-related? Like if they use a particular CAD system to design a machine, then they can sign up to go on an advanced user course?” “Well, actually not for that specific example, because that training is organised by the Engineering Groups. But in general, you’re right, when people ask to sign up for skills improvement training, they have to specify how it relates to their job here. There was an example recently, some people wanted to sign up for an online PLM course. That would be product-related.” “And what about when you hire someone? Do you specify if they should have experience with particular product-related computer systems or with product-related technologies?” “Yes, we might specify they should have experience with a particular CAD or CAM application. Or they should have experience of the Internet of Things.” “Do you keep track of product-related skills, like with a skills matrix?” “No, but it’s on the To-Do List.” “I guess that’s about it. I don’t have any more questions. Thank you for participating in the interview. I can see that your main role is far from products, but I have to check in these interviews. One last question. What about product-related bonuses? Do they exist? Like if a product development project works very well and the product does well in the market?” “As far as bonuses go, that would be limited to executives. For others, they could receive a service award for doing something particularly great related to a product.” “Great. I must go now. Thanks a lot for your help.” *

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Jane’s last interview of the day was at 2 pm. It was with Anna Maria Hochstettler, from Sales. Jane didn’t know where her office was, so asked Linda. Linda called Anna, and suggested they meet at the coffee station. “Hi, are you Anna Maria?” “Kind of, but people just call me Anna. My mother was Italian. And my father German-American.” “Quite a mix! Well, I’m Jane. I’m from Somerset, in England. Thanks for agreeing to be interviewed. The interview is for the MPL project, which is for Dr. Bender. The aim of the project is to find out what happens to products from beginning to end. Perhaps you could start by telling me about your product-related activities.” “I saw that you were going to see Brenda. I’m Sales as well, but for standard products. Brenda works on specials.” “OK, I see. I saw Brenda this morning. But I guess that’s a different world, the world of specials. That must really get into lots of details about new functionality.” “There are probably some differences, but I guess it’s 99% the same. Just because we sell standard products doesn’t mean we don’t have to know all the technical details of the machines. If we didn’t know more than the prospects, they’d never agree to talk to us. They wouldn’t waste their time. Sales isn’t really about the specific product you’re selling. It’s about having sales skills and product knowledge. If you have great sales skills, you can sell in any area. We sell a lot of upgrades, and for that, we have to be down in the details of what the prospect has been doing with their machine.” “On another subject, thanks for sending me the documents I asked for, and the list of systems you use.” “You’re welcome.” “You sent me a lot. And it took me a while to figure out what they all do, but I made it. I’ve been interviewing people in other Mayer plants, so I’m getting to know how all the bits fit together.” “Cool! You must be the only person who knows that.” “Two more questions, and then you can get back to your work. The first question is about issues, problems. What are your main product-related issues? Not just with particular machines, but that could also be with activities related to machines.” “Personally, I have a problem with our commissions. We’re expected to sell machine upgrades, but it takes as much effort as selling a new machine, and we get less than half the commission. An easy solution would be to raise the price by enough to pay our commission properly. Alternatively, increase the commission percentage.” “Anything else?” “Some of the configuration data for the customers’ machines is very wrong. But we only find that out after the machine upgrade has been delivered. Then there are extra costs to fix it, and our commission is cut. That’s not right. It’s not our fault. They should make sure the data in the computer is right. I’ve even been in situations where I’ve been on the customer site and seen the machine doesn’t correspond to the configuration data in the computer. I’ve sent in the correct data, but nobody updates the configuration in the computer. Easy-peasy solution, clean up the data in

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the computer. Saying that, I guess there’s another issue here. Often the solutions are obvious here, but nobody does anything.” “One last question. What would you suggest as a product-related improvement? Same meaning as before.” “Improve the NC controllers on the machines. Our controllers are good, but they could be much more powerful. The clearer we make it to prospects that we have the best controller functionality, the more we’ll sell.” “Thanks Anna, that was great. Sorry to drag you away from your work.”

18.4 Wednesday 24 July The alarm woke Jane at 6:30 am. She’d slept well. It seemed as if she’d got over the jet lag. By 7:00, she was driving to the restaurant for breakfast. With another six interviews to get through during the day she needed a good breakfast. Jane arrived at the factory at 7:55. “Hi Dana, how are you this morning?” “Hi there, Jane. Great. And you? Enjoy the bowling?” “Sure, it was great.” * Jane walked past Linda’s office a few minutes later. “Hi Linda, how are you this morning?” “Hi Jane, great. How about you? No ill effects from bowling?” “Nothing. I’m feeling good. I think I’ve even recovered from jet lag.” Jane went to her room and looked through the documents she’d received from today’s interviewees. Nothing out of the ordinary from what she could see. Today’s interviewees were all middle-level managers. Their document fingerprints were pretty much as expected. * At 8:30 Jane arrived at Lisa Francioli’s cubicle in the Operations building. Lisa was Supply Chain Manager. “Hi Lisa, I’m Jane, I’m here for the MPL project interview.” “Great, where should we start? Did you get the documents I sent you?” “Yes, thank you very much. As you probably know, the MPL project is for Dr. Bender. It’s to find out what happens to products from beginning to end. Maybe you could tell me about your product-related activities.” “My role is all about planning and moving the materials we need to produce and deliver our products. That starts with getting them here from suppliers, moving them through the plant, and then delivery out to meet customer orders. I own the overall strategy for that, lead the Supply Chain Team activities, and report performance to Steve Zielinski. Along the way, the Team executes dozens of activities ranging from identifying and validating suppliers, sourcing particular materials and components, incoming goods, storage here, production activities here, crating and delivery there.

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Related to that, there’s a lot of forecasting, planning and reporting. And a lot of communicating with all sorts of folks along the flow. Our objective is to minimise the overall cost but, at the same time, ensure that the flow continues with no breakdown or snafus like being out of stock for a particular component and as a result not being able to deliver a machine to a customer on time.” “Thanks for that Lisa, it fits with the documents you sent. If I understand right, you’re managing the flow of physical parts and products.” “Yes, we don’t define what goes on in the machine. That’s Engineering’s job. Once they’ve released a design, we can organise the corresponding material flow. At a high level, that’s about it. In the low-level details, sometimes we’ll discuss with Engineering about options from a supply chain viewpoint before they get to releasing a design. Another detail, we don’t handle the suppliers of engineering services to the Engineering Department. They do that directly.” “Great. Just two more questions. First, what are the main product-related issues you face? When I say product that could include materials or machines, or your various activities around them.” “The main issue is that for years we had executives here who wanted us to go to any length to reduce the cost of materials. They made us switch suppliers to save a cent. As a result, our supply chain has become so complex that a small problem anywhere could make the whole thing collapse. As they say, we’ll come to a standstill if a butterfly in China flaps its wings the wrong way.” “Thank you. My last question, do you have any product-related improvement suggestions?” “I just told you about the main issue, the one related to the overstretched supply chain. Fortunately, Chuck Marek has recognised it and we’re going to start a risk management program. To start with, we need to identify and quantify the risks. My guess is we’ll finish up with fewer suppliers, more local suppliers, and increased safety stocks.” “Great. That’s it, Lisa. Thanks for your help. I’ll leave you now so you can get back to your work.” * After reviewing her notes from the meeting with Lisa, Jane went down to the coffee station at 9:20. She needed a short break before the next interview, which was with Jim Kozak, the Mechanical Engineering Group Leader. By 9:30 she was at his office. “Hi, I’m Jane, I’m here for the MPL project interview. Thanks for replying to my mail.” “Hi Jane, my pleasure. Come on in. Where do we start?” “As you may know, the MPL project is for Dr. Bender. It’s to find out what happens to products from beginning to end. I usually start by asking the interviewee to tell me about their product-related activities.” “Sure. I’m the Group Leader for the mechanical parts of our machine tools. Our machines have a modular design. We have a base unit, and position modules and parts on that. All told, and depending on what the machine is, we could have more than a thousand parts in the machine. The Group is made up of Sections. Within the

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Group, each module is assigned to a particular Section. The folks in that Section are the specialists for that module. When we get a new order, I work with the Section Leaders to see what needs to be done for their modules. We look to see if we can reuse existing components or even whole modules. We also talk to the other Engineering groups, and we make a development schedule. When I joined over 30 years ago, we used to do all the work on drafting boards, but now it’s mostly in the computer. Computer Aided Design, Computer Aided Engineering, Configuration Management, Product Data Management, Simulation, Analysis, Cost Estimating, Requirements Management, Engineering Change Management, Project Management. There’s an application for every activity. The engineers have all the applications. I got your mail about the documents you wanted. I saw that you’re going to interview Rahul Varma. He’s one of our Key Users. We decided he’d send you the documents you wanted.” “Thank you. That’s right. I’m due to see him tomorrow. He sent me the documents. Quite a package!” “I thought you wouldn’t want all that twice.” “Thanks. I have just two more questions now. First, what are the main productrelated issues you’re faced with?” “The biggest one is hiring good young people. These days, good young people aren’t interested in becoming machine tool engineers. They want to be in software start-ups in Silicon Valley, or designing medical devices, or being consultants. When I joined the company there were ten applicants for the position. It was an honour to work for the company. It was a good steady job. The banks knew it, they lent me the money to buy my house in Parma. Now we’re lucky if we get one applicant from the whole of Ohio for a similar position. Also, we used to hire less skilled folk as drafters, and they could get trained and work their way up. Nowadays, we don’t hire anyone who can’t perform from Day One. These days, the banks see working for this company as a risk. They expect the work will go to Mexico or China. It’s nearly happened a few times.” “And the final question. What would be your product-related improvement suggestion?” “Our products are great. And I believe we’re doing a great job at making them even better. That’s not just my biased opinion, you can see it in the sales figures. My improvement suggestion is related to the issue I just mentioned. It’s to do with young people, the new hires of the future. We have to make them understand the opportunities here. We have some great Community Colleges in this area. I’d like to see us setting up partnerships with them so we can involve their students in our activities and show them what we’re doing. I’m sure that, as a result, some of them would want to work here after they graduate.” “Great. Thanks.” * Jane’s 10:00 interview was with Joe Yurkovich, the Electrical Engineering Group Leader. “Hi, I’m Jane, I’m here for the MPL project interview. Thanks for replying to my mail. As you may know, the MPL project is for Dr. Bender, the CEO of Mayer.

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It’s to find out what happens to products from beginning to end. Perhaps you could start by telling me about your product-related activities?” “Sure. I lead the Electrical Engineering Group. We design the electrical systems and components for our machines from concept through release. We prepare electrical systems and component requirements and specifications, make schematics and layouts, and prepare wiring diagrams and related documentation. We analyse our designs. For example, durability, fatigue, thermal and noise vibration and harshness, NVH, analysis. When I say electrical components, that covers a variety of components for our machines. It includes motors, signal amplifiers, display circuits, lighting, lamps, fans, circuit breakers, starters, relays, switches, wiring, sensors, contactors, start stop buttons, transformers, indicators, actuators and all the rest. Each one of those comes in many forms. For example, the motors category includes spindle motors, axis motors, pump motors, tool change motors and so on. We also create and manage product structures and BOMs, Bills of Materials.” “That’s quite a list. Thanks for sending me the documents I asked for. That was a huge set of documents!” “That’s right. We have so many components, and we do so many things with them. That all needs documentation. And did you see the list of computer systems I sent you? Each one of those creates a bunch of documents as well.” “Yes, I saw that. Thanks. It must have been one of the biggest sets I’ve received. And the list of systems is truly impressive. On another subject, what are the main product-related issues you electrical engineers are faced with?” “One thing that concerns me is the quality of electric power. Other issues are electrical noise and interference. Our designs implicitly assume we’ve got highquality power available and we’re in a relatively clean environment. But, with more and more electrical devices in use everywhere, that’s not necessarily the case. Another issue is how we develop our designs alongside the other Engineering Groups. That’s becoming increasingly difficult. Don’t get me wrong, each Group is great at what it does, but typically it doesn’t understand how the other Groups work or how they’re thinking. That leads to misunderstandings, errors and missed targets. Another issue is the expanding scope of Electrical Engineering. We’re now expected to understand robotics and factory communication networks. And address cybersecurity. Years ago, those areas hardly existed, so some of our people know little about them. That shows the importance of keeping up with new technologies.” “Thanks for those issues. My last question, what would you suggest to make things better in your product-related activities?” “We’ve thought about that a lot in our Group. First, we decided to look deeper into Systems Engineering. Second, there’s a big issue around people and their knowledge and know-how. We need to manage know-how better. We’re in a strange situation these days. The people who’ve been with us for some time have great know-how about what they’ve been heavily involved with. But for anything in the last five years, they’re not so strong. Meanwhile the young people we hire know all about the latest technologies of the last five years. But they don’t have field know-how of what went before. So we’re looking at knowledge management as a way to top up everyone’s know-how.”

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“Thanks, Joe. You’ve given me a lot of great information. I’d better let you get back to your work.” * Jane was at Linda’s door at 11:58. “Hi, Linda how are things?” “Great, lunchtime? Let’s go! How’s it going?” “Three down this morning, and three to go.” “Sounds great. Sounds like your bowling! But you still have a way to go. You need to keep your energy levels up. Fortunately, it’s Wednesday today.” “Why’s that? What’s special about Wednesday?” “Polish Boys today. They’ll keep you going for another ten interviews!” “What are you talking about now Linda?” “Wait and see. Follow the expert as you said on Monday. Although I noticed you forgot to do that yesterday evening! That’s my friend Rhona over there. We’ll go and eat with her.” * Jane’s first interview of the afternoon was scheduled for 1:30 pm. It was with Cheryl Carroll, Electronic Engineering Group Leader. After her Polish Boy, Jane felt more like a quiet nap. However, she told herself to behave professionally, and arrived on time at Cheryl’s cubicle. “Hi, I’m Jane, I’m here for the MPL project interview. Thanks for replying to my mail. As you may know, the MPL project is for Dr. Bender. It’s to find out what happens to products from beginning to end. Perhaps you could give me an overview of your product-related activities?” “Sure. Hi, Jane. I lead the Electronic Engineering Group. We develop all the electronics for our machines. That involves a lot of activities. Clarifying requirements and agreeing specifications. Detailed design including requirements management, trade-off analysis, capturing schematics and PCB layout. We commission and test prototypes, develop test procedures and test boards. We create and update electronic assembly configurations. We develop programs for pick and place machines. We support assembly, integration and test. We write appropriate product documentation. In parallel with that, we liaise with the other Engineering groups and other stakeholders. Also in parallel, we evaluate new electronic components. And we track issues with machines in the field, identifying root causes and resolving issues. As well as that, I make an annual plan and budget for the group, and report performance to Steve Zielinski. And maintain our procedures and practices. How’s that for an overview?” “Great. Thanks. Next subject, thanks for sending me your Group’s procedures and product-related documents. That’s going to be quite a stack when I print it out back in Mayer.” “Sorry, but you did ask for them!” “Don’t get me wrong. I’m very pleased you sent them. They’re really important for this project. When I put all the documents together, they help people understand what’s happening with products from beginning to end. Just two more questions for you. First, what are your main product-related issues?”

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“Hiring good people is an issue. Compared to other companies which are recruiting, we don’t pay high salaries here. Another issue is component reliability and lifetime. We’re never sure how reliable a new component will be, or how long it will be on the market before it’s replaced. We increasingly live in a throwaway society. Products have increasingly shorter lives. Look at your phone as an example. Behind the shorter lives of products there are related shorter lives for components. Then there’s the extra workload we’re expecting with all the talk of Internet of Things. A lot of the technology there is electronics. Another issue is everything related to the environment. We’re expected to consume less energy. And to lengthen the life of our equipment. At the same time though, we’re expected to cut costs and develop faster. That’s a tall order!” “And, last question, do you have a product-related improvement suggestion?” “I’m not going to say we should acquire more computer systems. It seems to me we already have too many. No, my first suggestion would be to set more value on our electronic engineers. Increase salaries so we’re a more attractive employer. The second is that we need to find a better way to work with the other Engineering disciplines. In spite of many improvement initiatives, it still seems we’re living and working in separate worlds.” “Thanks, Cheryl. That’s been very instructive. I’ll leave you to get on with your work now.” * Jane’s penultimate Wednesday interview was scheduled for 2:30 pm. It was with Jerry Troyer, the Software Engineering Group Leader. “Hi, I’m Jane. I’m here for the MPL project interview. Thanks for replying to my mail. As you know, the MPL project aims to find out what happens to products from beginning to end. To start, please tell me about your product-related activities.” “Sure, Jane. I lead the Software Engineering Group. Each year, I review the Group’s strategy, make a plan for the year and agree the budget with Steve Zielinski. Each year we also review our working procedures and update as appropriate. One of my main activities is recruitment. We need to grow our Group, but it’s a slow process.” Jerry paused and seemed to be thinking about something. “Please continue,” said Jane. “Yes, sorry. From the product viewpoint, we develop and maintain software for the controllers of our machines. How do we do that? We analyse requirements and develop the overall design for a new project. Then we design, test, debug and document code for the machine’s CNC. We assist with machine tests on the shop floor. We’re also involved in troubleshooting any issues on customer sites. We find any faults and fix them. Although it’s not often a problem with the software, just that the customer has misunderstood something. During the development, we work closely with the other Engineering groups. I don’t remember if I mentioned it, but I make the usual monthly, quarterly and annual reports to Steve Zielinski. That’s about it I think.”

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“Thanks, that’s very helpful. And thanks for sending me examples of your procedures and your product-related documents. That’s all very helpful for the MPL project. Now I have two more questions for you. First question, what are the main product-related issues you face today?” “That’s difficult to answer. There are so many. For example, it’s often difficult to understand the real requirements for the software. A lot of people, stakeholders, customers, they don’t really know what they want, or at least they find it very difficult to express it. Then there are conflicting requirements and changing requirements. Clarifying and managing requirements is a big issue. Another issue is system maintenance. The more systems we have, the more maintenance. And that can take a lot of our time, maybe 30%. And enhancements can take another 30%. That doesn’t leave much time for new developments. Another issue is new technologies and new functionality. We’re always being asked to be at the forefront of these, but nobody can explain how we can achieve this. Typical examples are Industry 4.0 and IOT platforms. We’re expected to suddenly become experts overnight at no cost. But we don’t have any people available to work on these technologies, everybody’s fully engaged. And we’re not allowed to hire new people. It’s a big issue.” “Thanks, Jerry. One last question, what would you propose as ways to improve the situation?” “First, I guess we need to be more professional. That may sound easy, and you could say that it’s my fault that we’re not, but we seem to be totally overloaded and unable to find the time to be more professional. It seems we’re always running after what we should have already done. Secondly, I guess we should improve the remuneration packages of our Group. Currently we’re not competitive with other companies. We interview people, then find they’ve gone elsewhere for 30% more than we offered.” “Thanks for your help, Jerry. That was very instructive. I’ll leave you now to get on with your work.” * The last interview of the day was with Art Braun, the Plant Manager. Jane found his office in the Operations Building, not far from Mr. Zielinski’s. “Hi, Mr. Braun. I’m Jane, I’m here for the MPL project interview. Thanks for replying to my mail. The MPL project is for Dr. Bender. It aims to find out what happens to products from beginning to end. Perhaps you could start by telling me about your product-related activities.” “I’ll do my best,” said Mr. Braun. “I don’t often think about that, but here goes. To start with, I manage day-to-day production operations in the plant. I maintain policies and procedures. I assist in hiring and training activities. I lead activities such as manufacturing engineering, plant maintenance, new equipment acquisition, performance measurement, health and safety, quality assurance, cost reduction, improving productivity, implementing new technologies, and reporting plant performance to Steve Zielinski.”

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“That sounds a lot. But you managed a very concise description! It’s really helpful. And also thank you for sending me copies of your procedures and your productrelated documents. There was a lot there to look at! But from what you just said I can see you have a wide range of activities. And the computer systems and documents to go with them.” “It took a while to gather all that material for you, but it was a good exercise. I’ll use it in some of my training courses to show what we do here. Most people don’t see the big picture. They’ve never been shown it, so it’s not surprising they can’t see it. But I believe it helps them in their daily work if they can see where they fit in the big picture.” “I agree entirely. That’s one lesson I’ve learned in this project. Most people just see a very small part of the big picture, like one piece of a jigsaw puzzle. But I have another two questions for you. The first question is about the main issues you face in your product-related activities.” “We have issues attracting young people to work in Production. They have the wrong perception of what Production is like today. They think it’s a dirty workplace. They think it has no future as they expect everything to close down and move to China and Mexico. But that’s not today’s picture. We’re clean, high-tech and here to stay. A young person has a brighter future here than being a truck driver, store worker or restaurant server. All those jobs will be hit hard by automation. We’ve already been through that. Staying with the idea of what people understand about what we do, I think we also have a communication issue and a lack of understanding issue. For example, people at the top are talking about the need for an Industry 4.0 program. But we’re already doing a lot of Industry 4.0 in this building! I can show you now examples we have of use of Augmented Reality to help with machine assembly, simulation of changes to plant layout before making the change, sensors on all our machines reporting performance and showing product and process variance. It’s like SPC on steroids! We have a factory communications network running. We’ve integrated our CNC systems to DNC to MES to ERP. We’re using Additive Manufacturing. We have 3D scanners. We have RFID readers. We have robots and AGVs. We maintain a database of faults in production. We use AI to look for causes that are difficult to spot. We have all this, and nobody at the top seems to know about it. I’m wondering if we shouldn’t set up a communications team to get our message out to the rest of the company!” “I was going to ask if you have any improvement suggestions for your productrelated activities. But that sounds like one. Do you have any others?” “We need to upskill our workforce, our Production associates. Currently they don’t have the skills that they’re going to be needing before long.” “Thank you, Art. I don’t have any more questions. You’ve been very helpful. I’ll leave you now to get on with your work.” * During lunch, Linda had suggested that she and Rhona should show Jane some of the local points of interest. After Rhona had suggested Pittsburgh, Cedar Point and the Cuyahoga River, Linda had said they’d leave at 4:30 and she’d decide where they’d

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go. They left on time, and Jane reminded Linda she’d already visited the Cleveland Museum of Art. “That’s good,” said Linda. “So we won’t go there. We’ll start with some culture instead. We could start with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Or I can show you where I saw the Cavs win in 2016.” As there was no reply from either Jane or Rhona, Linda said, “Or we can go to Lakewood Park or Edgewater so Jane can admire the lake, and then find a good restaurant and have something to eat.” “That sounds great,” said Rhona. “I prefer Lakewood.” “OK, but first we’ll do a quick tour downtown so Jane can admire the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, West Side Market and where I saw the Cavs win in 2016.” Rhona didn’t say anything, so Jane said, “Thank you, that sounds great, Linda. That should give me a good picture of Cleveland.”

18.5 Thursday 25 July The alarm woke Jane at 6:30 am. After the night out with Linda and Rhona, she felt she could have done with another hour or two in bed, but that wasn’t on. She had to get ready for another full day of interviews. By 7:00, she was driving to the restaurant for coffee and a light breakfast. She hoped that would keep her awake for another six interviews. * By 7:50 she was at Reception, “Hi Dana, how are you this morning?” “Hi there, Jane, great and you? Enjoy the evening?” “Sure.” * “Hi Linda, how are you this morning?” “Hi Jane. Still recovering, how about you?” “Just about alive. I have to be, six more interviews today.” “And don’t forget that, after your interviews, there’s dinner with Chuck.” “Oh no, I forgot about that. Can I back out?” “No! You’re the guest of honour! The whole management team will be there.” * Jane went to her room and sat down. Then she went to get a coffee, a strong one. After a while, she started looking through the documents she’d received from the day’s interviewees. Nothing out of the ordinary from what she could see. They were all mid-level managers. Their document fingerprints were pretty much as expected. *

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The 8:30 interviewee, Kimberley Williams, arrived on time. “Hi Jane, I’m Kimberley, I’m here for the MPL project interview. Did you get the documents I sent you?” “Hi, Kimberley. Yes, thank you for the documents. That’s just what I need for the project. It’s a project for Dr. Bender, the CEO of Mayer, to find out what happens to products from beginning to end. It’s called the MPL project. I’ve read through your documents. Perhaps you could tell me now about your product-related activities.” “Sure. I’m the Master Data Manager. I lead the Master Data Management Team. We manage the Master Data for our products. Master Data is the master version, the reference version, of some very important data. This data is used by many people and software in many departments, so it’s important that it’s 100% correct quality. That way, everyone refers to and uses the same version of this data. There’s Master Data of different types. Customer Master Data is an example. Obviously, you want everyone in the company to be using the correct customer name and the correct customer address. It wouldn’t make sense for everyone to enter the customer name on the keyboard. That way you’d get lots of mistakes. One person might write Kimberly Williams, another might write Ms Kimberly Williams. Another could write K. Williams, or Williams K., and so on. The Master Data Team are the owners of the name that the company wants to use for the customer. It’s important for all sorts of reasons. For example, you don’t want to call Ms Kimberley Williams, who is one of your valued customers, Mr. Williams. If you do that, you could offend your customer. You’d also make it difficult for our applications to know to which customer you’re referring. To get to the master version, we have to get people in different departments to agree on what the rules and format should be. That’s part of our job. Also, we have to control access to the data so that people can’t change it. But we also have to allow access so people can read and use it.” “Good,” said Jane. “So that was Master Data for customers. What about Master Data for products?” “It’s the same principle. We need to have just one name for a product. We can’t have Salespeople calling it one thing, but Service people calling it something else. That way everyone would be confused, including the customer. We also need a single item number. A single agreed description. We could have product Master Data about the product’s size, weight and packaging. Whenever several departments are using the same piece of data, we need to be sure everyone uses exactly the same. We don’t want, for example, Marketing saying the height of the product is two metres, when Engineering is developing something that’s three metres. Our job is to create and maintain this single source of data of truth across the company. Behind that, we’ve developed the processes to make it possible.” “Thanks for the explanation, Kimberley,” said Jane. “And thanks for sending me the documents that I asked for. The examples were very helpful. I was amazed by the number of working procedures you have.” “That’s because it’s not really the data that’s the problem. It’s the governance of the data.” “What kind of issues do you have with product-related data and activities?” “The first is the effort it takes to maintain the Master Data. We have a huge volume of existing data, and there’s a lot of new Master Data being created. Master Data

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doesn’t manage itself. People manage it. And we’re low on people. The second issue is people. There are many people in the business who just don’t care about Master Data. They don’t participate properly, they don’t comply with our procedures and rules. The third issue is changes to data. No sooner do we get an agreed version of Master Data, than someone wants to change it. And they always have great reasons for why they absolutely must change it.” “Thanks for those issues. My last question, what would you propose as an improvement action for your product-related Master Data activities?” “That’s a great question! It’s one I’m often asking myself. We’re always trying to improve, but there’s only so much we can do. We can only improve incrementally. My suggestion would be something totally different. I’d suggest the company appoints a Chief Data Officer. That could take us to a completely different level.” “That’s an interesting suggestion. Thanks for that. And thanks for all your help with the project.” * By 9:15, Jane was back at the coffee station for some more strong coffee. She needed the break and more coffee before the next interview. After reviewing her notes from the meeting with Kimberley, she left for her next interview. * The 9:30 interview was with Dale Ingram, the Installation Manager. “Hi Dale, I’m Jane. I’m here for the MPL project interview.” “Hi, Jane. Come on in, sit down. Did you get the documents I sent you?” “Yes, thank you. I’ve just been looking at them. They’ll be very valuable for the project. As you know, I’m working on MPL for Dr. Bender. It’s to find out what happens to products from beginning to end. Perhaps you could tell me something about your product-related activities?” “Sure. I manage the Installation Team. We install the company’s products. I’d better start by saying something about our products. I guess you know we make specials and standards. My team installs both kinds on customer sites. Installing a special is, well, special. It can take days or even weeks. We go to the customer’s site and usually we help the customer’s team with the installation. Installing a special is always interesting. But, in a way, installing a standard machine is even more interesting. It’s repetitive, so it gives us the chance to learn from experience and to improve. We’ve learned how to install fast. That’s even become part of the company’s sales pitch. Four-hour installation is included in the machine price. Customers love it, but it requires a lot of effort upfront. We have a three-stage approach. In the first stage, we get the customers to send us their shop floor layout plans and photos, dimensions, floor surface characteristics, where they want the machine to go, and the like. That’s already a huge help for us. We check everything to make sure installation is possible. That way, we won’t turn up and find there’s not enough room, or there’s no power supply. The customers understand what we’re doing, and it gets them thinking as well. The installation is free if we do it in four hours, but if they change their mind

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halfway through, they have to pay for it. They don’t want to do that, so they really think things through ahead of time.” “Please wait a minute, Dale,” said Jane. “I need to catch up with my notes.” Dale waited until he saw Jane had stopped writing. “Then, in the second stage, we build a CAD model of the customer’s shop. We have CAD models of all our standard machines and CAD models of all our equipment and tools. That allows us to simulate how we can get the machine in there, position it where the customer wants it, and do final correcting, levelling and alignment. We can see from the simulation if we can install in four hours or not. If we can, great, we go and install. If we can’t, we do more simulation until we find how to get it down to less than four hours. Like I said, the customers are delighted with installation in four hours. So are we, because it means we’re not wasting our time, we can go and install the next machine for the next customer. Another advantage, instead of having to write a machine installation report by hand after the installation like we used to, we can now get it at the end of the installation. We’ve a standard template in which we pre-insert customer specific details like layout. Other fields are filled in automatically. After the installation, we take photos of the as-installed machine and insert them in the report. And we take photos and videos showing machine settings and operating parameters. We give a copy to the customer and keep the original for us. It’s really helpful for everyone.” “That sounds very impressive. Now I understand why you sent me so many documents. I didn’t realise you were using 3D CAD for simulation.” “Times are changing. Installation is high-tech these days. Forget the pictures of guys in oily overalls crawling about on the floor. We even have a Britney and a Jill on our team now.” “As you say, times are changing. My next question is about the product-related issues you face. That’s product-related in a wide sense.” “The big issue, I guess, is that we only use the rapid installation approach for standard machines. We don’t have it for specials. That would be a game-changer.” “My last question, what would you see as an improvement for your activities?” “There are several things we can do to improve our simulations for the four-hour installation. The more we can analyse and simulate in the computer, the easier the installation. If we can identify a problem in the computer, we can solve it before getting to the customer site. Apart from that, it would be a great improvement if we could apply a similar approach for specials. But that would take quite some time.” “Talking about time, it’s time for me to go to my next interview. Thanks a lot for your help, and your time.” * By 10:15, Jane was back at the coffee station. She was beginning to feel better. She went back to her office and reviewed her notes from the meeting with Dale. Then she looked at the documents she’d received from Bob Lewandowski, the Maintenance Manager. She was due to interview him at 10:30. *

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“Hi Bob, I’m Jane, I’m here for the MPL interview. I guess you know it’s for Dr. Bender and is to find out what happens to products from beginning to end. Please start by telling me about your product-related activities.” “Sure, Jane. Well, I’ve always felt our role relative to our machines is like a doctor’s role with their patients. Someone may go to their doctor for an annual check-up. Well, we give our machines an annual check-up too. Someone may go to their doctor because they have a specific problem. We also go to our machines when they have specific problems. A doctor may recommend a new organ for their patient. We also change organs and provide spare parts for our machines. Another similarity is related to experience. If you go to a doctor who has thirty years of experience, after five minutes they have a pretty good idea of what’s wrong with you. They look at you and ask a few key questions. And they know what’s wrong with you.” “Sorry, Bob,” said Jane. “Please wait a minute. I need to catch up with my notes.” Bob waited, then continued. “Probably the experienced doctor knows what’s wrong with you because they’ve already seen something similar a hundred times. Whereas if you go to a newly qualified doctor, they may ask questions for half an hour and still not know. Because they’ve never seen that situation before. It’s the same with us. An experienced maintenance specialist looks at a machine, asks a few questions, and knows what has to be fixed and how to fix it. Because they’ve seen the same thing dozens of times before. A new recruit can go through the recommended questions for an hour and still not know. Basically, our job is to keep our machines going, and prevent them getting sick. And fix them quickly if they do get sick. I guess you know we have standard machines? Well, most of our people will see a few hundred machines in a year, ones in good health and ones that are sick. After a few years, they’ll have seen thousands. By then, as soon as they see the machine and hear about its symptoms, they have a good idea what they need to do.” “Thanks, Doctor Bob! That’s a great explanation. And thanks for sending me the documents. I’ve looked at them, all your working procedures and product-related documents. There were lots of them! I went through them one by one, and can see where they fit in your activities. But, by the way you talk, it’s almost as if you don’t need any documents.” “Sorry, I was exaggerating to make my point. An experienced maintenance person will be able to identify the problem without documents, but we need the documents when we fix the problem. The fix has to be 100% correct. And then the rookie, the unexperienced maintenance person, will probably use the documents to identify the problem as well. The documents contain our know-how.” “What about computer systems? I saw from the list that you use many. What role do they play?” “Today they play a support role, they help create all the documents and make our knowledge available. Tomorrow, people say they will do much more, such as propose preventive maintenance.” “You sound sceptical, you don’t believe that?” “The examples I’ve seen so far are pretty basic. In the cases I’ve seen, the machine operator should realise themselves that there’s a need for preventive maintenance. But those are cases where the computer is working on the information the operator

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sees. However, I think that should change in the future. I’ll go back to my doctor and patient analogy. Today, when you walk in the doctor’s surgery, they don’t have much information. They can’t get much information from your body in five minutes. Maybe just pulse, height, weight and blood pressure. But imagine if they could get an analysis of all your body fluids and ultrasounds of key organs and ECG charts. All in five minutes. That would tell them much more. It would be a game-changer. It would be the same with us and our machines. If Engineering can fit maybe fifty sensors to the machine, to get all the key performance data. Well, that would be a game-changer too. All that data would tell us maintenance folks a lot, but a computer could also process it much faster than us.” “I understand. Just a couple more questions. What are the main issues facing your team?” “One of our issues is that customers often do things with our machines that they shouldn’t do. It would be great to have a way to stop that, or at least to warn them not to do it. Another is the training issue. It takes a few years to become a good maintenance engineer. It’s all about practice, seeing enough cases and getting that practical experience. It would be great if we could cut that time. Maybe there’s some computer-based way to do that? Then there’s something a lot of our guys hate. Writing up maintenance visits. We have an application that helps, that automates it. But it’s very poor, we still have to enter almost everything on the keyboard. I know that Dale Ingram has something much more advanced for Installation reports. We should look at that.” “Anything else?” “Nothing that comes to mind now.” “Good, that was helpful. Thanks for answering my questions and replying to my mail.” * Jane was back in her office at 11:40. She was reviewing her notes of the meeting with Bob Lewandowski when Linda came in. “Hi Jane, 11:55.” “Hi, Linda. Is it lunchtime?” “Yes. We should eat something.” “I can only manage soup! And please remember that since this morning I no longer drink alcohol.” “Well, well, that will be some change! Come on, let’s go.” * When they got to the cafeteria, Linda said she’d take a salad. “Don’t forget we’ll be eating again in a few hours. We’ll leave from here after work. It’s not far away. It’s Chuck’s favourite restaurant. Surf and turf. It’s a good restaurant. You’ll see. I expect you’ll be back at your hotel well before 9 pm.” * After lunch, Jane’s 1:30 pm interview was with Donna Zimmermann, from IT. “Hi Donna, I’m Jane, I’m here for the MPL project interview. It’s a project for the CEO

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of Mayer. The objective is to find out what happens to products from beginning to end. Please tell me about your product-related activities.” “Sure. I’m running a Digital Transformation project but, so far, I’m unaware of anything product-related. We’re just getting started. We selected some Digital Transformation consultants. They started in early June. With them, we’re developing a plan to develop a Digital Transformation strategy. We’re still in Phase Zero, preparing a plan for next steps. We’re also getting the Digital Transformation message out to the company in a variety of ways. Workshops, Intranet updates, a newsletter, town halls, after-works. We don’t want to rush in and start proposing things before everyone is on board, has a good feel for Digital Transformation, and can think of Digital Transformation in their own area.” “OK, so maybe it’s too early to ask this then. But do you have any feeling yet as to what might be some product-related issues.” “I don’t know. As you say, it’s probably too early to say. I hear a lot about disjointed, fragmented systems, but don’t have any details yet.” “OK, and any possible product-related improvement suggestions? “Again, it’s probably too early to say. But I’ve heard talk of a cloud-based platform.” “OK, and anything on Digital Threads or Digital Twins?” “Oh, yes. Our Digital Transformation consultants have put them both in the plan for next steps. They say it’s a no-brainer that we should start with Digital Thread. But it looks as if Digital Twin will come later. They say that’s more for rocket scientists.” “How come?” “Listen to the project steps they say we’ll need. First, launch the Digital Twin project, and educate the participants about Digital Twins. Then, identify several business scenarios for Digital Twins that could benefit us. Like monitoring data coming from sensors on the machine; tuning machine performance; improving reliability; and reducing maintenance costs. Next, describe each scenario from a business viewpoint, showing the business value. Then, describe each scenario from a technical viewpoint, outlining any changes that will be needed, like buying new applications, developing new interfaces, modifying the machine, and organisational changes. Next, describe each scenario from a cost viewpoint. Then, develop an outline plan for each scenario. Then, calculate the ROI of each scenario. And then, present to executives so they can decide which scenarios to go with. And all that’s before implementing anything.” “OK, I see what you mean. Well, thanks for answering my questions. I think we can stop the interview now. I’m interviewing a lot of people here, about thirty in all. Perhaps the people who made the list of interviews thought you were further into the project.” * By 2:00, Jane was at the coffee station. She’d reviewed her notes from the meeting with Donna, but there hadn’t been anything to add. So she’d looked through the documents she’d received from Vijay Narayan. She was due to interview him at 2:30. He was System Manager and Key User for CAD, ERP, PDM and ALM.

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* “Hi Vijay, I’m Jane. As you know, I’m here for the MPL project. It’s a project for Dr. Bender. He’s the CEO of Mayer. The objective is to find out what happens to products from their beginning to their end. Maybe you could tell me about your product-related activities?” “Yes. I have two hats in my activity. With one hat on, I’m the System Administrator for the CAD, ERP, PDM and ALM systems. With the other hat on, I’m the Key User for these systems. With my System Administration hat on, I deploy and maintain the systems, perform testing and resolve problems. I administer access controls. I manage backups and rollbacks. I liaise with the system vendors, attend vendor training events and manage licensing. I analyse system requirements. I participate in projects. I develop implementation, migration and upgrade plans. With the other hat on, I provide support for system users. I onboard new users. I give training and share best practices. I collect feedback from system users, and feed that back to the system vendors.” “Thanks Vijay, and thanks for sending me examples from the systems you work with. From memory you developed some of the working procedures you sent me. Is that right? Which hat do you do that with?” “Yes, I do develop procedures. Sorry for not mentioning that. That’s more on the System Administrator side. Another thing I could add with that hat on is that I develop special workflows in the systems.” “I realise that you’re not directly involved with the company’s machines. You’re supporting the people who are directly involved. Do you have any feeling for the issues with the systems they use?” “Mostly UX issues, User Experience issues.” “Any improvement suggestions?” “Not much I can say. There’s not much we can change internally. The system vendors develop the software. They need to improve the UX.” “OK, Vijay. Thanks for answering my questions. I think we can stop the interview now. You’ve told me what I needed to know. Thanks for participating in the interview. You’ve been very helpful.” * By 2:55, Jane had reviewed her notes from the meeting with Vijay. The interviews seemed to be getting shorter and shorter. She wondered if the next one would continue the trend. The 3:30 interview was with Rahul Varma, a designer from the Mechanical Engineering Group. * “Hi Rahul, I’m Jane. Thanks for agreeing to be interviewed for the MPL project. As you know, it’s for Dr. Bender. It aims to find out what happens to products from beginning to end. The documents you sent me help with that. Another way of finding out is by understanding product-related activities. Perhaps you could tell me about yours?”

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“Of course. I create designs and drawings for our machines from requirements, sketches and concepts. I build and maintain assemblies in the CAD system. I’m responsible for various calculations such as weight and various analyses such as thermal, structural and environmental. I create top-level assembly drawings. I manage the Bill of Materials, the BOM. I organise engineering documentation. I interact and collaborate with other internal groups. And I also support the Mechanical Engineering Group’s management on an as-required basis.” “Thanks, Rahul. And thanks for sending me copies of the documents you create and use. A couple more questions. What are the main issues with your work?” “I don’t know if it’s an issue, but there are always changes happening. I can almost guarantee that as soon as I’ve finished my work, someone will change something somewhere in our module or an adjacent module, and I’ll have to start all over again. Another issue is our mechanical engineering documentation isn’t well-organised. I was asked to prepare a copy of everything for you. It took me much longer than I expected. I thought I could find it all in one place, in the PDM system. But no, I had to hunt in many places.” “That’s good to know. And my last question. Do you have any product-related improvement suggestions?” “Yes. I suggest that we use the PDM system to manage all our data in the Mechanical Engineering Group.” “Thanks, Rahul. Thanks for answering my questions. We can stop the interview now. You’ve told me what I needed to know. Thanks for participating in the interview and for preparing all the documentation. That will be very useful.” * Rahul had sent Jane a mass of documentation. It wasn’t until 4:50 that she’d gone through it all and written some notes about each document. By then, it was time to see Linda, and find out when they were going to the restaurant.

18.6 Friday 26 July The alarm woke Jane at 7 am. She would have liked to have stayed in bed another few hours. But that wasn’t an option. This was the last day of the Cleveland interviews. She had to be bright-eyed, alert and full of energy until at least 5 pm. By 7:35 she was driving to the restaurant for breakfast. In spite of everything she’d eaten the previous evening, she needed to eat something in the morning to get her through the day. * By 8:15, Jane was at Reception, “Hi Dana, how are you this morning?” “Hi there, Jane. I’m feeling great this morning. It’s Friday, the weekend’s here. And you? Enjoy the evening?”

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“Sure, it was great.” * “Hi Linda, how are you this morning?” “Hi Jane, I’m great. How about you?” “Linda, I don’t understand how you people can eat so much. I’m used to seeing you all eating twice as much as me, but yesterday evening was unbelievable. Some of them must have eaten three times more than me!” “You should stay longer. You’d soon start eating more.” “No chance. My last day today.” * Jane went to her room and looked through the documents she’d received from the day’s interviewees. Nothing out of the ordinary from what she could see. The interviewees were mainly mid-level managers. There was nothing unusual in their document fingerprints. Her 8:30 interview was with Brad Unger, the Technical Data Management Manager. She was in his office on time. “Hi Brad, I’m Jane, I’m here for the MPL project interview.” “Hi, Jane. Great to see you. Please sit down. Did you get the documents I sent you?” “Yes, thank you very much. As you know, the project is for Dr. Bender, the CEO of Mayer. It aims to find out what happens to products from their beginning to their end. The documents you sent help me understand that. Perhaps you could also tell me something about your product-related activities?” “Sure. I’m the manager of the Technical Data Management Group. We manage technical documents. When I say technical documents that covers a really wide range. It could mean sketches, memos, safety notices, drawings, CAD models, test data, results of calculations, standards, bulletins, correspondence with customers, field reports, project reports, project plans, specifications, technical submittals, part information, product structures, parts lists, maintenance documentation, design review reports, risk review reports, installation instructions, checklists and instruction manuals. I could go on and on, but I hope that gives you a good idea. In theory, we manage all the technical documents. But, in practice, we only manage some of the electronic document management systems. We do manage the hard copy system. We provide training. On some systems we control document approvals, release and change. We get involved in scanning, indexing and linking of technical documents. We provide support to people in all matters related to technical documentation.” “That sounds like a lot of documents and a lot of work.” “There’s a huge mass of documents, and a huge mess. That’s why I didn’t send you copies of everything. But I did send you a list of all the document types that’s as near to complete as damn it. And I sent you a list of the various technical documentation management systems.”

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“Yes, I got that. Thank you. Just another couple of questions. First, what are your main product-related issues, assuming you have some?” “There’s one issue that overrides everything else. This company doesn’t have an effective technical document strategy. We have numerous unconnected systems, and the result is chaos. We manage the chaos on a day-to-day basis.” “And how would you improve the situation?” “Develop a technical documentation strategy. Start a Digital Thread project by looking to see what technical documents and data we need to manage. Then look for the best way to manage them. I’m not saying the answer is just one technical documentation computer system, but I’m pretty darn sure it’s not what we have today.” “Brad, thanks for taking the time to meet me. I don’t have any more questions. You’ve been very helpful. I have to go now for my next interview. Have a great day!” * At 9:12, Jane was back in her office, with her coffee. After reviewing her notes from the meeting with Brad, she left for her next interview. She was due to meet Debra Kowalski, a Configuration Management Manager, at 9:30. * “Hi, Debra. I’m Jane, I’m here for the MPL project interview.” “Hi, Jane. Great to see you. Please sit down. People usually call me Debbie. Did you get the documents I sent you?” “Yes, Debbie, thank you. I don’t know what you know about it, but MPL is a project for Dr. Bender. He’s the CEO of Mayer. The objective is to find out what happens to products from beginning to end. The documents you sent me help me understand that. It would also help if you could tell me about your product-related activities.” “Sure. MPL sounds like a great project. Well, I’m the Configuration Management Manager for some of our machines. That means I do several tasks. Putting it very simply, the first thing I do is make sure all of the components of a machine’s design are correctly identified, numbered, versioned and documented before release. Another way of looking at that is to say it means making sure all the paperwork describing the machine is 100% correct before it goes to production. Of course, as soon as the design is released, everyone starts changing everything. My second task is to control and keep track of all of the changes. The objective being that, at any given time, all the paperwork describing the machines is 100% correct.” “Hold on,” said Jane. “Let me get all that noted. Just a minute more. OK, I’m ready.” “My third and fourth tasks are to track the same thing on the machine itself, the physical machine, starting with the first version and then updating as changes occur. Is that fairly clear? There are a lot of people here who are totally against Configuration Management. A lot of it comes from the military. They have products such as airplanes with millions of parts. We don’t. And they have dozens of standards and guidelines about Configuration Management. They have dozens of administrators

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sitting around paid by the taxpayer with nothing better to do than write more guidelines and standards. We don’t. There are dozens of experts proclaiming only they do CM the right way. People in normal marketplace companies like ours just don’t have the time to read everything they produce. Here, we just try to keep it simple and relate it to what we actually do. Maybe some of the experts would say we’re not even doing Configuration Management. Fortunately, most of our machines only have a few thousand components. We’re not making warplanes with millions of parts.” “Thanks for the explanation, Debbie. I’m certainly not an expert. I’m just trying to understand what you do today. If I understand you right, you have something you call a configuration that’s like a total description of what the machine should be. All the components are described. The way the components fit together is described. The main characteristics of the machine are described. You’ve got a total description of what the machine should be in theory at any time. And then you have a similar total description of what the machine is in practice. What’s physically there. What its performance really is. At all times?” “You’ve got it.” “But aren’t the two automatically the same?” “We want them to be the same, to be in sync. But sometimes, something happens, and, for example, the customer has to urgently change a part on the machine. Then the two are out of sync, because our description of the machine no longer corresponds to what it is in practice. That could be a problem for us next time we do something on that customer’s machine. Our maintenance guy would get to the site, and find something unexpected, and waste time waiting and trying to find out what’s going on. Or maybe it turns out that a change made by the customer is causing a major problem.” “What are the main issues you face?” “On my first task, it’s really difficult to get all the identifying and descriptive documents ready before release. We call that the first baseline. It’s difficult to get that first baseline because you find that people haven’t documented their work properly, or they did document it, but then lost it. Or they forgot to put their final iteration in the system. On my second task, there are a lot of people who don’t like the bureaucracy of the change system. They modify things outside the system. That means we no longer have a true description of the machine. And the third issue is to get information from customers when they make a change to the physical machines on their sites. Often, they don’t tell us. Then we don’t have a true description of their physical machine.” “Thank you. Sorry, but I see time’s running out. I must move on. What are your suggestions to improve the situation?” “For our theoretical description of the machine, it’s a people issue, cultural. We need to educate and train people so they understand why it’s important for them to participate in maintaining a 100% correct configuration. For the physical machine on the customer site, we’d like to find an automated way of knowing if the customer has changed something. One way of doing that would be by incorporating special sensors that tell us about changes to the machine.”

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“Thanks Debbie, you’ve been very helpful. I have to go now. I need to prepare for my next interview. Thanks for your help! * By 10:15, Jane was back in her office, reviewing her notes from the meeting with Debbie. Ten minutes later she left for her next interview. She was due to meet Ahmed Elsayed, the manager of the Advanced Engineering Team, at 10:30. * “Hi, Ahmed. I’m Jane, I’m here for the MPL project interview. It’s for Dr. Bender, the CEO of Mayer. It aims to find out what happens to products from beginning to end. Perhaps you could tell me about your product-related activities?” “OK, Jane. You probably know that we make special machines and standard machines. In the Advanced Engineering Section, we don’t have anything to do with special products. You probably also know we have NPD projects, New Product Development projects, running to develop new standard machines. In the Advanced Engineering Section, we don’t have anything to do with NPD projects.” “OK. So now I know what you don’t do. What do you do?” “In the Advanced Engineering Section, we’re working on breakthrough concepts for the next generations of machines. It may be two or three years before our results are first used in an NPD project. We look at the world from the viewpoint of the customers, the users of machine tools. We apply Design Thinking to solve their problems and translate them into Advanced Engineering projects that will result in bringing new technologies and approaches into next generation NPD projects. Many of our projects result in fast prototypes. It’s a fast-moving environment. Sometimes we use CAD and Additive Manufacturing, sometimes we don’t. What’s important is to identify new concepts and test them out. It’s almost as useful if we can say a concept doesn’t work out as if we can say it does.” “Thanks for that. And thanks for the documents. I noticed that a lot is related to ideas and sketches.” “Yes.” “You seem to have a nice environment to work in. Are you faced by any issues?” “Our biggest issue is too many ideas and not enough people in the Advanced Engineering Section. I guess management didn’t realise how much work would come our way. There’s increased headcount being discussed for next year.” “Any other ideas for improvement of your work?” “Work goes well. It’s a free environment, we have good tools and good people. We have good relationships with Marketing and Operations. Apart from increasing section headcount, I think we could also work more with universities. Their students are dynamic, results-oriented, positive and wanting to succeed. It would be great to have some of them working within AE for short spells. And, if we worked with many students, it would help us identify the best ones. Then we could hire them when they graduate.”

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“Thanks, Ahmed. You’ve been very helpful. I see that it’s lunchtime. I have to go back to Linda Owen’s office. Have a great day!” * By 11:50, Jane was back in her office. She left her work there and walked down to Linda’s office. “Hi Linda, how’s it going?” “Great. Lunchtime? Nearly ready, give me five minutes.” Jane went over and looked out the window. She watched a train going past and started counting the number of wagons. All the trains she’d seen since she’d been here had been amazingly long. This one was no exception. “OK, all set, stop daydreaming!” said Linda. “What would you like today, another Polish Boy?” Jane winced, “A very thin vegetable soup would be great. Or chicken broth.” * After lunch, Jane looked at her list. Another three interviews. The next, the 1:30 pm interview, was with Ashley Novak, from IIOT. So she’d be hearing more about the Internet of Things. * “Hi Ashley, I’m Jane, I’m here for the MPL project interview.” “Hi, Jane. I got your mail. It looks like a great project, but I’m not sure I can help you much. You see, I’m the project leader for the Internet of Things project. We’re looking at ways we can bring IOT technology to our products. We have a testbed with an IOT platform to test our ideas and suggestions. With the IOT, machines will be able to send data back to us, and we’ll be able to do Analytics on it and generate value-adding decisions and activities. For example, we’ll be able to reduce energy usage, reduce pollution, measure tool wear and tear, and detect defects as soon as they happen. We’re also looking at robots working with the machine operator to learn how to do their job. And how we could reduce machine setup time by simulating in advance machine settings and performance.” “Thanks for the explanation, Ashley. And thanks for sending me the documentation you’re using. You seem to be using some high-tech systems.” “Yes, we’re out in front leading the pack.” “Are there any product-related issues you’re faced with?” “We’re not allowed to test on full-scale machines. I hope that will change soon.” “And any improvement suggestions?” “There’s a lot of bureaucracy. We have to fill in timesheets, write weekly reports, write detailed requests to purchase equipment. All time-wasting, innovation-stifling. It would be great if they’d open up and let us go faster.” “Thanks, Ashley. You’ve told me all I need for the interview. Thanks for your help. Have a great day!” *

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At 2 pm, Jane was back in her office with a coffee. Today’s interviews seemed to be going quickly. She wondered if the 2:30 pm interview would also be a short one. It was with Newt Thomson, from Quality. * “Hi Newt, I’m Jane, I’m here for the MPL project interview.” “Hi, Jane. Great to meet you. Did you get the documents I sent you?” “Yes, thank you very much. I’m not sure if you know, but the aim of the project, for Dr. Bender, is to find out what happens to products from beginning to end. Perhaps you could tell me about your product-related activities.” “I work on the development, implementation and maintenance of the company’s QMS, the Quality Management System. There are quite a few associated tasks. I advise people on everything related to Quality in Operations. I train folks in the use of the system, including onboarding. I collaborate with our plant specialists on machine calibration, monitoring and maintenance. I’m involved in risk management exercises. I’m part of the team for annual supplier audits. I’m involved in Engineering Change Management. I maintain the Quality procedures. I measure Quality metrics. I report to management on QMS performance and propose improvements.” “And do you ever work directly with a product? For example, control of a part’s dimensions?” “No, I’m not first-line interacting with parts.” “Thanks for the explanation, Newt. That helps me understand what you do. And thanks for sending me the documents I asked for. I wasn’t sure what some of them were, but I can understand now thanks to your explanation. Another question, are you faced with any product-related issues?” “One issue is that there’s still quite a lot of non-adherence to protocols. Another is that sometimes we don’t calibrate our QC inspection tools often enough. And another is that some of our team don’t have a lot of experience.” “And do you have any product-related improvement suggestions?” “Definitely more training and education on quality-related subjects. Both for members of the team and other people in the company.” * Jane went back to her office. She reviewed her notes from the meeting with Newt. Then she left for her 3:30 pm interview with Sandy Stone, Project Manager, Operations. * “Hi Sandy, I’m Jane, I’m here for the MPL project interview.” “Hi, Jane. Come on in. Great to see you. Did you get the documents I sent you? How can I help you?” “Yes, I read through them and thought they fitted well to your title of Project Manager.” “That’s good! Yep, I’m just a plain old Project Manager doing plain old Project Management work.”

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“The MPL project is for Dr. Bender. It aims to find out what happens to products from beginning to end. I have an idea, but could you tell me something about your product-related activities?” “Sure. Pretty much the usual Project Management tasks. Clarifying project objectives, setting scope, identifying tasks, activity sequencing and planning, resource planning, estimating time, developing schedules, estimating costs, making a budget, leading the team, training, monitoring progress, measuring progress, identifying and removing barriers to progress, identifying risks and issues, managing risks and issues, checking quality, controlling deliverables, reporting progress, making sure people keep to deadlines, delivering on time and on budget. All the while communicating with project sponsors, stakeholders, team members, and steering committees.” “Thanks, that’s a good list! What about issues? What issues are you faced with when you’re doing all that?” “Pretty much the usual Project Management issues. Project objectives not being 100% clear. Over-optimistic deadlines. Project participants not understanding their role, or not playing their role. Creep of project scope. Lack of skills among the people in the project. Theft of key project people. Steering committee vacillation.” “Vacillation?” “Yes, the people who are meant to steer the project shilly-shally, they don’t take decisions. They don’t take action, they sit on the fence, they sit on their hands.” “And what would you suggest to improve the situation?” “More training for people working in and around projects to get them to understand their roles and responsibilities.” “Thanks, Sandy. I don’t have any more questions for you. You’ve been very informative. Have a great day and a great weekend!” * Jane went back to her office. After reviewing her notes from the meeting with Sandy, she saw a 4:30 interview had been planned with Tina Zhang from the Systems Engineering Project. * “Hi Tina, I’m Jane, I’m here for the MPL project interview.” “Hi, Jane.” “Maybe we could start by you telling me about your work.” “I only started here last October. I went on induction courses. Then, early this year I heard I will be put on this Systems Engineering project, but we only started in March.” “And what’s the objective of the project?” “The objective is to understand if we should apply Systems Engineering here. And, if we should, how do we apply it. And how do we introduce it.” “And how’s the project going?” “We started by making a plan and defined our project deliverables.”

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“And then?” “We started in June with the first phase. The objective of the first phase is to understand what Systems Engineering addresses, what it means, and how other companies do it.” “I see. Something like a literature search, and going to some Systems Engineering conferences, maybe taking some short courses, and visiting some companies that are already doing Systems Engineering?” “That’s right. That’s what we’re doing in Phase 1. We’ve read ISO 15288. We took an online Systems Engineering course. Now we’re looking for a short on-site Systems Engineering course somewhere. There are many three-year courses. But that’s not what we want. We just want a basic explanation and introduction. We’re also looking at Model Based System Engineering.” “When do you expect to report?” “By the end of the year.” “Do you see any particular product-related issues?” “We’re beginning to get the feeling that it’s too early for us. Sometimes we see something and say that’s exactly our problem. But the solution often seems to have long timescales and high implementation fees. We’re starting to feel that today it’s mainly something for big aerospace and defence companies, University professors and consultants. Our company is very lean and action-oriented. We have to perform in the market against competitors from around the world. We don’t have the resources to send lots of people on three-month courses. We don’t even have the resources to send one person on a three-month course. But we’ll keep moving forward in the project, attacking the question from different angles. By the end of the year, we’ll know what to do and where to go next.” “Thanks for the explanation, Tina. That tells me all I need to know for the MPL project. Have a great weekend.” * After the interview with Tina, Jane went back to her room feeling numb. Thirty-one interviews completed in five days! And several social events and late nights. She wondered how she’d done it, how she’d managed to keep going. Next up would be the Atlanta interviews on Monday, and then she could go home. Well, not exactly home, but back to Mayer. But before then, the first thing to do was to say goodbye to Linda. She collected her things from her office for the last time and went down the corridor for the last time. “Hi Linda, I’m on my way.” It wasn’t planned, but she went over and hugged her. “Thanks for everything, you’ve been wonderful.” “Come back soon, I’ve got lots more great places to show you in Cleveland!” And with that, Jane left. * Workwise it had been a tough week, but everyone had been kind and friendly, in particular Linda. Jane was sad to leave. But leave she must. She got into her car and

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drove to a nearby mall to pick up something to eat and a Cleveland T-shirt to go with her Cavs backcourt jacket. Back at the hotel she went for her regular swim, and then went back to her room. * Before eating, Jane wanted to write down several things she didn’t want to forget. First, she thought she’d now found a good name to replace Dr. Bender’s words concerning ‘the product from beginning to end’. She’d thought of ‘product lifecycle’. Sue Estadt had talked of ‘the whole contract lifecycle from beginning to end.’ Bettina Mangels had talked of ‘total lifecycle cost’. And, in Mayer, Frau Rosen had an Employee Lifecycle Management procedure. Everyone understood what a lifecycle was. Everyone would understand ‘product lifecycle’. Second, she’d matured the five-block concept she’d discussed with Fritz. The five blocks were the five phases of the product lifecycle. Finding names for the last three had been easy. Realisation. Support of Use. Retirement and Recycling. But she hadn’t found names for the first two. Third, she’d heard about some additional Product Happenings. Upgrades of machines in the field. And rental of machines. She’d need to detail them. Next, concerning working procedures, everything she’d seen and heard in Cleveland confirmed that departmental procedures were usually internally correct, but didn’t take account of the reality of what was happening with products. Fifth, she was now convinced that configuration played an important role. Although there seemed to be two configurations. The descriptive, pure-data configuration of a machine. And the configuration of the machine itself. Sixth, she’d heard about more information related to the machine during the Support of Use phase of the product lifecycle. And seventh, it felt as if the five-form model should be a six-form model. With all that written down, Jane turned to the next important activity, eating her dinner.

Chapter 19

Saturday 27 July

The alarm woke Jane at 7:30 am. She would have liked to have stayed in bed longer, but she had a long day ahead. At 8:00, she checked out of the hotel and went for breakfast at the usual place. She took her time, there was no rush. She had a flight leaving in the early afternoon. She estimated she should leave the restaurant four hours before take-off time. * Jane got to the airport far too early. Fortunately, her ticket class got her into the airline lounge. As it was relatively quiet, she decided to work on something she’d been thinking about while driving. She logged in to her University website and saw she had to hand in her research report by Friday October 4. Apparently, she should have completed a research proposal before starting her research and got it agreed by two staff members. Had she done that? She couldn’t remember the details, she just remembered discussing it with her supervisor and getting his agreement. She looked for some information about the structure of the report, but there was no sign of what a research report should look like. Although apparently, she’d have to produce a twelve-hundred-word business-oriented presentation as well. OK, but first she had to write the report. What was that expected to contain? She decided to search on Google and see what she could find. This was more productive. She’d need a topic and a title. And she should list research questions, and go to the library, and consult experts. And she’d need a methodology, findings and a conclusion. And an abstract, references and a bibliography. And APA6 format, whatever that was. Putting all that together, the main sections of the report could be Title Page, Table of Contents, Introduction, Thesis Statement, Literature Review, Methodology, Findings and Results, Conclusion, References, Bibliography, Abstract and Keywords. The Literature Review could include journals, conference proceedings, books, web pages and online sources. And she should mention the sources in the References and the Bibliography. The Conclusion should contain main points, and recommendations for next steps. What about Methodology? What would that be? Maybe that’s literature review and field work,

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visiting the Mayer sites and interviewing people. And interviewing some experts. And some analysis and synthesis. But what about Thesis Statement? What would that be? Research intent? The purpose of the research? Before she’d clarified that, Jane heard her flight called. She was happy with her progress on the research report structure, but needed some more inspiration on thesis statement, topic and title. * The flight took about two hours. By the time Jane had picked up her car and checked in at the hotel, it was past 4 pm. It was hot and humid, and it seemed too late to visit anywhere. She’d leave tourism for Sunday. Today, she’d just go to a nearby mall to get something to eat and then go to the pool and relax. After doing twenty-one interviews in five days, she felt she deserved some relaxation.

19.1 Sunday 28 July Jane went for breakfast via the Reception Desk, picking up some tourist brochures. She would read them once she’d got her breakfast organised. So, what should she have for breakfast? There were several things she didn’t understand on the menu. What were biscuits, gravy and grits doing on a breakfast menu? That meant nothing to her. This looks better, she thought. Buttermilk pancakes, two eggs, bacon, potato hash, fruit. Leafing through the brochures she saw there was plenty to see. Assuming she started at 10 am and finished at 4 pm, she’d have six hours of tourism. She’d need at least one hour for anywhere she went, so would aim for four sites. That looked like Georgia Aquarium, World of Coca-Cola, King Center and the Art Museum. * Jane got back to the hotel at 6 pm. It had been a great day. Thank you, Dr. Bender! Next up was trying to find something to eat in the mall. And then a visit to the pool. After that, she’d eat whatever she’d found in the mall.

19.2 Monday 29 July The alarm woke Jane at 6:15 am. The factory was at least thirty minutes away, so she’d planned to leave the hotel at 7:15. Before then, she needed to prepare for another long day and night with a good breakfast. Yesterday’s breakfast had kept her going until the evening, so she went for the same again. * The GPS got Jane to the factory at 7:50. Without it, she’d never have found it. It was out on a spreading industrial estate between two small towns. The security was impressive. A guard at the gate, CCTV cameras and two chain link fences to get

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through. The guard said Mr. Loeffel would be waiting for her. Then, ahead of her, she saw what appeared to be two manufacturing buildings and a two-floor office building. The road led her to the office building. Someone was standing outside, presumably Larry. He indicated where she should park. “Hi Jane, I’m Larry. Welcome to Atlanta. Come on in and let me show you around and explain what we do here. I’ve arranged for lunch. We need to leave here about 10:45. That way you’ll have plenty of time to get to the airport for your flight. This is a small site. Here in this office building there’s Mark Levine, Legal. And my office. And my assistant, Sandy McRae. And Dick Schlotzhauer. He runs Marketing and Sales. And then Hank Johnson. He manages Operations. Now let’s look at the next building. It’s the Assembly Building. We just have a sheet metal machine in the other building. I’ll show you that later. Coming back to the Assembly Building, these are the electrical and electronic assembly areas.” Jane asked, “Is that the same pick and place machine I’ve seen in the other Mayer companies?” Larry replied that he hadn’t visited them all, but he knew some of them had the same machine. “Let’s move on. Next, down here, the main modules come in from the other building, and the machine is assembled here. And then taken out for delivery.” Jane didn’t know what to say. Compared to the other production plants she’d seen in recent weeks it was like there was nothing here. Only a few machines and a few people. Larry was already moving on, “Let’s go see Mark Levine now. He’s our VP Legal.” * “Hi Mark, this is Jane,” said Larry. “Hi Jane, I just have a quick question about your MBA research report. We’d like to see it before you show it to anyone outside Mayer. This is a very litigious country. We wouldn’t want you to be sued.” “I have a contract with Dr. Bender. And I’ve signed an NDA.” “Yes, I understand. I spoke to him about it. Your report for him is confidential and not for distribution outside Mayer. It’s your research report that concerns me. Universities often claim academic freedom and then publish anything and everything. But your report will have commercial value. There could be company confidential information in there or customer confidential information. Maybe some legal firm somewhere will see that and sue Mayer hoping we’ll settle before it gets to court. To avoid that, I’ve drawn up an agreement here. This paragraph of this article specifically addresses the research report. The rest is the same as your current agreement. You don’t need to sign now. You can check it with the first one. And discuss it with Dr. Bender if you want to. OK?” “Yes, OK.” “Thanks Mark,” said Larry. “Come on Jane, let’s go see Mary Webster now. She’s our Finance VP. She’s in the next office.” *

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“Hi, Mary. This is Jane. I mentioned she’d be coming through and might have some questions.” “Hi Jane, welcome to the Finance Department. It’s made up of my office and the two offices next door. We just do standard Finance stuff here, invoice customers, chase payment, receive invoices from the supply chain, pay as late as possible.” “Do you use computer systems?” “Sure, it’s at the end of the corridor. Do you want to see it?” “No, thank you. Do you have an ERP system?” “Sure. It does everything for us. But it’s in the computer. It’s just a program. You can’t see it.” “Any other questions, Jane?” asked Larry. “Nope? OK, Jane, let’s go see Schlotz, he’s our VP Marketing.” * “Hi, Schlotz,” said Larry. “This is Jane, I told you she’d be here today.” “Hi, Jane. Welcome to the Marketing Department!” “Jane,” said Larry. “I have to run now, but I’ll be back soon, maybe ten minutes or so. Schlotz will tell you all you want to know about Marketing.” “Jane, great to meet you. I could tell you a lot about Marketing, but as Larry is going to be back soon, I’ll keep it short. We have five telesales folks here. They sell to small shops over the Web. We have two sales guys who sell to major accounts, that’s five or more machines. They’re out traveling all week, doing the rounds. We have two assistants handling orders coming in over the Web. They also look after the website, write blogs and handle social media. That’s the team. What else would you like to know?” “I only arrived an hour ago. I don’t know much about the plant here. Mr. Loeffel just gave me a quick overview. He showed me the Assembly Building, that’s all. I know very little about what you do here. So I don’t know what else I’d like to know. Why don’t you start by telling me about your products?” “We sell two products. The Patriot and the All-Star. They meet the needs of more than 80% of machine shops. More than 90% of parts are American. 100% assembled in the US, at our Atlanta plant. That’s here. Deliveries to the fifty states. Delivery in under seven days in the continental forty-eight. We’re low-cost. Cost is the main factor for 88% of our market. We make the lowest-cost standard machines. All the functionality that’s needed. Three Rs, reliable, rugged, robust. Three Hs, high-tech, high-quality, high performance.” “Do people buy machine tools over the Web?” “Sure, why not? These days everyone buys everything over the Web. You never bought anything over the Web? Come on, I’ll show you our website. Look there’s the Patriot. And that’s the All-Star. All the specs are there. These are the regional phone numbers for our sales engineers. All the calls come here. We also run the Club Website for users of our machines. They can ask questions, share tips among themselves. We can see what they want.” “Can they select options on the site?”

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“No options, we’re standard. Everything they need is on the machine.” “What about specials?” “We don’t do them. That wouldn’t be us. Our customers don’t want them. They want low cost. Specials double the cost of a machine. Anyway, a good machinist will find a way to combine functions so the special functionality isn’t needed.” “Do you do market surveys?” “No. They’re a waste of money.” “Do you go to industry shows?” “Sure, once a quarter. It’s important for folks to see us in the flesh.” “Do you have Marketing brochures? “Sure, on the Web. Not printed ones, if that’s what you meant. Too expensive.” “Which services do you offer?” “Spare parts. Let me show you the Web page. Machinists are practical people. They order here. Overnight delivery. They change the parts themselves.” “Do you provide Maintenance services?” “Like I said, machinists are practical people. They do the maintenance themselves. They do it well, they want to keep their machines running. They don’t want outsiders coming in and upsetting their machine settings.” “Do you offer an installation service?” “We deliver to their address. We unload. That’s it. Like I said, they’re practical people. We unload where they want it. They know where they want it, we don’t.” “What about Returns?” “No. Our job is to sell new machines. Of course, there’s a thriving market out there for our used machines. Prices are high, our machines keep their value. But that’s not our business.” “Thanks Mr. Schlotzhauer, no more questions. Hank Johnson’s next on my list.” “I’m pretty sure he’s not here today. Let’s go check with Sandy.” * Sandy confirmed that Hank was out. However, Larry had said he would fill in for Hank and would go out for lunch with Jane. He’d be along in five minutes. “How’s it going, Jane? Getting the information you need? We need to head for lunch now. There’s not much in the way of restaurants around here. Chicken and waffles OK with you?” “Sounds interesting, lead the way. I’ve not been here before.” “First things first. Do you have any questions?” “Yes. A lot.” “Well, let’s hold them until we get to lunch. I suggest we take both cars. Then you can head straight to the airport after lunch.” They drove for maybe twenty minutes, and then Larry indicated a restaurant car park. Jane stepped out into the hot, humid air and longed for Somerset. Larry walked over to her, “I’ve reserved a quiet table for us. Let’s go in.”

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They went in. It was cool inside. “Hi, Monique,” said Larry. “Are we in the corner today? Can we order?” Monique came over with iced water. “Hi, Ma’am. Would you like to know today’s specials?” “No thank you, Monique,” said Larry. “We’ll have two of your Chicken and Waffles, please. I have a visitor from afar.” “Anything else, Sir?” “Two cokes, please.” “A small one for me, please,” added Jane. “Now, Jane,” said Larry. “You have some questions?” “Larry, I have a lot of questions. Dr. Bender asked me to find out what happens to products from beginning to end. I’ve been thinking about the positioning of the sale of your machines. It’s always the same, I think. There’s no Engineering work before a sale. And you don’t have Resales.” “That’s right.” “And you do very little After-Sales. You sell some spare parts, that’s all.” “The way you say that makes it sound bad. Think of it another way. We offer lowest-cost standard machines. Everything else follows from that. The customers want to pay as little as possible, with no additional costs after purchase. So, no AfterSales Service. But to achieve that, we make very, very reliable machines. How often do you take your car in for a service now? Or your cell phone?” “Something’s not clear to me. I guess you must upgrade the machines sometimes?” “That depends what you mean by upgrade. We guarantee software upgrades to customers, but we don’t upgrade any parts on the customers’ machines. That’s not our business. But we do upgrade the Patriot and the All-Star models once a year. We test for months before the release to be sure there are no problems. The upgrade is based on an approach we have that’s called Idea Management. Throughout the year, everyone puts any ideas they have of their own, or from customers, or from potential customers, into a little application we’ve developed. I got the idea for this from my previous company. We look frequently at the ideas, and once a year we decide which ideas will be included in the next annual upgrade of the model. You may be thinking that with such an approach we’re never at the forefront of innovation. But we’re not aiming to be at the forefront of innovation. We’re focused on low cost.” “Larry, I have another question. I saw you sent me a lot of documents. Thank you. But I haven’t had the chance to print them out and work on them. I saw a lot of product drawings, but not many procedures. Did you send them all?” “Yes, but our procedures usually cover many subjects, so we don’t have lots of small ones like some people. In my previous company, specials were a killer. And so were Engineering Changes. So here we try to prevent any changes. It’s a different way of thinking from many companies. They have a culture of continually making changes. They think that’s important for their business. Being responsive to all the changes going on around them. We have the opposite view. We try to make all the improvements at the same time. Once a year. That means we have very stable operations for most of the year. In other companies they keep making changes, often of no significant value. Often, they’re not set up to handle the changes properly, so the

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changes aren’t done properly, or they request a change on a previous change before it’s been implemented. Then they create huge Change Boards to try and manage the mess. And they have chasers to run around and get the changes implemented properly. I guess that’s great if you have unlimited funding. But we don’t, so we aim for management for minimum change during the year. Sorry to change the subject, but would you like Homemade Pecan Pie and Ice Cream? I don’t know any better in Georgia.” “Thank you, Larry, that sounds good. And thanks for introducing me to Chicken and Waffles. That was a new experience. Coming back to business, in the other Mayer plants I’ve seen, there’s a lot of machining of mechanical parts in the plant. I only saw electrical and electronic here.” “We have a different approach. We buy in the basic mechanical machine. We buy rugged. We make standard machines, so we buy large quantities. We buy low cost. Then we build our parts on the basic machine. The housing for example. That’s what customers see. Whether it’s on the Web or at an industry event. Contemporary design. Indefatigable image. Our nameplate. The flag. We insert our electronics and software. That’s where the value is in machine tools today.” “Is that possible? I think Mr. Schlotzhauer told me 90% of parts are American.” “They are. We import very few parts. Remember we’re talking number of parts, not another unit of measure like weight of parts.” “OK, I see. And he said 100% assembled in the US.” “That’s right. All our assembly is here, as you saw this morning. It’s all true, Jane, otherwise we wouldn’t say it. But, changing the subject, now it’s time for you to head to the airport.” Jane thanked Larry for all his help and headed for the airport. * An hour later, Jane had checked in and was waiting for her flight. She had almost twelve hours ahead of her before landing. Hopefully, she’d be able to do some creative thinking during that time. But first, she needed to make sure she didn’t forget all the new ideas that had appeared during her days in the US. She already had a list from Cleveland. One point was upgrades of the installed base. Another point was the hourly rental of machines. She added two points from Atlanta. Larry had talked about Idea Management. And limiting Engineering Changes. And there was another question in her mind. Does the way they work in Atlanta equate to one of the Product Happenings she’d already identified? Or was it a new one? Something else to think about on the plane was her research report. She needed a research statement, a research topic and a title for the report. But she’d watch a film first. That would take a couple of hours out of the flight. Then she’d think about research for a couple of hours until dinner. Then sleep. If all went well, by the time she woke up, it would be time for breakfast and landing. In the meantime, she could eat some of the fruit on offer, and drink some mineral water. *

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After take-off, Jane watched a film. Then she thought about watching another one. No, she told herself, first you have to think about a research statement, a research topic and a title for the report. Surely that can’t be difficult for someone who can do thirty-one interviews in five days! She thought about it for a few minutes. The research topic could be ‘Changes in the Approach to managing Products’. A bit short for a topic! Perhaps that could be the title. Or ‘Different Approaches to managing Products.’ Or ‘Changing Market Requirements and their Effect on the Management of Products’? Not really, it’s not just about markets, it’s also about technology. So, ‘The New Environment for Products and its Impact on their Management’. Or, better, ‘The New Environment for a Company’s Products and its Impact on the Approach to their Management from Beginning to End’. Then she could expand on that in the research statement. For example, ‘Companies developing and selling products are faced with a new environment due to new technologies, globalisation, an increased focus on the environment and cost pressures. In response to these changes, companies are changing the way they manage products and moving away from traditional departmental approaches. The research identifies issues with the traditional approach and shows examples of a new approach used by a successful global company.’ She read that through again, and thought it looked great. And it looked as if dinner was about to be served. It was time to relax and forget about MPL for a few hours.

Chapter 20

Tuesday 30 July

Jane arrived at the Mayer site just before lunch. She went over to Frau Mueller’s office to tell her she was back and would tell her all about her travel in the afternoon. Fritz was also there. Jane asked him if he’d organised the two extra tables for the Container. She’d need them for all the documents from Cleveland and Atlanta. He said he’d do it after lunch as everyone was eating now. He suggested they should also have lunch. * After a Line 1 lunch with Fritz, Jane went back to the Container and started printing and labelling US documents. Fortunately, the two extra tables arrived at 3 pm, so she could start laying documents out in their right places. At 4:30, she’d nearly finished but decided to call it a day. She had to tell Frau Mueller about her journey. She calculated she’d be able to finish the remaining documents early the next day. There were just a few outstanding procedural documents and a few product-related documents. And she needed to check the lists of systems. * By 5:30, Jane was back at Gasthof Adler. She was feeling lightheaded and wasn’t sure what to do. According to her calculations, it was only lunchtime in the US, so it wouldn’t make sense to go to bed now, even though she felt exhausted. Instead she’d have dinner, talk to Frau Adler for a while, and then go to bed without setting the alarm.

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20.1 Wednesday 31 July When Jane woke up, she looked at her watch. It was almost 8 am. She’d slept nearly twelve hours. Maybe she could have slept some more, but she decided to get up and get down to breakfast by 8:30. That way she should be in Mayer by 9:15 at the latest, and would be able to finish off the US documents by 10:15. With them out of the way, she’d be able to concentrate on reviewing her plan up to the end of the week. She only had three days left in Mayer and needed to make best use of them. * By 10:00, Jane had downloaded all the US documents, labelled them and put them in their places on the tables. Now she had to concentrate on her remaining time in Mayer. There were three main areas of activity. Updating the material on the Container walls with the information from the US. And preparing the final presentation for Dr. Bender. But that would have to wait. She could do that on Friday, once she’d cleared up the other last few points. As someone had once said, all things are ready if our minds be so. The third activity was to get a clear picture in her head of the work she was doing and where it was taking her. But to do that, she needed a coffee. * After drinking half the coffee, Jane listed the next steps. Review the Product Happenings. Review the Big Picture on the whiteboard. Update her model. Update the OnePager. Now she had to concentrate on going through this logically, step by step. In the beginning, she’d been asked by Dr. Bender to find out what happened with products from their beginning to their end. One concept she’d found that addressed that flow was the departmental structure of Marketing, Engineering, Production and Service. In the M—E—P—S flow, the Marketing Department identifies the product the customers want, the Engineering Department develops the products, the Production Department makes it. And then the Service Department maintains it. Another concept she’d seen was the marketing life cycle concept that went through Market Development, Market Growth, Market Maturity and Market Decline. But that seemed a very high-level view and didn’t explain what was actually happening with products. From what she’d seen, there was nothing wrong with having functional departments. Indeed, a functional department offered many advantages, such as having a pool of skilled practitioners in a function, training, career path, and provision of specialised tools for that function. It wasn’t the functional Department that was the problem. The problem was assuming that the M—E—P—S flow represented what happened with the product from beginning to end. Thinking about that required more coffee. * After finishing the coffee, Jane thought about the different problems she’d seen with the M—E—P—S flow. She had working procedures from all the sites and all the departments, and they were all written independently by each department. And they rarely addressed an activity, or even a small step of an activity, taken by another

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department. Yet a lot of the time the activities were cross-functional. She had examples from Achim in Hanover and Marie-Cécile in France showing clearly that, in some company activities, people from as many as five or six departments were working together in parallel. This idea of the departments working in series didn’t make sense and didn’t correspond to reality. Another thing that made no sense was to have a department called Engineering. What was that supposed to mean? There were all kinds of engineers, design engineers, software engineers, production engineers, service engineers, maintenance engineers. And most of them weren’t in the Engineering Department. And another thing that made no sense in the M—E—P—S flow was that there was no sign of the Finance Department. Are you kidding? The whole point of developing a product was to make money, and somehow the Finance Department was never involved? Another really strange thing she’d noticed was with Product Managers. Where do they fit in the M—E—P—S model? She’d seen some in Marketing Departments and some in Engineering Departments. How could that be? And another thing. Where’s the product portfolio in M—E—P—S? Nowhere. It’s not even addressed. And where’s Product Portfolio Management? Again unclear, sometimes in Marketing, sometimes in Engineering, sometimes in Corporate. If the M—E—P—S model is valid, why doesn’t it show where Product Portfolio Management fits? She felt she was making good progress describing problems with the M—E—P—S flow, so went and looked out the Container window. What next? * Coming back to her chair, Jane thought about the roles she’d seen that seemed to be in the wrong department. Surely a manufacturing engineer in the Production Department who writes an NC program should be in the Engineering Department? They don’t produce parts, they produce software. What’s the difference between their programming and that of the software engineers in the Engineering Department who develop the program for the NC controller? And what about people in the Engineering Department developing physical prototypes and parts. Isn’t that Production’s job to produce parts? The M—E—P—S model has lots of anomalies. Another is the duplication of computer systems. Each department wants to have its own applications. Then you finish up, for example, with a PDM system in Engineering and another PDM system in Service. That makes no sense! Similarly, there’s duplication of data about the product. Each department seems to want to have its own data, so you finish up with each Department having its own copy of data describing the product. It’s duplication, waste. And, with copies of data, perhaps it’s even worse because there’s the danger that the copies in each department aren’t all the same. Which can lead to quality problems. Going back to the departmental procedures, they only show what people in that department should do, not what people in other departments are doing in parallel. Not surprisingly that confuses everyone since nobody knows what should really be happening. All that covers the problems with the M—E—P—S approach. Now what’s the improvement suggestion for Dr. Bender? That’s not so easy, she’d look at that after lunch. *

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After lunch, Jane made herself a coffee and drank half of it. Now she was ready for the improvement suggestion. From the interviews, three concepts had emerged. First, rather than referring to products from beginning to end, she proposed referring to the product lifecycle. The product lifecycle, that’s the product from beginning to end. In the interviews, several people had mentioned a lifecycle in other contexts. It seemed to be a concept that was generally understood. She drew the product lifecycle as a horizontal rectangle, with the beginning on the left and the end on the right. The second concept she proposed was that there are five phases in the product lifecycle. This had started to become clear when she’d positioned all the activities on the first whiteboard. She remembered showing it to Fritz before she went to the US. In Cleveland, she’d found names for the three right-hand phases. Realisation, Support of Use, and Retirement and Recycling. On the way back from Atlanta, she’d thought of naming the first two phases Ideation and Definition. If you looked inside a lifecycle phase, the activities could be defined in cross-functional swimlane diagrams of the type that Achim and Marie-Cécile had shown. Each swimlane represents a role. Those swimlanes show what is really happening with the product across the lifecycle, from beginning to end. And now for the third concept, the model. But before that, some more coffee. * Jane finished her coffee and returned to the third concept, the model. After the interviews in France, she’d developed a five-form model. She’d drawn this on a sheet she referred to as the One-Pager. It was the picture she’d show Dr. Bender in the elevator. At the top of the page was a rectangle containing the product portfolio, the description of all the products and parts that the company has ever produced. She’d seen this was necessary because Céline Meunier and Roger de Brouckere made use of the product portfolio when developing proposals. Below that were the three lines she referred to as the upper line, the middle line and the lower line. Below them was the sales line. But from what she’d learned in Cleveland, now she had to change from a five-form model to a six-form model. She drew the sixth form, another rectangle, under the sales line. It represented the company’s installed base. In Cleveland, she’d seen they proposed upgrades to customers’ existing machines. To do that, they needed to know the installed base in detail. So it had to be in her model describing what happened to Dr. Bender’s products from beginning to end. Dr. Bender had asked what happened to the products from their beginning to their end. She’d found that different things could happen. She’d called them Product Happenings, and found about a dozen. They all contained hundreds of activities and documents, which made them confusing to explain and understand. But, for each of them, she’d developed a script of a few hundred words to explain what was happening with the product from beginning to end. That seemed a good place to stop for the day.

Chapter 21

Thursday 1 August

Jane was woken by the alarm at 7:30 am. She was adjusting to the time change and aimed to be in the Container by 8:30. * However, Jane’s brain seemed to be running in low gear, and she didn’t get to the Container until 9:00. She went straight over to see Frau Mueller and have a coffee. Her brain felt as if it needed more stimulation. But, before she could get a coffee, Dr. Bender came out of his office, welcomed her back and said he’d like to come over to the Container with Fritz at 9:30 and hear about her progress. “Hello, Dr. Bender,” Jane replied. “All’s well, and I’ll tell you all about it in the Container at 9:30.” Dr. Bender and Fritz left for a meeting, and Jane was able to have her coffee. When Dr. Bender got to the Container with Fritz at 9:30, Jane reminded him that she’d be making her final presentation the next day, Friday August 2. She told him there were still some things that she had to update and change. Nevertheless, she’d made great progress and nothing that she’d told him before going to the US had changed fundamentally. “That’s excellent,” said Dr. Bender. “You’ve done a great job. I’m delighted. When you started, I didn’t know what you’d achieve. You’ve certainly exceeded my expectations. Congratulations!” “Thank you, Dr. Bender. I’m glad you like it.” “It’s so good, Jane, that I’d like you to stay a little longer and help us take the next step, put it into practice.” “I’m sorry, Dr. Bender, but I can’t. You know I have to write my research report. And I don’t have much time. The new term starts in nine weeks.” “How much progress have you made so far?” “That’s part of the problem. I haven’t started writing the report. That’s why I have to start writing very soon!”

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“But have you got your conclusions, and the section structure?” “I have a preliminary section structure, but I don’t have the conclusions yet.” “But in that case, you can’t start writing it now. It’s like here, if we want to succeed with a project in Mayer, we don’t start until we know exactly what we want to achieve. Otherwise, it’s guaranteed failure. We need to know what machine we want to make before we start building. We don’t just start making bits and pieces and hope for the best. It’s the same for your report, you need to start by knowing your conclusions. Then you work on clarifying the logic to get to the conclusion. You don’t start by writing low-level details and then try to put them together to make the report. You have to start with the very top view. I remember you mentioned a three-line or fourline model. But a professor could say that’s just untested theory and probably wrong. Whereas if you stay with us a bit longer, we can put the theory into practice. And then your conclusion can be the new approach to products at Mayer. And no professor can dispute that. If you stay, we’ll get someone to type the report, you just dictate it. And we’ll get someone to make your diagrams. And do whatever formatting is needed. While you just work on the value-adding material. What do you think? You could call it ‘Developing a New Product Management Approach in a Machine Tool Company’. Much better than the usual MBA report title of ‘Comparative Study, by Literature Search, of blah blah blah’. What do you think?” Jane thought about it. It was all a question of time. It was true that, if she stayed at Gasthaus Adler, she’d make great progress at the weekends. There’d be no interruptions to slow her down. Whereas, if she went home, her friends would want her to go clubbing and eating and shopping. And she’d go and see Mum, which would take up more time. “Why don’t you stay until the end of August?” asked Dr. Bender. “That’s four weeks. I can ask Frau Mueller to extend your consulting contract this afternoon. And she can look after your reservations. What do you say?” Why not? Jane thought. She’d make enough in a month here to cover her expenses until the end of the MBA course. And it would be interesting to see if her theory made sense in practice. But she’d really need to organise her time properly, starting tomorrow at Gasthaus Adler. “Yes Dr. Bender, I agree. I’ll stay until the end of August.” “That’s great, Jane. Fritz, please go and ask Frau Mueller to extend Jane’s consulting contract until the end of August. When will that be?” “Friday August 30,” replied Fritz after consulting his PC. “Good. Please tell Frau Mueller I want to sign the contract with Jane by 4:15 this afternoon. That way it will be out of the way and we’ll be clear to start on Monday. Now Jane, let’s discuss the next step for Mayer. We should have a cross-functional team working on this. And I want to involve all the sites. From the interviews, who would you recommend involving? Starting here. I’d like Lianne to be involved as her team is looking at business processes.” Jane thought for a while, “Mr. Sauer.” “And Hanover?” asked Dr. Bender. Jane thought for a while, “Achim.”

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“Who’s that?” “Achim Klein. He reports to Tanja, the Head of Medical Sales. He’s very logical and has a good overview.” “What about France?” asked Dr. Bender. Jane thought for a while, “Marie-Cécile Rousseau.” “And who’s she? You seem to know more people in my company than I do!” Jane laughed. “Well, I’ve spent the last two months doing nothing but talking to people in your company! Marie-Cécile is the Quality person in the Operations Department. She reports to Mr. Girard.” “What about North America?” asked Dr. Bender. Jane thought about the people she’d met in the US, “Larry Loeffel would be good.” “I’m not sure he could be available much,” replied Dr. Bender. “But I’ll ask him. It’s going to be the same for anyone who’s doing an important job for the company. They’re needed full-time on their day job, which makes it difficult to have them here. On the other hand, we don’t want people who aren’t useful in the team. What about Cleveland?” “I’ll have to think about that. Chuck’s secretary was really helpful, but she doesn’t know about the products.” “OK, we could start by looking at that team. But there’s nobody there from Engineering. Who could that be?” Jane thought for a while, “I know, Mr. Ramsberger. He’s communicative and logical. And has a good overview. And he’s here.” “That’s a good start. We can always add other people later. And we can always bring in SMEs, Subject Matter Experts, on an as-needed basis from here. And also from Hanover and France. They’re only a few hours away. Anything else today, Jane?” “The team will need somewhere to work, so could we put them in the Container next door? We could leave all my interview findings and conclusions in this Container. Then develop the future picture next door. As far as I know, the other Container isn’t used much. I’ve only seen someone called Radovan go in there some mornings, but there’s not much in there apart from a few posters and a coffee machine and some cream.” “Good idea. I’ll get Frau Mueller to organise that. I’ll make sure your contract is ready for signature at 4 pm. You can come over on your way out and sign it. Before then, please think about what the team should be doing in August.” “Yes, Dr. Bender, but I have a question about that.” “Yes?” “Will it be possible for me to share with the team the information about people’s interviews that’s in the latest draft of my report? That way I won’t have to repeat everything that’s in there.” “Probably, but please give me a copy so I can see what’s there over the weekend.” *

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Jane went over to Dr. Bender’s office at 4 pm. He asked if she’d thought about the team’s activities in August. “Yes. We’ll have four weeks in August. I’m thinking that everybody could work from their home site for the first two weeks and then we can all work together here for the third week. I’ll finish my final report in the fourth week. Lianne and I can coordinate things from here for the first two weeks. Then the others can all come and work together here from Monday August 19 to Friday August 23. During the first two weeks, that’s Monday August 5 to Friday August 16, I’ll work with the European sites in the morning and the US sites in the afternoon. The first two days, I’ll go over the background. For example, I’ll explain about all the documents in the Container, and show them the lists on the Container walls. Then I’ll explain about the whiteboards. Then I’ll explain the models. That’s the five-phase product lifecycle model and the six-form model. And then I’ll explain about the Product Happenings. That will cover the background.” “That sounds good,” said Dr. Bender. “That means someone like Larry would only be absent from their workplace for one week.” “The next big subject to explain will be swimlanes and process mapping,” continued Jane. “Lianne could kick that off, explaining the theory behind it. She could also show examples that she has from other business processes. Then she could turn to the product-related business processes, and briefly explain them.” “Sorry to interrupt, but have you identified a team member from Cleveland?” “Not yet,” replied Jane. “I was thinking we should ask Chuck Marek.” “Chuck? But he won’t have the time.” “I know, and it’s the same with Larry. But my feeling is that in both Cleveland and Atlanta it’s very hierarchical. The people down the hierarchy behave as if they’re just there to do the job on their job title. And for the exact number of hours on their contract. Maybe Mr. Zielinski would be good, but I think it would be better if you speak to Chuck first and get him to delegate someone.” “I understand. Let me think about it. Please continue where you were.” “Next,” continued Jane. “Lianne could move on to mapping, documenting, the current product-related processes, the As-Is processes. That’s what we want each site to do next. Lianne can explain about the scope of mapping and the level of detail. We’ll be working with people from five sites and we’ll have six processes. Perhaps we can get each site to map two of its current, As-Is, processes. That would give us ten, but we’d really like to have As-Is maps for each process from at least two sites. So perhaps we can ask Hanover and France to do three As-Is processes each. And the other three sites can do two each. That will give us twelve. We’ll have to think about which process makes sense for each site, but it would be good to see the current Ideation process from Atlanta. Larry has done some great work on that. And for Product Portfolio Management it would be good to involve Klaus Becker, as that’s his area. It’s best if they develop swimlane charts of the Ideation, Definition, Realisation, Support of Use, and Retirement and Recycling activities in their companies. That way, by the time they get here, they’ll have it available to share with the rest of the team. We can have meetings online to synchronise and make sure everybody’s on the same page. I’ll send them a template, so everyone follows the

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same format. In addition to the As-Is process maps, the swimlane charts, each site should also prepare a list of its current improvement projects. That’s because those projects could lead to changes in the flows. And each site should prepare a list of its pain points in the six phases and indicate their positions on the swimlane diagrams.” “Is that important?” asked Dr. Bender. “Shouldn’t they be looking towards the future not to the past?” “Identifying the pain points is important for several reasons. For one, it will help get people out of their daily rut of acceptance of what’s going on around them. It will get them to start thinking analytically. And it will get us to an overall list of today’s pain points for all the sites. That will help convince people of the need to change. Also, when we eventually get to the blueprint for the future situation, we can run through the pain point list to make sure that each point has been addressed. And we’ll be able to explain to non-participants what we’re going to improve.” “A blueprint for the future situation. That’s what we need,” said Dr. Bender. “When do you think we can have that?” “We’ll aim for a first version by the end of August. It won’t be complete, but it will be a great first step.” “Excellent Jane, that sounds like a plan. I’ll discuss it with the Site Executives and see how that works for them.” “May I call Lianne and arrange a meeting with her for tomorrow? And involve her over the next few weeks?” “Yes, and you can tell her that you’ve spoken to me about it and you have my support.” “Finally, one more thing. You asked me to find out what people are doing and planning for Digital Twin and Digital Thread. What I found was that people see the Digital Thread as a continuous unbroken strand of product data that flows through the product lifecycle from ideation to recycling and reuse. At least, that’s the vision, the theory. In reality, in practice, it’s much more likely to be a thread with a smaller scope. A thread that doesn’t run across the whole product lifecycle, just a smaller part of it. I can illustrate examples with threads of wool on the whiteboards in my Container. And starting from them, it’s relatively clear to see how a Digital Thread project should run. It fits with what Achim Klein did in Hanover. And with Armin Freisleben’s implementation approach, also in Hanover.” “That’s great. Yes, I’ve seen the threads on the whiteboards in the Container. That makes sense. What about Digital Twins?” “That’s not so clear. People on the different sites agree that a Digital Twin is a virtual representation of a physical product that represents the product throughout the lifecycle, but they’re approaching it differently. For example, Mr. Ramsberger started a project here with Grigor Kanfer in the Research and Innovation Section. But Willy Hirschfeld’s working on another Digital Twin project in Annette Maier’s Software Group. In Hanover, Ernst Gersten is looking at Digital Twin. He’s the Technology Group Leader. And Denise Masson, their Software Engineering Group Leader, is also working on Digital Twin. But she’s not working with Dr. Gersten, but with Willy Hirschfeld. In Cleveland, it’s different again. Donna Zimmermann from their IT Department has a Digital Transformation project using external consultants.

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She told me the consultants recommend starting with implementing Digital Thread or Threads. And then doing a kind of feasibility study for Digital Twin to identify which area to start with.” “That’s an excellent overview! Thank you, Jane.”

21.1 Friday 2 August The alarm woke Jane at 6:30 am. She didn’t feel great but got up quickly. There was no point in wondering what time it was in Atlanta. She was here at Gasthaus Adler and needed to be in the Container by 8:00. Her meeting with Lianne wasn’t until 9:00, but she had a lot to do before then. Jane was down for breakfast at 7:00. She asked Frau Adler if she could work at her table on Saturday. “Yes, no problem,” replied Frau Adler. “Good, thank you very much. And today I should be back by 6 pm.” * By the time Lianne arrived in the Container, Jane had finished her early morning activities. The main task now was to prepare for the upcoming online meetings with the other four sites. Jane had thought they’d need Monday and Tuesday to go over the background, findings and next steps for MPL. However, as they went into more detail, it soon became clear they’d need three days. Each day, they’d cover the same material twice, once with the Europeans in the morning and once with the Americans in the afternoon. Once the need for three days was clear, they went through and looked at each subject again to see exactly how long it needed and where it would fit. It was 11:30 by the time it was clear what each of them had to prepare. A good time to stop for lunch. * After lunch with Lianne, Jane went back to the Container and started preparing everything she’d present on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. She had about three hours before her as Lianne was due back at 4 pm for a dry run, a run-through of everything. * Jane and Lianne started the run-through with Jane’s presentation. It was good that a fresh pair of eyes looked at her work. Lianne pointed out several places where the sequence wasn’t logical, or something wasn’t properly explained, or there were formatting and spelling errors. At 4:45, they changed roles. Lianne ran through her presentation, and Jane made improvement suggestions. By 5:30, they were through. All that remained was to make the changes. They could do that on Monday before the first meeting with Achim and Marie-Cécile began at 9 am.

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21.2 Saturday 3 August As it was Saturday, Jane didn’t have breakfast until 8 am. At 8:45, she started working on her research report. She wanted to work through the concepts again, taking account of the work she’d be doing in August for Dr. Bender.

21.3 Sunday 4 August Jane had breakfast at 8 am. Unusually, she was going to take a day off work and visit Munich. During breakfast, she prepared her itinerary. Alte Pinakotek, walk to Marienplatz for lunch, then walk to Deutches Museum, and then walk in Englischer Garten. And be back at the village restaurant by 6 pm. * Back at the village restaurant, drinking a weissbier, Jane had a moment of panic. Did her presentation for Monday make any sense? Was she really replying to the question that Dr. Bender had asked? She told herself to calm down and think rationally. What was the question he’d asked? That was easy, to find out what happened to products from their beginning to their end. And had she answered that? Yes, honestly and to the best of her ability. She’d interviewed more than a hundred people and, from their answers, knew exactly what happened to products from their beginning to their end. So, no need to panic. But what about the idea of replacing ‘products from their beginning to the end’ with ‘product lifecycle’. Was that reasonable? Answer, perfectly reasonable. Lifecycle was used in many contexts, and it involved a series of stages from beginning until end. And what about the five stages of the product lifecycle. Did that reflect reality, or was it totally wrong? Jane drew a rectangle on her paper napkin. Then wrote the names of the five stages inside. It made sense. In the Ideation phase, the product is just an idea. During the Definition phase, the product is defined to such a level of detail that it can then be produced in the next phase. There’s a huge difference between the first two phases. You can’t produce an idea! Then came the third phase, Realisation. No-one’s going to deny that a product goes through a phase of production. If it didn’t, it would never exist. It would still be just a definition. And then the fourth phase, the phase of Support of Use. Again, who can deny that a product is used? Not much sense in producing a product and then not using it. And who can deny that the company provides support for the customer’s use of the product? And the fifth phase, the Retirement and Recycling phase? Well, maybe the name is not quite correct, should it be the ‘dump the unusable and unwanted product’ phase? Maybe, but not exactly easy on the eye. But it would be easy to change the name if someone had a better idea. Finally, what about the Product Happenings? Well, she hadn’t invented them, the interviewees had told her about them. So why was she panicking? Stop panicking, enjoy your weissbeer, enjoy your dinner!

Chapter 22

Monday 5 August

Jane was down for breakfast at 7 am. She needed to be in the Container by 8:00 to include the improvements that Lianne had suggested for her presentation. * Mr. Ramsberger arrived in the Container at 8:45. Lianne and Mr. Sauer joined them a few minutes later. At 9:00, they were live online with Achim and Tanja in Hanover and Marie-Cécile in France. “Hello everybody,” said Jane. “Welcome to our first workshop. For the next two weeks, we’ll be having a three-hour workshop each day from 9:00 am to noon. And each afternoon, there’ll be a similar workshop with the US. This morning, I’ll tell you something about my work on the five sites, the interview results, the documents in the Container, and the first whiteboard. And, tomorrow morning, I’ll tell you about the other two whiteboards, the two models and the Product Happenings. And then, Lianne will take over and address process mapping and swimlanes. Lianne will complete those subjects on Wednesday morning. On Thursday morning, we’ll start work on As-Is process maps. It won’t be clear until late on Wednesday which process should be mapped on each site. However, you can start thinking now about who to involve in process mapping.” * After lunch, Jane and Lianne repeated the morning’s presentation. This time they were joined online by Larry from Atlanta. And Chuck Marek, Steve Zielinski, Sandy Stone and Newt Thomson from Cleveland. * At 5 pm, Jane went back to Gasthaus Adler with mixed feelings. She felt the workshop had met its targets, but it was still unclear who was going to be the lead participant from Cleveland. And she didn’t feel good about the group dynamics. However, the ball was rolling, so she relaxed and enjoyed her dinner.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. Stark, Product Lifecycle Management (Volume 5), Decision Engineering, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46887-2_22

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22.1 Tuesday 6 August Jane was in the Container by 8:00 am to prepare for the morning workshop. Lianne and Mr. Ramsberger arrived at 8:55, and they started on time at 9:00. “Good Morning, everybody. Yesterday, I showed you the first whiteboard. This morning, I’ll start by showing you the other two whiteboards, the two models and the Product Happenings. And then, at about 10:30, Lianne will take over and start with process mapping and swimlanes.” * Jane finished her presentation at 10:14. A fifteen-minute break was agreed. * After the break, Lianne took over, “The idea is that the presentation I’m about to give could be reused on all sites as an introduction to process mapping and swimlanes. It won’t contain much that’s new for you, Achim and Marie-Cécile, but you can reuse it on your sites to onboard other people who’ll be involved in As-Is process mapping. If there’s something you see that you disagree with, just tell me, and I’ll take it into account for the final version of the presentation. The intention is that there’ll be just one final version, and it’ll be used on all sites so everyone gets the same message. OK?” “Yes,” replied Achim. Lianne continued, “There are six parts to my presentation, and I’ll try to cover the first three today and the other three tomorrow. The subjects for today are an introduction to process mapping, an introduction to swimlanes, and some suggested rules for common use of swimlanes across the five sites. The subjects for tomorrow are examples of process maps in Mayer, agreeing on volunteers for mapping each of the six processes, and documenting pain points and improvement activities on all the sites. All OK so far?” “Yes,” replied Achim. “Good, so I’ll start with the introduction to process mapping. You know that a process is a set of related activities that transforms inputs into outputs. The simplest representation of an activity is a rectangular box with the name of the activity written in the box, a horizontal arrow coming into the left-hand side of the box representing the input, a horizontal arrow going out of its right-hand side representing the output, and a vertical arrow coming up into the bottom of the box. The vertical arrow represents enablers such as a person or a computer system or a machine. Activities can be linked to build up a process. The end point of one activity is the start point of the next. I’ll make an example with these three activities: define the customer requirement; design the product; and manufacture the product. That could be represented by three rectangular boxes, one after the other, with the output from the first being the input for the second, and so on. Everything clear so far?”

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“Yes,” replied Achim. “Another technique to mention is hierarchical decomposition of activities. For example, if we have a top-level, Level 0, activity box named Develop New Product, we could decompose that into five constituent activities: Get Confirmation of Requirement by the Customer; Identify Concepts and select Best Concept; Detail the Design; Confirm Prototypes; and Introduce the New Product to the Market. Then we could decompose each of these five activity boxes, which are at Level 1, into their constituent activities. As an example, I’ll take the activity box named ‘Identify Concepts and select Best Concept’. We could decompose that into seven constituent activities at Level 2: Review Customer Requirements; Clarify Concept Selection Criteria; Review Existing Designs; Identify Concepts to be developed; Develop the Concepts; Test the Concepts; and Select the Best Concept. Proceeding like this, at the top level, Level 0, just the main activities are shown. But going down the levels, more and more activities are identified and shown. Eventually we could get to a level showing individual tasks. All clear so far?” “Yes,” said Mr. Sauer. “Using activity boxes, it can be difficult to show the participants, especially if there are many of them. Another approach is a swimlane representation. Imagine you’re looking down on the long side of a swimming pool with six lanes. Competitors in a race dive in from the left-hand side. That’s the short side of the swimming pool. Where they dive in, we indicate the roles in the process. We’ll use this swimlane representation to represent the three-activity process. In this case, assume that the uppermost lane, which we can call Lane 1, is for the customer. So, in Lane 1, there’ll be the customer’s activities. The lane underneath is Lane 2, that’s for someone in Marketing. So, in Lane 2, we’ll show that person’s activities. Lane 3 is for someone in Engineering and Lane 4 is for someone in a Production role. We’ll position the first activity box so it’s half in Lane 1 and half in the Marketing Lane, as there’s activity there from both the customer and the person in Marketing. The second box is in the Engineering Lane and the third box is in the Production Lane. Lane 5 is for data and document management systems. In the first box we write the name of the activity, Define Customer Requirements. Its output is the requirements. We can put them on a curved arrow and show them being sent down to the data or document management system. The horizontal arrow leaving the right-hand side of the box shows the flow of activity. It goes to Design the Product, the second activity box. There are two arrows coming into this box. One is the horizontal flow arrow from the first activity. The other is the curved data arrow with the customer requirements coming up from the document management system in Lane 5. We use a small green circle to show a computer system is used in a task. Marketing could be using a word processing system to get the customer requirements. We write WP in that circle to show it’s a word processing system. If a CAD system is being used by Engineering to design the product, we write CAD in the small green circle next to the Design the Product activity box. Everything clear so far?” “Yes, so far,” replied Achim. “That’s about it,” said Lianne. “It may not be 100% perfect and complete, but it’s a great way to show what’s going on in a process. You see that, with this pool,

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we’re now showing the participant roles, the activities, the flow of activities, the documents, the document management system, and any other applications in use. And we can then apply hierarchical decomposition to this pool, the Level 0 pool. For example, we can take the box named Develop New Product, and decompose it on a Level 1 swimlane diagram with five activities: Get Confirmation of Requirement by the Customer; Identify Concepts and select Best Concept; Detail the Design; Confirm Prototypes; and Introduce the New Product to the Market. And then we could decompose each of those down to Level 2. And so on. OK?” “All OK so far,” replied Achim. “I see it’s coming up to noon. Does anyone want to propose changes now, or shall we do that tomorrow?” “Let’s leave that for tomorrow,” replied Achim. “I agree,” added Marie-Cécile. “OK, so thank you everyone,” said Lianne. “We’ll meet again tomorrow morning. Enjoy your lunch.” * “Lianne,” said Jane. “You mentioned showing the start point and end point of each activity. That made me think about the 5-phase product lifecycle. The five phases are: Ideation; Definition; Realisation; Support of Use; and Retirement and Recycling. Should we have a clear start point and end point for each phase? And should the end point of one of the phases be the start point for the next?” “Yes”. “So, for Ideation, we could say the start point is some kind of idea, and the end point is a validated idea for a product-related project. And, for Definition we could say the start point is the validated idea for a product-related project, and the end point is the complete definition of the product. In Realisation, the start point is the complete definition of the product, and the end point is the usable product. In the Support of Use phase, we could say that because the end point of the Realisation process was a usable product, then the start point for Support of Use is the usable product.” “That sounds good to me, but we’ll need to look at it in more detail and get other people to review it. We should also have something in there for Product Manager activities related to the customer’s use of the product.” “And the end point of the Support of Use phase is something like a decision to recycle the product. But there’s also retirement. So another end point could be a decision by the Product Manager to retire a machine.” “That makes sense. And what about the Engineering Change Management process. Where does that fit?” asked Lianne. “If we’re thinking about the product lifecycle, it’s applied after the product has been realised. So it’s in the Support of Use phase. It changes something that exists. That could be where the decision to retire a machine comes from.” “Shouldn’t the customer also appear in a swimlane in the Support of Use phase?” “Yes. They’ve accepted the product at the end point of the Realisation phase. Or maybe they accept it at the beginning of the Support of Use phase. Early in the

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Support of Use phase they’ll read the Installation Manual, or the User Manual, or the Instructions For Use, or whatever it’s called. Then they start to use the product. If it doesn’t work properly, then there’ll be a maintenance activity.” “That sounds good,” said Lianne. “But now it’s time for lunch.” * After lunch, Jane and Lianne repeated the morning’s presentation. This time with Larry from Atlanta. And Steve Zielinski, Sandy Stone and Newt Thomson from Cleveland. * At 5 pm, Jane went back to Gasthaus Adler. So far so good, but so far it had been theory. She wondered what would happen when they got into details of process mapping on each site. And she was increasingly concerned about group dynamics. It was beginning to feel as if the US and the European parts of the team were on different wavelengths.

22.2 Wednesday 7 August Lianne started on Wednesday by asking if anyone wanted to suggest changes to the material she’d shown on Tuesday. “There are some small changes I could suggest,” said Achim. “I expect we could all suggest small improvements but, in general, the presentation is fine, and we shouldn’t waste time on window-dressing. There are more important things to do in the little time we have.” “I agree,” said Marie-Cécile. “Me too,” said Mr. Sauer. “Good,” said Lianne. “I’ll move on with some examples of process maps in Mayer and then we’ll think about how to move forward with As-Is processes. I’ll start by describing the process maps we’ve recently been building in Mayer. Connie Blum has been working on this. These maps aren’t showing product-related activities, but are examples that people can learn from. For example, here are the HR, IT and Finance processes.” * Lianne finished her overview of Mayer processes at 10:27. “What do you want to do now, Jane? Discuss these process maps, take a break, or discuss As-Is process mapping?” “Thank you for that presentation, Lianne. I suggest we take a ten-minute break and restart at 10:40 with As-Is process mapping.” *

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After the break, Jane restarted the workshop. “I’ve been thinking a lot about As-Is process mapping,” she said. “To start with, I thought we could assign one of the lifecycle phases to each site, so that everyone could focus on just one phase and map it in detail. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought it would be best for everyone to look at all the phases. That means you won’t have time to go into a lot of detail, but at least you’ll have a good overview. Another issue is that we’re working in two separate groups, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. I’ve been thinking a lot about that. I came to the conclusion it would be better if we all worked together. To make that work, everyone should send me the documentation for a phase the day before we discuss it. That way, both groups can see everything in advance. Does that make sense?”. “That sounds OK to me,” said Achim. “I’ve been in all the workshops so far. Unfortunately, it feels as if, because the US and the European parts of the team have worked separately, they’re now on different wavelengths. So, from tomorrow, I suggest we all work together. That’s not going to be easy because there’s a six-hour time difference between us. My proposal is that we’ll work together for four hours each day. That will be 2 pm to 6 pm here in Europe. And 8 am to noon in the US. I hope that’s OK with you all. Is it a problem for anyone?” “OK with me,” said Mr. Sauer. “Me too,” added Mr. Ramsberger. Jane continued, “Here in Europe we can prepare for the afternoon session in the morning. And in the US, they can prepare in the afternoon for the following morning’s session. As there are six As-Is phases to review, we can take one day for each. MarieCécile told me that August 15 is Assumption Day, a French national holiday, so we’ll start with Product Portfolio Management tomorrow and then Ideation on Friday. We can do Definition on Monday, followed by Realisation on Tuesday. And Support of Use on Wednesday 14. Then we’ll finish with Retirement and Recycling on Friday 16. Then, the following week, when everyone will be here, we’ll look at the future processes. Starting with Product Portfolio Management on Monday 19 and finishing with Retirement and Recycling on Friday 23. That will allow everyone to head home on Friday evening or Saturday. Any objections to that?”. “Should we check for US holidays?” asked Achim. “I looked and didn’t see anything between Independence Day in July and Labor Day in September. But I’ll check again this afternoon. One other thing, when each site looks at As-Is, it should also make lists of pain points and currently running improvement projects. Anything else, or shall we stop now for lunch?” * After lunch, Jane contacted Klaus Becker and asked him to participate in the Product Portfolio Management workshops. Then, she and Lianne repeated the morning’s presentation. This time with Larry from Atlanta. And Chuck, Steve, Sandy and Newt from Cleveland. Chuck said that Sandy would lead the effort from their side, and she and Newt would fly across to Mayer on Saturday 17 and fly back on Saturday 24.

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He added that he and Steve would participate as much as possible online, but their time was likely to be limited. * At 5 pm, Jane went back to Gasthaus Adler. So far so good. She asked Frau Adler about possible accommodation for Sandy, Larry, Newt, Achim and Marie-Cécile. It seemed there wouldn’t be a problem in mid-August. Jane wondered where she could take them in the evenings. On Sunday evening, they could go to the restaurant in the village. And on Monday evening, they’d eat at Gasthaus Adler. Jane remembered there was a pizzeria in the village. Perhaps they could go there once. She decided to go there over the weekend to see if it was suitable. And, for Thursday evening, she’d suggest that Dr. Bender would take everybody out.

22.3 Thursday 8 August By 14:05 Central European Time, 8:05 Eastern, all the invited participants were at the meeting. Jane, Lianne, Mr. Ramsberger, Mr. Sauer and Klaus Becker were in the Container. Achim, Marie-Cécile, Sandy, Newt, Rich Rand and Larry were online. “Welcome to the workshop,” said Jane. “Today the plan is to look at Product Portfolio Management. I’ve asked Klaus Becker to take us through this as he’s responsible for PPM at the Corporate level.” “Thanks, Jane. Hi, everyone. I’ll start by telling you about the work I’m doing here in Mayer. Then I’ll tell you about the feedback I’ve had from the other sites. So, starting here, we’re testing a six-step approach. I’ll tell you about the six steps. In the first step, we review the business assumptions. That’s making sure we understand the company’s latest business strategy. We’re looking at parameters there like target market share, portfolio value, profitability, customers, acceptable risk level and so on. We also confirm or modify our 5-year estimates of market size and structure. Similarly, we review our market lifecycle model. That has the four market phases for the product, starting with Introduction. Then going to Growth or Scaling or Expand or Take-Off or whatever else you want to call it. Phase 3 is Maturity or Sustain, and the last phase is Declining or Retire or End of Life. We have estimates for how long a product will stay in each phase, and how quickly it may grow or decline. Another thing we do is look at the results of simulations we’ve made in the past to try to get an accurate a model as possible. In the second step, we select the portfolio of interest. For example, we could just look at one product, or one product family, or several product families or the whole portfolio. Is that clear so far?” “Yes,” said Larry. “The next step, Step 3, is to confirm or modify the investigation parameters. Then, in Step 4, we apply the model. To start with, we run with the standard parameters. The output shows the results for each product, including sales and costs, over a fiveyear period. As well as the performance of the whole portfolio. Then we modify the parameters to see how that affects portfolio performance. That gives us lots of

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what-if scenarios. Then, in Step 5, we analyse the results. We’re looking to see how to increase the value of the portfolio, while avoiding excessive risk. As we look at the results, we usually see sales increasing for the next two to three years, but then dropping. That tells us where we need to be looking to introduce new models and what we should be phasing out. We do risk analysis and sensitivity analysis. We can test all sorts of hypotheses, for example a downturn in the automotive industry. Or supply chain problems in a geography where we have suppliers of key materials and parts. Or what happens if we start supplying machines for a new industry sector. Finally, in the last step, we report our findings and suggestions. For example, we could suggest starting development of a new model for introduction three years down the road. Or phasing out a list of machines. Or entering a new market.” “That sounds interesting,” said Jane. “What did you hear from the other sites on this subject?” * “One of them told me the proposal looked very complete. They said it was much fuller than what they have. From what I understand, each of their Product Managers reviews their own portfolio of products individually. They look at sales figures and where each product is in the Product Roadmap. They understand profitability of each product and identify underperforming products. Then they decide what to do, suggest new features for a mature product, or reduce price levels, or start thinking about phase out.” “OK,” said Jane. “That doesn’t seem to be in disagreement, just less to it. And the others?” * “Another site told me that they didn’t have a documented procedure for this. They said it was left to each Product Manager to decide what to do. Also, they said they have very little phase-out. One result of that is they maintain spare parts for machines no longer in use. A similar issue is that some options are never selected by a customer, but spare parts for them are kept in stock. The Product Managers tend to keep a product alive even if it’s only sold once a year. That counts as revenue for them. They’re not measured on the cost of holding parts and materials for their products.” “That doesn’t sound right,” said Jane. “But when you say phase-out, that makes me think of the Retirement and Recycling phase of the lifecycle.” * “It’s interesting you say that,” said Mr. Becker. “I had a similar feeling when I heard from another site. Except that it seems related to the Definition phase. In this case, a few years back they introduced an activity they call Product Portfolio Management. It manages their portfolio of product development projects, the pipeline of new products. In this case, they’re looking at projects that have started as well as projects that haven’t started.” “It sounds as if it’s managing a pipeline and a portfolio,” said Achim.

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“Let me tell you about it,” said Mr. Becker. “They said they introduced this activity because they weren’t getting enough new products to market, even though they had dozens of development projects running. A team investigated and saw a plethora of obstacles and stumbling blocks. For example, they had more projects than people. So there was frequent switching between projects which wasted time. Many projects got cancelled midway, which was wasteful. Other projects were going nowhere, but were allowed to keep running, eating up resources. More waste. They also found that the people proposing projects were using different methods to justify projects. And even though the underlying data was just best guesses, an ROI was being proposed to two decimal points. Another impediment, there was no way of getting an overview over all these projects, as they all had their own characteristics and ways of reporting.” “Sounds familiar,” said Mr. Ramsberger. “As a result of the team’s work, management introduced a new activity. It’s in five steps. The first step is called Update Portfolio. The second is Report Portfolio. The third is Review Portfolio. The fourth is Take Action. And the fifth is Lessons Learned. I’ll tell you about it, but first have to explain what the portfolio looks like. Imagine a spreadsheet. Each row of the spreadsheet contains data about one project. So, if there are one hundred projects, there’ll be one hundred rows in the spreadsheet. The columns in the spreadsheet contain the attributes of a project. For example, its number, its name, its owner. Then there’s data on the resources needed by the project, such as internal, external, people and equipment. Then there are five-year estimates of sales, with a low estimate, a high estimate, and the best estimate. There’s information on risks. There’s categorisation data, for example, which product family, is it a new model or an update, is it a Phase-Out. There’s data on the products that are likely to lose sales because of the results of the project. There’s an urgency parameter. There are fields for profitability, and NPV and ROI. There are planned and actual dates for the different phases of the project. There are fields addressing the source and quality of the data in the columns. There’s other data as well, but you can already see there’s a good description of the project in its row. Also, you can see that there’s the same data on each project, which makes it easier to compare projects and do analysis and reporting.” “It sounds useful,” said Mr. Ramsberger. “Yes,” continued Mr. Becker. “The first step of the PPM activity is Update Portfolio. That includes entering the data in the first place for a project that’s going to be proposed. It also includes weekly updating of the status of a project that has started and is in progress. The second step is Report Portfolio. That offers a choice of many reports that visualise the projects in the portfolio. For example, you can plot out when the projects are expected to finish. Or when all the projects related to a particular model are going to finish. Or a bubble chart showing the NPV, likelihood of success, and cost of resources for a selection of projects. Or the cumulative value and cost of a set of projects. Or the planned completions in a particular year. Based on the reports, the third step is to review the portfolio. Do the results make sense? Are there some obvious losers that need to be stopped? Should the sequencing be changed? There are many questions that can be answered on the basis of the data that’s available. The following step is Take Action. Perhaps that could be to stop a poorly performing

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project and reassign its resources to projects that have high potential. And the fifth step is Lessons Learned. That’s because it’s important to learn from this activity, important to understand what’s been learned. For example, are there certain conditions that make a project particularly risky? Are there issues with certain data sources? The lessons learned help identify, select and run development projects better.” “Thank you, Mr. Becker,” said Jane. “Anything else?” “Well, I also have a list of activities in this phase, a list of documents, a list of applications, a list of improvement projects, and a list of issues. Shall I show them now?” “No, thank you,” said Jane. “Let’s leave them for our Product Portfolio Management workshop. That’s scheduled for Monday 19. I suggest we all take some time now to think about what you’ve presented, and try to get our heads round it. There was a lot there. So, Mr. Becker, thank you for participating today. It’s been very useful. I suggest the team takes a fifteen-minute break. When we come back, we’ll discuss what we’ve just heard.”

22.4 Friday 9 August By 14:10 CET, Jane, Lianne and Mr. Ramsberger were in the Container. Achim, Marie-Cécile, Sandy, Newt and Larry were online. “Good Morning or Good Afternoon everyone,” started Jane. “Today, let’s look at the Ideation phase of the product lifecycle. Remember that we’re thinking that the start point of the Ideation phase is some kind of idea and the end point is a validated idea for a product-related project. When I was interviewing people across the five sites, I found that Larry had an interesting approach. Larry, perhaps you could lead today’s workshop?” * “Sure, Jane,” said Larry. “But remember everybody, in Atlanta we have our own way of working. Our approach to Ideation might not work for many companies. As you know, we bring out just one new version of our products each year. In that way, we’re a bit like some software vendors. We’re not aiming to be market leaders. We’re not aiming to be the first to offer new functionality. We aim to be a follower. Not far behind, but a follower. We aim to be low-cost and reliable. If you think about another industry, it’s as if we’re offering traditional jeans for hard physical work situations. A competitor could be offering fashionable jeans for club wear and need to update their offer every quarter. Our jeans would sell at $10, the competitor’s jeans at $1,000. That calls for a different mindset. It’s an entirely different way of thinking and working. Our customers aren’t looking for fast-changing fashionable machine tools. They want low-cost, hard-wearing and reliable. Our Ideation activity is based around people entering ideas over the Web into a database. That’s already two important functions. People are providing ideas. We’re storing the ideas. As an aside, in my last company, they actually lost ideas because they didn’t store them properly. So, storing ideas may sound insignificant but it’s actually very important.”

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“It sounds important to me,” said Jane. “Ideas are valuable. You don’t want to lose valuable ideas!” “Right, it’s important. When people enter an idea, they have to enter it in a maximum of five minutes. That helps them be clear about the idea. They have to enter some additional data fields about the idea such as: type of idea; type of benefits it would bring; what’s new; source of the idea; proposer; application area; and so on. Every week, the Atlanta management team looks at the ideas. Our reasoning is that we’re the ones who know the business best. We’re responsible for the business, so it’s up to us to understand and decide about ideas. Our future depends on those ideas. We usually think about the idea for a few weeks, then decide what to do with it. Maybe it’ll make sense to get some folks to look at it in more detail for a few days. Maybe it needs to be fleshed out, so the benefits are clearer. Maybe we’ll feel it’s a good idea for the next version and give it a priority for that. Or maybe we’ll put it on the back burner for a while. Or maybe we’ll see it makes sense and comes from a customer we see as important, so we’ll give it a high priority for the next version. Throughout the year, ideas come in and we review and prioritise them. Then, when we have the Kick-Off meeting for the next version, we start with a prioritised list of ideas.” “Is it just ideas for the product?” “No, it can also be an idea for the shop floor. Or even for marketing and sales. When you look on the swimlanes here you can see we have roles for the idea proposer, the executive review team member, a clarifier, a detailer, and the database, and you can see that we’re using a homemade application in the green circle. Then you can see the idea as a kind of object.” “It looks good to me,” said Jane. “What did you hear from the other sites?” * “One site said they had something similar, but different. They also had Web entry and the database. But they didn’t have a single update per year approach like ours. So, whereas our output seems to be validated prioritised ideas, theirs is prioritised, classified projects. To get to the project, they have an intermediate step that we don’t have. We have input idea, review idea, prioritise idea, update database. They have input idea, review idea, define project, prioritise project, update database. And they have a classification of four types of project: product improvement; new product development; activity improvement, and activity development. Activity could be production activity or service activity. A production activity project could be the introduction of a new machine.” “OK, I see,” said Jane. “That may mean they’d have a slightly different endpoint for the Ideation phase. Anything else from other sites?” * “Yes, but it’s not 100% clear, because it doesn’t seem to be documented. I think it applies to developing a completely new standard machine or a new family of machines. There are two activities. One is to validate the idea of the new standard machine. The other is to validate any new technologies to be used in the new standard

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machine. Validation of the idea is led by Marketing. In a first step, they describe customer needs. In a second step, a Product Manager describes the concept of the product and how it would be used by customers. These two activities lead to the development of a business case and a risk analysis. That leads into a development plan that highlights if any new technologies need to be developed. There are decision points here. If new technologies are involved, then a decision is taken about launching a project to develop them. If no new technologies are involved, a decision is taken as to whether to go further with the new standard machine, or whether to stop here. If the decision is to go forward, then the needs, concept, business case, risks and plan are taken to the next level of detail. If the project still makes sense, it gets launched as an NPD project. Otherwise, it’s stopped.” “I kind of understand,” said Mr. Ramsberger. “It’s a pity it’s not documented. Perhaps it was just a proposal? Larry, do you have a feeling for the roles that are involved? It’s happening before NPD, so it’s clearly Ideation. It feels a bit like a classical approach starting with Marketing.” “That’s also strange,” replied Larry. “It seems to be broader. It appears that the idea for the new standard machine can come from anywhere, anyone. It could be coming from a particular industry sector, Sales, Service, Engineering, pretty much anyone. But after that first step, Marketing seems to take the lead.” “Thank you, Larry,” said Jane. “Anything else?” “I also have a list of activities in the Ideation phase, a list of documents, a list of applications and a list of issues. Shall I show them now? Or shall I leave them for the Ideation workshop on Tuesday 20?” “Let’s leave them for the workshop,” replied Jane. “Let’s take a break now and then review what you’ve presented. There was a lot of detail in there.” * At 5 pm, Jane went back to Gasthaus Adler. Frau Adler told her that Sandy, Larry, Newt, Achim and Marie-Cécile would be staying at the Gasthaus. That reminded Jane she should test the pizzeria in the village. She’d do that on Sunday evening after she’d finished working on her research report.

22.5 Monday 12 August At 14:00 CET, the workshop started. Jane, Lianne, Mr. Sauer and Mr. Ramsberger were in the Container. Achim, Marie-Cécile, Sandy, Newt and Larry were online. “Good Morning or Good Afternoon everyone,” started Jane. “Today let’s look at the Definition phase of the product lifecycle. Remember that currently we’re thinking the start point of the Definition phase is the validated idea for a product-related project, and the end point is the complete definition of the product. Marie-Cécile has been looking at this. Over to you.” *

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“Thank you, Jane,” said Marie-Cécile. “Good Morning or Good Afternoon everyone. Jane asked me to look at this, but it’s not been easy. I’ll tell you about the As-Is processes, but first you should be aware of the difficulty. It seems people equate this lifecycle phase to NPD, New Product Development, and then they think there’s just one NPD process here. But, as Jane has shown, there are different things happening with products, different Product Happenings. There are three or four different Happenings in the Definition phase. For example, development of a new series of a machine, for example, the Series 6000 in Mayer. That would be a big undertaking. Another is to customise a machine of an existing series for a particular customer, that’s much less work. Then there’s developing a new concept. That could be halfway between the first two. And then there could be an upgrade of an existing series, such as moving the Series 3000 from a previous version to a new version. And again, that’s different. However, all these different Product Happenings fit with our definition that the start point of the Definition phase is the validated idea for a product-related project, and the end point is the complete definition of the product. So, as I tell you about our existing processes, please bear that in mind.” “OK, Marie-Cécile, will do.” said Larry. Marie-Cécile continued, “In the first of our As-Is NPD, New Product Development, processes, there are four phases. Phase 1 is called Feasibility, Phase 2 is Definition, Phase 3 is Implementation and Phase 4 is Launch. And there are 4 Milestones. Milestone 1 is Project Authorised, Milestone 2 is Design Complete, M3 is Market Release and Milestone 4 is Year 1 Report. The deliverables from the Feasibility Phase include target clients, marketing objectives, product objectives, financial objectives, target volume, main modules, market positioning, main technical characteristics, project team, patent overview and so on. By Milestone 2, all the design information is released, prototypes have been built, manufacturability checked, risk analysis done, there’s a draft communication plan, there’s clarity on patents, and clarity on make/buy and supply chain choices. That site has a Standard Machine Section and an Order Engineering Section. The Standard Machine Section develops the standard models. They use the standard NPD process. The Order Engineering Section gets special requirements from Sales from a specific customer who wants a special machine. These are small adjustments to the standard model so that it fits exactly to the customer environment. There’s a procedure for Order Engineering, but it doesn’t say more than I already told you.” “Excuse me, Marie-Cécile. This is Newt. Could you say something about the Departments involved there?” “In the top-level swimlane diagrams I can see Marketing, Product Management, Engineering, Supply Chain, Sourcing, Finance, Legal, Production, Quality, Sales and Service.” “Thank you.” * “The next site has a five Phase, five Gate approach to New Product Development. On that site, New Product Development aims to get a product to market as soon as possible. They don’t do any research about new technologies in NPD. Phase 1

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is business review, Phase 2 is concept design, Phase 3 is development, Phase 4 is prototype, Phase 5 is product launch. Gate 0 is the Project Launch Gate. After that is Phase 1. Gate 1 comes after Phase 1. They call it Screening. Gate 2 comes after Phase 2. They call it Business Case. Gate 3 comes after Phase 3. They call it Production. Gate 4 comes after Phase 4, Prototype. It’s called the Product Launch Gate.” “Excuse me, Marie-Cécile,” said Sandy. “Do we know why they did this?” “I was told it was introduced because a lot of projects weren’t making it all the way through to the market. Even small projects were taking years. Many projects never finished, they just consumed resources endlessly. Nobody knew what was going on. It was opaque, no one was sure if a particular project was stuck or was moving forward and would finish in a month or in a year or never. They told me this Phase Gate approach is a huge improvement. They say that it’s transparent, and everyone can see where each project is. And if they see projects are getting stuck in the same place, they can find out why, and take action to improve.” “OK, thanks,” said Sandy. “Please continue.” “From what I could see, and from what I was told, they defined the roles, activities and deliverables for everything that needed to be done in each phase. They did this by first identifying all the activities in a phase. And then breaking each activity down to show the tasks it contained. That made it clear what needed to be done, how it needed to be done. And the task deliverable. As an aside, I think that’s a valuable lesson going forward for us. Especially as we have all the information on activities, tasks, applications and documents. Continuing, they also defined the criteria for each gate. For example, target sales, expected costs, and planned launch date. They created a predefined scoring model for each of these criteria. A total score gets calculated automatically at each gate. That makes it easier for the gatekeepers to decide whether the project can pass the gate, or should go back and repeat a phase, or should be stopped, or should be put on hold. Any questions on that one?” “Not from me,” said Jane. “But as you say, there’s a usable method there.” * “OK, so coming to the next site. For their NPD, they have four Stages and four Gates and one Control Point. They use this approach, for example, to upgrade a model. They don’t use it if there are new concepts to be introduced. That has to be done in what they call Research. The idea being that when they start an NPD project, they know they can do it. Stage 1 is Preparation and Customer Validation. Stage 2 is Development. Stage 3 is Commercial and Technical Validation. And Stage 4 is Scale up and Sustain. Gate 1 is Customer Confirmation. Gate 2 is Limited Release. Gate 3 is Full Release. And the Control Point is Closure. By the end of Stage 2, everything is ready for production. There are activities in there like Requirements Management, Detailed Design, Process Planning, Tool Design, Production Sourcing, Preparation of Support Materials, Project Management, and Risk Management. Any questions?” “I’m just wondering why all the sites don’t use the same structure. They’re all doing almost exactly the same thing!” *

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“No comment,” said Marie-Cécile. “And I haven’t finished yet. One more site to go. And they have a milestone approach. The milestones are: M1 Feasibility Study Approval; M2 Project Order Release; M3 Business and Project Plans Complete; M4 Instruction to Proceed; M5 Top-level Design; M6 Business Case/Investment Release; M7 Detailed Design; M8 Design Freeze; M9 Pilot Production; M10 Inhouse Testing; M11 Prototype Production; M12 Authorisation to Offer; M13 Field Tests; M14 Ramp-up; and M15 Sales Release/Launch. So now I’ve told you about all the sites. Jane, I also have a list of activities, a list of documents, a list of applications and a list of issues. Shall I show them now?” “Let’s leave them for the workshop. From memory, it’s on the Wednesday. Let’s take a break now and then we can all think about your material. There was a lot in there.” * At 5 pm, Jane went back to Gasthaus Adler. While eating, she reviewed her plan for the coming week. Everyone should arrive on Sunday, and she’d take them down to dinner at the village restaurant. On Tuesday, they’d go to the pizzeria in the village. Jane had checked it out and found it had popcorn and American ice-cream, so seemed suitable. And, on Thursday evening, Dr. Bender would invite the whole team to dinner in an expensive restaurant in a nearby village. The other nights, everyone could enjoy Frau Adler’s cooking.

22.6 Tuesday 13 August At 14:15 CET, the workshop started. Jane, Lianne, Mr. Sauer and Mr. Ramsberger were in the Container. Achim, Marie-Cécile, Sandy, Newt and Larry were online. “Good Morning or Good Afternoon everyone,” started Jane. “Today let’s look at the Realisation phase of the product lifecycle. Remember that the start point of Realisation is the complete definition of the product. And the end point is the usable product. Achim has been looking at this so, over to you, Achim.” * “Hello, everyone. Jane asked me to look at this phase of the product lifecycle. I found that all the sites have a similar top-level picture with six main processes. These are Enable, Plan, Source, Make, Deliver, and Return. In the Enable process we have activities like managing equipment and facilities, and setting up the supply chain. Then, in the Plan process we plan, like making production schedules. The Source process, that includes receiving, verifying, and managing inventories. In the Make process we issue materials, produce, test, package, stage the product, and release the product for delivery. In the Deliver process, we have warehousing, inventory management and then delivery to customers. And finally, the Return process which includes return of packaging of the product, and also the return of problem products by the customer. That’s it.”

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“That’s it?” repeated Jane. “That’s all?” “Yes,” replied Achim. “It’s the same on all sites.” “That’s all?” “Yes,” said Achim. “There are differences at lower levels, but usually that’s just due to having different machines.” Jane wondered what they would do for the rest of the four-hour workshop. “And it’s the same for all components? Mechanical, electrical, electronic, software?” “Yes,” replied Achim. For a moment, Jane regretted not having invited Tanja Dietrich to the workshop. “And what about activities in this phase. Do you have a list?” “Yes,” replied Achim. “But it’s not complete because I didn’t have time to look at everything.” “Could you share what you have?” asked Jane. “Of course, I can read it to you now,” replied Achim. “Acquire parts, acquire material, acquire equipment, analyse operations, assemble parts, assure quality, audit suppliers, calibrate, check incoming materials, collect data, compare actual product costs to planned costs, control documents, control processes, control quality, cost activities, cost parts, count, define Manufacturing Bill of Materials (MBOM), define KPIs, deliver products, design tooling, distribute, estimate manufacturing cost, forecast, handle, hire people, identify potential suppliers, identify product costs, inspect, integrate, label, lead, maintain plant, make changes, make packaging, make parts, make products, make prototypes, make report, manage change, manage inventory, manage issues, manage orders, manage processes, manage product data, manage projects, manage risk, manage supplier relationships, manage suppliers, manage warehouses, manage work-in-process, modify parts, move material, negotiate, number parts, number documents, on-board suppliers, order components, order materials, package, plan manufacturing, plan supply chain, prepare contracts, present report, procure, purchase equipment, purchase components, qualify vendors, receive data, receive materials, receive returns, report progress, review personnel performance, schedule activities, set strategy, set-up machines, ship, simulate production, size lots, solve problems, source suppliers, store parts, take corrective action, take preventive action, test parts, train people, transport, upgrade equipment, validate, verify, write guidelines, write NC programs, and write process plans. That’s all, but like I said it’s not complete because I didn’t have time to look at everything.” “How many do you have so far?” asked Sandy. “I’m not sure, but I counted once and saw ninety-seven.” “That was a list of ninety-seven activities in the Realisation phase of the product lifecycle?” “Yes. But it’s not complete because I didn’t have time to look at everything.” “About what percentage have you looked at?” asked Larry. “About 37%.” “So maybe there are another ninety-seven activities you haven’t seen yet?”

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“Yes. But there could be more. Or there could be less.” “Interesting. So by the time you finish the list, there could be two hundred identified activities in the Realisation phase. That could be a very useful starting point for defining future processes.” “Yes. And the list of applications could be useful as well. But again, it’s not complete because I didn’t have time to look at everything.” “Could you share what you have?” asked Jane. “Yes, I can read it to you now,” replied Achim. “3D Scanning, Additive Manufacturing, ALM, Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Auctions, Augmented Reality, Automation, Autonomous Vehicles, Big Data, Blog, BOM systems, CAD, Calibration, CAM, CAPP, Collaboration Management, Communications, Complaint Management, Compliance Management, Computer Numerical Control (CNC), Data Exchange, Data Management, Data Translation, Digital Manufacturing, Direct Numerical Control (DNC), Document Management, ECAD, EDI, Electronic Whiteboards, E-mail, Engineering Change Management, Enterprise Content Management, Environment Health and Safety Management, ERP, Factory Simulation, FMECA, FTA, Image Management, Integration, Intranet, Labelling, Learning Management System, Maintenance Management, Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), Manufacturing Management, Material Handling Systems (MHS), Mechanical CAD, NC programming, Numerical Control (NC), Part Libraries, Part Management, Plastic Behaviour Analysis, Presentation, Process Definition, Process Mapping, Product Costing, Product Data Management, Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC), Quality Management, Reliability Management, Risk Management, Robot Path Analysis, Robotics, Routing Definition, Shop Floor Data Collection systems (SFDC), Simulation, Spreadsheet, Supplier and Sourcing Management, Test Management, Tool Design, Tool Management, Value Analysis, Value Engineering, Viewing, Virtual Reality, Word Processing and Workflow Management. That’s all I have so far, but it’s not a complete list because I didn’t have time to look at everything.” “How many do you have so far?” asked Sandy. “I’m not sure, but I counted once and saw seventy-seven.” “Wow! You have seventy-seven applications in the Realisation phase of the product lifecycle, and the list isn’t complete?” “Yes.” “And that list is also from looking at about 37%?” asked Larry. “Yes.” “Well,” said Larry. “I wonder how many other applications you’ll find. My instinct says you won’t find as many more applications as activities. I’d be surprised if there are many more than one hundred applications in the Realisation phase. But again, that list will be helpful for defining the processes.” “I agree,” replied Achim. “By the way, I have a list of documents in the Realisation phase. Again though, the list isn’t complete. Let me read it to you. Analysis results, As-built configuration, Assembly drawings, Assembly list, Bill of Materials, CAD model, CAM file, Change data, Change Notice, Change requests, Change orders, Cleaning guidelines, Consumables lists, Cost estimates, Costing data, Cutsheets, Detail drawing, Drawings, Equipment data sheet, Equipment logs, Exception report,

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Exploded views, Factory layouts, Failure reports, Fixture designs, Flowcharts, Formulae, Label data, List of issues, Machine libraries, Maintenance information, Master data, Material certification, MBOMs, Models, Multi-view drawing, NC programs, Packaging standards, Part classifications, Photographs, Pneumatic diagram, Process model, Process plans, Project flows, Project plans, Project review document, Purchasing data, QA records, Quality findings, Regulatory rules, Repair procedure, Results of calculations, Results of reviews, Risk reports, Scanned drawings, Schedules, Schematic drawing, Sensor data, Shop Floor Instructions, Simulation results, Sketches, SOPs, Spare part info, Spare part policy, Standard costs, Standards, Sterilisation guideline, Test data files, Test results, Tool designs, Tool drawing, Video files, Welding instructions, Wiring diagram and Working drawing.” “How many do you have there?” asked Sandy. “I’m not sure, about eighty-four.” “And again, that’s from looking at about 37%?” asked Larry. “Yes.” “My guess is there’ll be over 150 documents,” said Larry. “This seems valuable input for developing future processes. Do you have any other lists to share with us?” asked Jane. “I started listing issues,” replied Achim. “But it’s not easy because they seem to overlap, and to be in groups. And I’m not sure if I should keep them all, or just keep the groups.” “I’d keep everything to start with,” said Mr. Sauer. “You can always slim down later.” “OK,” said Achim. “This is what I have so far. But it’s incomplete, and I think the groupings aren’t quite right. Poor supply chain co-ordination, fragmenting the supply chain, poor co-ordination with suppliers. Limited part re-use. Wrong data versions, mistakes on drawings, missing fields in data records, incorrect numbers and incomplete information, unreleased versions of data mistakenly used, wrong detail on drawings. Manually re-entering existing data, data translation. Waiting for information to be reformatted or to be created. Unable to access legacy data. Too many applications; too many interfaces; too many changes to applications; multiple overlapping databases. Equipment under-utilised. Pollution, scrap, rework.” “That’s an important list,” said Mr. Sauer. “With a list like that you can explain to everybody why we need to change.” “Those lists are very helpful,” said Jane. “I suggest we stop now and look at them again. There’s a lot there, and there’s a lot we can do with them.” “Jane, I have a list of improvement projects for this phase of the product lifecycle. Shall I show it now?” “No, thanks. Let’s leave it for the workshop. Let’s take a break now and review what you’ve presented. There was a lot there.”

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22.7 Wednesday 14 August At 14:00 CET, the workshop started. Jane, Lianne, Mr. Sauer and Mr. Ramsberger were in the Container. Achim, Marie-Cécile, Sandy, Newt and Larry were online. “Good Morning or Good Afternoon everyone,” said Jane. “Today let’s look at the Support of Use phase of the product lifecycle. Remember that the start point of Support of Use is the usable product. And the end point is something like a decision to recycle the product, or a decision by the Product Manager to retire a model. Any volunteers to get us going?” “I can start,” said Mr. Sauer. “I’ll start with this. It’s the first page, the Level 0, of a Service Team’s process map. The process starts after the customer accepts the machine that’s been delivered. It stops when the machine has been scrapped, and no longer exists. You can see on this top page that there are eight customer-facing processes and one internal process. The customer-facing processes are: the call centre service process; the maintenance service process; the repair service process; the spare parts service process; the upgrade service process; the training service process; the warranty service process; the recall service process. The internal process is called the field service management process.” “That looks clear, Mr. Sauer,” said Jane. “But again, it looks as if there’s a difference between the scope of the Service Team’s activity and the scope of the Support of Use phase of the product lifecycle.” “That’s right, there’s much more in Support of Use than here, I’m just starting with this. Underneath the first page are the details of the eight processes, but before I get to them, I need to point out the importance of knowing the exact configuration of the machine at the customer site. By knowing that, huge amounts of time are saved. If it wasn’t known, people would have to go out to a customer, to find out what was on the site. Otherwise, an engineer could get there expecting to carry out certain tasks, but find they couldn’t, because parts had been removed, changed or added. Instead of one visit there’d have to be two visits. Knowing the exact configuration of the machine on the customer site is key to superb execution of all these processes. Another enabler of the customer-facing processes is the field service management process. This has two main subprocesses. The first of these is to set up and organise the whole After-Sales Service process, including the rules, directives, and procedures. It includes hiring and training. And the computer system. It’s also where the historical and knowledge database lives. And, for each machine, the service manuals, maintenance plans and work instructions. All that’s kind of fairly static. The second sub-process is dynamic. It’s managing what goes on in the field. It manages work orders, which customer, which type of work, which priority, which service engineer, which tools, which equipment, which parts, which consumables, planned and actual start time, planned and actual end time, overall time, overall cost. OK so far?” “Sure,” said Larry. “Keep moving.” “Coming now to the call centre, it handles all sorts of calls from customers. Technical advice about working with the machine. Or a complaint about a problem. Or a call to say there’s been a breakdown. Or maybe they want help selecting a

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part from the spare parts catalogue. There’s a call reporting system, so they know a lot of parameters such as time of call, time to answer, time to handle, and subject of call. The call centre agents are measured on ASA, AHT and FTFR. In the case of a complaint, they ask customers to send a photo or video, along with a voice or text description. That’s important as it gives a lot more detail. Like they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. The spare parts service is highly automated. If a customer requests from the catalogue, there’s a quick check against inventory levels, and a check of the level of the service contract. There are different levels of service agreement, and different warranty lengths on different parts. If all that’s OK, they aim to deliver in 24 h. Everybody OK so far?” “Sure,” said Larry. “Keep moving.” “Next is the maintenance service. By maintenance, they mean regular scheduled planned maintenance. That’s a lot easier to manage than the repair service. By repair service, they mean unplanned action, for example, to fix a breakdown. For repairs, they don’t know upfront what the problem is, what the severity is, how long it will take to fix, how much it will cost to fix. Maintenance is easier to manage than Repair as long as they have the exact configuration of the machine. That means they know upfront what they have to do, and can plan in advance. Plan who will do it, when they do it, what they will do, what they need in the way of equipment, parts, material, technical information, consumables and so on. They know from experience when particular parts should be replaced, so factor that into maintenance tasks, so they can do preventive maintenance along with the standard scheduled maintenance. Some of the newest machines send back sensor data over the Internet. That’s another input for preventive maintenance. Other machines have a type of black box in the controller. If there’s a problem, the service person can read the black box file to see what happened. There’s an AI program that predicts failures, and that’s integrated into preventive maintenance. For each maintenance intervention, the service engineer creates a technical report of what was done, what was changed and why. This becomes part of the information package associated with the machine, the story of its life. And in the computer systems, action is taken to update the configuration of the machine and the status of parts that have been replaced. That way they maintain the exact configuration of the machine tool.” “This all looks clear, Mr. Sauer. Good work. But keep going please,” said Jane. “The most complex process is the Repair process. For that, they start by receiving a request from the customer. They record and classify it. They may be able to tell what to do from an inspection of a photo or video but, in the worst case, the service engineer has to go to the customer site and investigate, inspect the machine. Then they access the technical information database and work out what to do. That’s followed by making a quote and delivering it to the customer. If that’s accepted, they prepare and ship the required parts, equipment, materials, consumables, repair instructions and other technical information to the customer site. Along with a service engineer who replaces, tests and gets acceptance. Then they update their systems so they know the new configuration. Finally, the work order is closed. And then they invoice. There’s a separate page of process description details for each of these steps. Should I move on to them?

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“Perhaps not yet,” said Jane. “Let’s see what other sites have for this process.” “Just one thing, Jane,” said Achim. “Don’t let’s forget there may be other processes in the Support of Use phase of the product lifecycle that don’t show up in the Service Team’s map. I’m thinking of warranty management, product recall, tests, training, value analysis for example.” “Achim’s right,” said Mr. Sauer. “And next I have a possible example of that from another site. A while back, they developed a new Engineering Change Control process. They said that previously they’d suffered a lot of problems with changes. Changes were out of control. Sometimes they thought they’d implemented a change, but they hadn’t. Sometimes, from the documentation, there was no sign of a change, but they’d actually changed the part. This caused all sorts of problems. Sometimes they’d have to break down an assembled machine in the factory to put the right parts in. If they didn’t catch it in time, they’d be forced to go to the customer site and fix it there. Other times they’d implement a change on a part on the machine, but it didn’t appear in the documentation. There were changes coming from all sides: customers; Marketing; Engineering; Production; Service; Standardisation; Finance. There were all sizes and severities of change all mixed up together.” “This should be interesting,” said Newt. “I wonder if their process will be the same as ours?” “I’ll come to that later,” said Mr. Sauer. “They put in place a process that works with an Engineering Change Request and an Engineering Change Order. The first step is to create and describe the ECR. Step 2 is to flesh it out. Step 3 is to get approval for the ECR from all stakeholders—Marketing, Engineering, Production, Service, Finance—that it makes sense to do it. If it’s approved, Step 4 is to create the ECO from the ECR. Step 5 is for the Engineering Change Board to review the ECO and approve it. Step 6 is to send the ECO to the people who should implement it. Step 7 is to implement the change. Step 8 is to close the ECO and then close the ECR. In Step 2, they clarify the requested change, identify all the parts that will be affected, identify who will have to make the changes, and estimate the cost. At that stage, they’ve not done much work. In Step 4, they prepare everything to make the changes to the parts, like new versions of drawings, documents, instructions, but they don’t release them. And they don’t make the changes to the parts. In Step 5, the Engineering Change Board can see in detail what’s being prepared and can see the cost and resources involved. Maybe the ECB won’t approve. Then the parts aren’t changed and the proposed new versions of documents aren’t released. If anything’s not clear at this stage, the ECB may ask for a more detailed impact analysis. Sorry, I should have said that in the ECR there are fields like reason, requestor, priority level, cost, urgency, sequence and so on.” “I have the answer to my question!” said Newt. “Let me tell you about another site,” said Mr. Sauer. “They have something similar, but before the ECR is created, the person requesting the change creates a Problem Report. They’ve found that often several problems can be combined and addressed together in one ECR. And sometimes the problem has already been addressed, so there’s no need for a new ECR. That means they have like a Step-1 which is to create the Problem Report and a Step-2 which is to review the Problem Report.

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And they don’t call it an ECR, but an ECP, Engineering Change Proposal. Another difference is that, before Step 3, they have a decision. If it’s only a small change, they say it can go Fast Track, which means it doesn’t need Engineering Change Board approval. However, if it’s not a small change, they say it must go Full Track, which means it does need Board approval. Another difference is that, in Step 6, they create an Engineering Change Notice, ECN, which they send to the implementers, telling them to implement the change. And another difference is that, after Step 7, they have Review Change and Audit Change steps before releasing the ECN.” “You said they have something similar,” said Jane. “That didn’t sound very similar to me.” “You’re right. Somewhat similar. Another site also has a reporting system for all Engineering Changes. Basically, each change goes into a database, and that automatically collects the information from the different input screens and applies time stamps. And then every week, reports are made showing, for example, the status of all the changes, and the average time taken for changes of different categories, and so on.” “I expect most people have that kind of report,” said Mr. Ramsberger. “One more thing,” said Mr. Sauer. “On the first site I mentioned, they stressed they have a single Engineering Change Control system that manages changes in several Departments including Engineering and Production. It wasn’t clear, but maybe before they had separate Change systems in the Engineering and Production Departments. They said that the previous logic was that having separate Change systems corresponded better to each Department being responsible for its own activities. They said a lot of Engineering Changes didn’t affect Production. And a lot of Production Changes didn’t affect Engineering. After the ECO, they had an MCO, a Manufacturing Change Order for the Production Department. But it seems there were a lot of disadvantages as well, which was why they switched to a Change system that managed changes in several Departments.” “You’ve lost me on that one,” said Jane. “Anything else.” “Yes,” replied Mr. Sauer. “Like Achim said, there may be many other processes in the Support of Use phase of the product lifecycle. Here’s another one I was told about. It’s a customer complaint process. It starts with the customer filling in a Complaint Form and sending it in with a photo or video of the problem. The Quality Department receives the form and makes an initial review. They work out the required next steps, make an investigation plan, and launch the first step. The Production Department receives the form and photo, carries out a review, and decides if it’s a production problem. If not, they send the form and photo to the Engineering Department, where they carry out a review and find the root cause. Once that’s done, Engineering informs Customer Service, and they reply to the customer.” “Interesting,” said Jane. “But as I heard you saying that, I was thinking there are lots of places in that process where things could fall through the cracks.”

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“You’re right,” replied Mr. Sauer. “That’s an example of where an automated workflow can be useful.”

22.8 Friday 16 August At 14:00 CET, the last workshop of the week started. Jane, Lianne, Mr. Sauer and Mr. Ramsberger were in the Container. Achim, Marie-Cécile, Sandy, Newt and Larry were online. “Good Morning or Good Afternoon everyone,” said Jane. “Today we’re going to look at the Retirement and Recycling phase of the product lifecycle. But before we get to that, I wanted to check the travel status. Starting with Sandy and Newt. Everything OK, flights and the rest?” “Sure,” said Sandy. “We’re good. Flying out Saturday evening, ETA Gasthaus Adler Sunday noon.” “Good. I’ll ask Frau Adler to prepare a lunchtime snack for you. And, in the evening, we’ll eat at the restaurant in the village. How about you, Larry?” “All systems go. I’m aiming to meet up with Sandy and Newt on the way, and arrive with them at Gasthaus Adler.” “Good. Marie-Cécile?” “I’m coming by car. I’m aiming to be at Gasthaus Adler at 5 pm.” “Achim?” “Me? I’m coming by train. I’ll be there at Gasthaus Adler at 17:30.” “Excellent. I’m looking forward to seeing you all again. And now, let’s get started with the Retirement and Recycling phase of the product lifecycle. Any volunteers?” “I can start,” said Mr. Sauer. “I’ve got input from different sites.” “OK, so let’s start!” “I’ll start with a process to disassemble a machine that a customer returns. It starts with a Request to Return. Before I tell you about the process steps, I’ll tell you about its deliverables. There are three main deliverables from the process. The first deliverable is physical, the bits of the machine. The machine is dismantled into five categories of assemblies, components and parts. The first category is for what can be reused without additional manufacturing work. The second category is for what can be reused after additional manufacturing work. That’s the remanufacturing category. The third category is for what can be recycled. That implies it has value, otherwise it wouldn’t make sense to recycle it. The fourth category is for what has no value. It doesn’t make sense to recycle it, so it’s disposed of, maybe landfill. The fifth category is for hazardous material and parts. Stuff that could be harmful to people or the planet, and has to go to specialist recyclers. Every assembly, component or part is barcoded so it doesn’t get lost and can be tracked. The second main deliverable from the process is the knowledge that can be gained about the machine’s performance and that of individual components and materials. This can come from visual inspection of parts or testing of parts or computer inspection of parts, or from data collected from sensors on the parts. The third deliverable is a change in the status of the machine and

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its parts in the computer systems. The status gets set to disassembled. That way the systems know that the machine has got to its end. Everyone OK on the deliverables?” “Sounds good.” “Coming now to the steps of the process, there are six. The first one is to receive the Order to Disassemble and to receive the machine. The next step is to access the disassembly procedure for the machine and review it. The dismantlers have handheld rugged tablets, so automatically get the latest version. The review is important because the procedure is frequently updated. The procedure contains a lot of details such as the disassembly bill of materials, the DBOM, and the disassembly sequence which is often shown on video. Then there’s also a list of the disassembly facility requirements, equipment, tools and protective clothing. And there’s the list showing the destination of each part, is it re-use, re-manufacture, recycle, dispose, or hazardous. The next step is to inspect the machine for corrosion, broken parts, general wear and tear. And the electronics is removed so that the data it contains, for example, from sensors, can be retrieved. OK so far?” “Yes.” “After that, the main teardown starts, with dismantling following the steps in the disassembly sequence. As the parts are separated, they’re barcoded and then stored in the appropriate place depending on their category. Then there’s a detailed sub-step for each category. The disassemblers can add any comments they have from their tablets, such as two parts being corroded together. Or excessive wear and tear. When everything’s been positioned, labelled, and commented, the machine and part status is updated in the computer systems. A summary of a disassembly operation is sent to the Product Manager, so they can inform everyone of the learning from the activity. For example, cost accountants will be interested in the costs and prices related to each part at the end of its life. Design engineers may see possibilities to reduce the amount of materials needed. Production may see ways to improve manufacturing.” “I’m thinking about the six-form model. When the machine is scrapped, what happens to its status in the Installed Base rectangle? Perhaps it has to show a scrapped status.” “Good question, Jane. It shows how precise we’ll need to be in future processes. Let me tell you now about another process from another site. This one is for retirement. They have a Phase Gate for retirement. It has predefined criteria and scores such as the cost/price ratio of the product. It starts when the Product Manager or the Product Portfolio Manager proposes a Retirement Review. If there’s agreement to hold the Retirement Review, then they go through a checklist in the next Phase. For example, what’s the reason for retiring the product? There could be several reasons. Maybe because they think it costs more to keep alive than to kill. Or because there aren’t enough sales. Or because there’s been a technology revolution. Or because there’s now a better product available. Or because the product no longer fits the brand image. There are other questions to answer as well. Which customers are still using the machine? Is it a critical product for any customers? Are there outstanding service agreements and commitments? What’s the remaining stock level? What data do they need to retain? What are the costs of retirement? Which people are needed for retirement? Which resources will be released? What’s the migration path for

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customers? They check with the people involved to get these answers. Then they do a risk analysis and propose a retirement schedule. The proposed schedule typically includes several dates. Starting with an Internal Retirement Announcement Date. That’s the date it would be officially announced internally that the product will be retired. That’s when everyone like Sales and Maintenance would get official confirmation. Then there’s the External Retirement Announcement Date. That’s when customers are informed about the retirement, and told about the schedule. Then there’s the End of Production Date, which speaks for itself. There’s the End of Order-Taking Date. That also includes removal from Websites, price lists and catalogues. They’ll provide spare parts and maintenance up to the End of Support Date. After that, there’s a short period before the End of Life Date during which they can provide some services to special customers. And there’s a Lessons Learned Report Date, with a report about what worked and what didn’t. Depending on the product, that proposed schedule might run over four or five years or more. So that was the dates. Coming back now to their Phase Gate, there’s now a Gate at which the criteria are scored. Assuming that the Gatekeepers let them pass the Gate, then there’s a phase of developing detailed strategies and plans such as a business plan and plans for the supply chain, for communication, for migration. Then there’s another Gate, a Go/No Go Gate. If they pass that, then the whole plan swings into action and the retirement starts.” “Thanks,” said Jane. “That sounded great to me. It’s the first time I’ve heard about that. Obviously, I didn’t interview enough people! I heard about the recycling or scrapping of the physical machine tools at the end of their lives. But I didn’t hear about this retirement activity. Presumably a retirement usually refers to a standard machine model that’s being retired, not to a specific instance of that standard machine. Whereas Recycling is for a specific machine that comes back and is scrapped. It’s another great example of the need to think very clearly about different Product Happenings. What were the roles there?” “Legal, Production, Marketing, Service, Sales, Engineering, Finance, Product Manager and Portfolio Manager.” “Quite a party! It highlights again how these processes are cross-functional.” * “Then on another site, I saw something similar, but it’s not formalised. There isn’t a procedure for it. They have a strict five-year retirement. It’s for hardware service, spares and replacement parts and software service. But they specify the customer has to pay their support contract during the five-year period. They also have another term. After the End of Life Date, they set the product state to Obsolete. They say it’s very important when parts in the machine that are being retired are also used in other machines. They don’t want them obsoleting those parts.” * “From another site, I heard the activity is called Phase-Out, but it’s not clear if they ever do it. The focus is always on bringing great new products to market, not using resources to retire old ones. And then, on another site, they call it something different

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again. They call it Sunsetting. Jane, for this Retirement and Recycling phase of the product lifecycle, I’ve lists of activities, tasks, documents, applications, improvement projects and issues. Shall I show them now?” “No thanks, Mr. Sauer. Let’s leave them for the workshop next week. Let’s take a break now and review what you’ve just told us.” * At 5 pm, Jane went back to Gasthaus Adler. She was looking forward to eating, but first wanted to discuss with Frau Adler about the weekend’s arrangements. First, she asked her if she could work on her research report on Saturday and Sunday morning. Then she told her that Sandy, Newt and Larry would be arriving on Sunday about noon, and would probably be hungry. Frau Adler replied that she wasn’t going anywhere at the weekend, so would be available to welcome them and prepare something to eat.

Chapter 23

Monday 19 August

Dr. Bender launched the week’s work by welcoming Sandy, Newt, Larry, MarieCécile and Achim. Jane, Lianne, Mr. Sauer, Mr. Ramsberger and Mr. Becker were also present. Dr. Bender kept it short. He said the MPL project was very important for Mayer, it was making great progress, and he hoped they’d be able to take it even further. In particular, he hoped they’d make progress documenting the issues with the processes as that would help everyone understand the need to improve. And he suggested they think about next steps for the project, who should be involved and what needed to be done. Dr. Bender finished by saying he was looking forward to having dinner with them on Thursday evening. And then he was gone. “OK,” said Jane. “We have a tough week ahead of us. To start with this morning, I’ll show you everything that’s been produced so far in the next-door Container. Then, starting about 9:30, Mr. Becker will help us review where we are with Product Portfolio Management.” * It wasn’t until 10:00 that Mr. Becker could start. There had been a lot of material to see, and a lot of coffee to drink. “OK, everybody,” said Jane. “Let’s get started with Product Portfolio Management. Mr. Becker, when we met the week before last, on Thursday I think, you said you had a list of issues with this phase, as well as lists of activities, documents, applications and improvement projects. In view of what Dr. Bender said earlier, perhaps we should start by reviewing the list of issues. And then we can look at next steps.” Mr. Becker started by showing the list of issues and explaining their meaning and effect. He pointed out that the list included issues from all the sites, but none of the sites had all the issues. There were so many issues that the team decided it would be best to group them. *

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. Stark, Product Lifecycle Management (Volume 5), Decision Engineering, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46887-2_23

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Eventually, they came up with about half a dozen groups of issues. The first group of issues was the lack of an overall clearly-defined approach to Product Portfolio Management. It included the related lack of procedures and standards. Roles and activities weren’t defined. There weren’t agreed criteria for managing a portfolio. Another group included the issue that product portfolios weren’t being managed properly by Product Managers. There were products in inventory that were never sold, and spare parts in inventory for machines that no longer existed. There weren’t agreed methods for identifying poorly-performing products. There weren’t good techniques for identifying holes in the product portfolio. Another group of issues included the lack of appropriate phase-out. Another highlighted the need to improve project ROI. The subject of another group was the frequent switching between projects which wasted time. This group included issues such as starting projects without having enough resources, and cancellation of about half the projects before they got to market. Another group brought together issues such as the lack of a consistent method to value projects, the difficulty of comparing projects, the difficulty of identifying the relative priorities of projects, and the use by different managers of different types of business cases. Then there was a group of issues about data, including the difficulty of accessing data that was spread between different systems such as ERP, CRM and spreadsheets. Finally, there was a group that included issues such as projects using up resources that would be better used elsewhere, and project managers keeping their projects alive long after they should have been stopped. * Jane thought that was a good set of issues to start with, and other people would surely add other issues. However, as they had limited time, she suggested they moved on to next steps. “I’ve thought about this a lot,” said Mr. Becker. “I suggest we have a crossfunctional team that includes representatives from most, if not all, the sites. I’d include Rich Rand from Cleveland, but I’m not sure about the other sites. Perhaps we should ask Dr. Koch for someone from Hanover.” “And Christophe Laurent for someone from France,” added Marie-Cécile. “If we’re not sure who it is, I suggest we go top-down.” “I understand what you’re thinking,” said Jane. “But I think it would be more helpful for Dr. Bender if we suggest a particular person. Let’s think some more about that.” “I’d like to see someone who focuses on Phase-out,” said Mr. Sauer. “OK, let’s keep thinking about it. Now, Mr. Becker, what should we propose as activities for this cross-functional team?” “First, they need to get in-depth familiarity with the current lists of activities, tasks, documents, applications and improvement projects. Then, they should take another look at the list of issues, and put a cost on each of the issues. That way we could get to an overall value for what this is costing us today. And that could help the executives decide what to do next in this area.” “OK, that sounds like a plan, so we’re on our way to having a team and a plan of activities. That sounds like a good place to stop for today. Let’s go back to the Adler

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and regroup at 18:30. We’ll have finished dinner by 8 pm, so everyone can have a good night’s rest and be in great shape for Ideation.”

23.1 Tuesday 20 August The team started looking at the Ideation phase at 8 am. Jane asked Larry to take the lead. As with Product Portfolio Management, they started by looking at the list of issues, and then making groups. The first group only had one issue, currently most sites didn’t have an Ideation process. That led into a second group. With no process, there seemed to be a lack of ideas. Maybe there were ideas, but they got lost. Another group included Ideation being uncontrollable, difficult if not impossible to measure, and difficult if not impossible to improve. Another group was cultural issues. Too much bureaucracy around ideas, ideas getting suppressed, unsuccessful ideas being punished, a resulting sterile culture. Another group had the unknown cost of idea generation and management, and the lack of training. * Jane thought that was enough to start with, so asked Larry to move on to next steps, starting with a team to take Ideation further. “I haven’t thought about that,” said Larry. “But, as for Product Portfolio Management, I’d suggest a cross-functional team with representation from all the sites.” Jane didn’t know what to say. How could Larry not have thought about this? Or did he mean he didn’t know of anyone who could join his team. “OK, Larry,” she said. “I guess you don’t know many people on the other sites. After all, you haven’t spent the last two months interviewing! So, I’ll make some suggestions. I suggest you participate from Atlanta. Along with Johan Buss from Hanover, Newt from Cleveland, and Marie-Cécile from France. We’re not only looking for people with experience in Ideation. We also need people with a good overview and a structured way of working.” “I’m not sure about Johan,” said Achim. “Why not?” asked Lianne. “Have you worked together?” “No.” “Do you have another name to suggest.” “No.” “What about someone from Mayer?” asked Mr. Ramsberger. “Or don’t we have anyone with a good overview and a structured way of working?” “Thanks for volunteering, Mr. Ramsberger,” replied Jane. “But remember this is just a suggestion to Dr. Bender. He may change everything.” * In the middle of the afternoon, the team addressed next steps. “Any suggestions, Larry?” asked Jane.

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“I liked the plan that Mr. Becker suggested. First, the team needs to get familiar with the current lists of activities, tasks, documents, applications and improvement projects. Then they look again at the list of issues, and try to put a cost on each of them. And then they work out an overall value showing what this is costing us today. As Mr. Becker said, that will help execs decide what to do next. Ideally, I hope they’ll decide to implement the same Ideation process on all sites, but if we suggest that today I’m sure we’d be turned down.” “Why’s that?” “Resistance to change. People don’t like to change, companies don’t like to change, managers don’t want to lose power, executives want to stay in control. All cultural issues. You need an overwhelming reason to change for everyone to accept the need to change and go forward in the same direction.” “OK, Larry,” said Jane. “So, does anyone disagree with the current list of issues, possible team members, and possible next steps? This seems a good place to stop for today. This evening we’re going to the pizzeria in the village. We’ll leave Gasthaus Adler at 6 pm. It’s not far, we can walk there.”

23.2 Wednesday 21 August The team was in the Container by 8 am. “OK, everybody,” said Jane. “Let’s get started with the Definition phase of the product lifecycle. We looked at this last Monday. If I remember right, this is MarieCécile’s. Where are you with this now?” “I have lists of issues, tasks, activities, documents, applications and improvement projects. The more I look at this, the more complex it seems to become. Hopefully, it will soon go back to being simple. To explain what I mean, I’ll start by listing some of the functions that are involved here: Engineering; Finance; Human Resources; Information Systems; Legal; Logistics; Marketing; Portfolio Management; Product Management; Production; Quality; Recycling; Regulatory; Research; Sales; Service; Supply Chain and Sourcing. I think that most of the functions are involved here. But that’s a short list compared to the list of activities.” “What do you mean?” asked Larry. “It looks long to me.” “Larry, do you remember Achim’s list of ninety-seven activities from 37% of the Realisation phase of the product lifecycle?” “Sure.” “Well, now I’m going to read you a list of activities from 37% of the Definition phase of the product lifecycle. And this is after I’ve removed any that were on Achim’s list. Here we go. Achieve product certification, analyse Big Data from smart products, analyse markets, analyse parts, assess project risks, carry out design review, clarify desired functionality, clarify use environments, close issues, close the project, complete regulatory filing, confirm quality and reliability levels, confirm readiness for production, cost products, create a draft business case, create configuration baseline, create design documentation, create documentation for installation and

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servicing, create production documentation, create sales material, create use instructions, create wiring diagram, define company training needs, define customer needs, define customer training needs, define Design Rules, define Engineering Bill of Materials (EBOM), define intellectual property strategy, define market segments, define product characteristics, define product concepts, define quality expectations, define reliability expectations, define target customer, demonstrate commercial feasibility, demonstrate technical feasibility, deploy, design parts, design packaging, design the product, develop customer communication plan, develop promotion materials, develop software, document production process procedures, document test equipment, document test specifications, estimate product costs, estimate project costs, estimate service costs, evaluate proposals, finalise phase-in/phase-out plan, finalise product data sheet, finalise product structure, fix bugs, get field feedback, hold a kickoff meeting, identify competitive products, identify competitors, identify concepts, identify requirements, identify spare parts, variants and options, identify technical and market risks, investigate concept feasibility, manage configurations, manage data from product sensors, manage NPD project, manage products, manage requirements, measure progress, mitigate safety risks, pack product, perform make-buy analysis, plan the project, prepare education and training materials, report the business case, review customer feedback report, review feedback from customer interactions, review at gate, review progress, ship product, simulate parts, specify products, structure products, summarise all learnings, test parts, test prototypes, test the product, train service engineers, understand customer and market needs, update brochures, update business case, update catalogues, update project schedule, use product, validate service procedures and write manual. You can see why I think the list of functions is short!” “How many?” “About the same as Achim, ninety-something. And again, it’s only 37%, and I’ve tried to exclude any on Achim’s list. So you see, there really is a lot going on here.” “Is all that needed?” asked Sandy. “I guess so. A lot of the Phase-Gates on the different sites have been introduced fairly recently. But let me show you some issues as well. Project needs not clear. Meeting engineering specifications, but not customer requirements. Projects failing; projects taking years; and long time to market. Project costs too high; and product development costs rising. Poor scheduling of projects; and switching between multiple projects. Uncontrolled changes during the project; project status vague; and some projects never finished. Quality problems; design faults; standards ignored; delays when new technologies emerge; technical problems with new products; reusing obsolete components in new designs; increased rework; increasing engineering changes; not re-using existing parts; product labelling not compliant with regulations; optimising layout but lengthening delivery cycles; optimising performance but fragmenting the supply chain; product labelling not corresponding to the product; and not including risk management. Application Islands; data silos; legacy data problems;

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communication silos; errors in product definition records; people in different functions not talking together; multiple hand-offs of data; over-detailing designs; overlapping databases; conflicting copies of the same data; ownership of data unclear; and product data quality issues. Departmental mentality.” “That’s quite a list,” said Jane. “I see why you say it’s getting complex.” Newt stood up, “Excuse me, I’m not feeling well.” He collapsed on the floor. “Is that my fault?” asked Marie-Cécile. “Of course not.” Sandy knelt down next to Newt. “He’s passed out. It’s serious. Anyone here a first responder?” “Let me have a look,” said Mr. Sauer, taking Newt’s pulse. “He’s cold. There’s something wrong here.” He looked round. “Lianne, call Ulla Rosen’s assistant and ask her to come over, she’s a qualified nurse. And let’s try to make sure he can breathe properly. I think we should raise his legs so the blood flows to his head.” Sandra Krueger arrived two minutes later and examined Newt. “What happened?” “He stood up, said he didn’t feel well, and collapsed.” “It would be best to call an ambulance. They’ll be here in ten minutes. If he’s recovered by then, well, false alarm. But if he hasn’t, he’s going to need medical help.” * Sandy said she’d go with the ambulance in case Newt needed someone he knew. Mr. Sauer said he’d go as well in case they needed local knowledge. * Jane was shaken, but thought it would be best for the team to get back to work. “Everyone OK if we continue for a while?” “Let’s have a break first,” suggested Larry. “I need one anyway. Poor Newt, I wonder what happened. Maybe a bug he picked up on the plane? But he was with Sandy, and she seems OK. Or maybe something he ate? Or drank?” “I was sitting next to him last night. He drank the same as I did. And we’ve all been eating the same,” said Marie-Cécile. “We’re together all the time.” “Didn’t he have a different pizza last night? I remember it came after the others,” said Larry. The discussion went on, so Jane suggested they go for lunch. * After lunch, Jane suggested they go back to the Container and try to do some work. Before long, Mr. Sauer reappeared. He said the hospital was going to keep Newt under observation for a while. Sandy had said she’d stay until late afternoon. Jane went over to Marie-Cécile and suggested they work on the next steps for this phase, and then go back to the Adler. “OK, good idea. For the team, I’d thought about including Mr. Ramsberger for here, and Achim for Hanover.” “Marie-Cécile, who would you suggest for France?” “Can we have two?”

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“Yes.” “Didier Fournier and me. He’s the Engineering Director, I’m in Operations.” “And for Atlanta, Larry?” “No, this isn’t my area. Hank Johnson, he’s our Operations VP.” “Good, so we have a Definition phase team. What about the next steps, MarieCécile?” “For next steps, I was thinking of taking the same approach as Mr. Becker and Larry suggested. First, everyone has to get familiar with the current lists of activities, tasks, documents, applications, issues and improvement projects. Then put a cost on each issue. And then add them up to get a total cost. I agree with Larry. Unless there’s an overwhelming business case for change nothing will happen. We could develop the best processes in the world for the Definition phase but, without the business case, they’d never be implemented. * Sandy got back to Gasthaus Adler from the hospital just after the others had started eating. She said that Newt seemed OK, but they didn’t know what the problem was. So they were keeping him in for the night. They’d put him on a drip. “Let’s hope he gets better very soon,” said Jane. “I’ll drink to that,” declared Larry, raising his glass. “To Newt.”

23.3 Thursday 22 August The team was in the Container by 8 am. Mr. Sauer said he’d called the hospital, and they were going to keep Newt under observation for a while longer. But he was OK. “That’s good,” said Jane. “Even though he’s not here, we should keep going. Today, we’d planned to look at the Support of Use phase of the product lifecycle. Let’s start with Dr. Bender’s request to document the issues here. And then the next steps for the project. Mr. Sauer, will you take the lead?” “OK, Jane. Let’s start with the issues. I’ve taken the same approach as the others. First, I listed them, then I grouped them. Here’s the list: applications out of sync; breakpoints in workflows; configuration management; conflicting lists of the configuration of a machine on a customer site; culture of risk; customers lost; data out of control; duplication of activities; fast-changing electronic components; gave unreliable delivery dates; high service costs; hiring issues; inconsistencies between data in Engineering and Service; incorrect changes; incorrectly structured data; increasing machine complexity; ineffective fixes; lack of training; legacy data problems; liability costs; long delays in error resolution; missing applications; missing services; missing skills; not knowing if maintenance has been carried out; poor change management; poor communication; product failures; product recalls; re-entry of data; slow customer service; software bugs difficult to fix; too many

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changes; unclear process; uncontrolled customer changes; upgrades ignored; version management and warranty costs.” “Quite a list!” “You’ll see it gets easier to understand when the issues are grouped: Data out of control; inconsistencies between data in Engineering and Service; incorrectly structured data; legacy data problems; not knowing if maintenance has been carried out; reentry of data and version management. Poor communication. Incorrect changes; long delays in error resolution; poor change management; too many changes and uncontrolled customer changes. Customers lost; fast-changing electronic components; high service costs; ineffective fixes; liability costs; product failures; product recalls; software bugs difficult to fix; upgrades ignored and warranty costs. Breakpoints in workflows; duplication of activities; gave unreliable delivery dates; missing services and unclear process. Slow customer service. Hiring issues; lack of training and missing skills. Applications out of sync; increasing machine complexity and missing applications. Configuration management and conflicting lists of the configuration of a machine on a customer site. Culture of risk.” “Thanks, Mr. Sauer. But you know when I hear that list there are some entries I don’t understand. We probably need to write a short explanation of each entry. Just to be sure everyone understands them. But that’s a good start for Dr. Bender. Let’s go for lunch now.” * After lunch, Fritz came to the Container and suggested the evening’s dinner be cancelled. “Dr. Bender feels it’s not good to be celebrating while Newt is on a drip in hospital.” “He’s right, perhaps we can arrange something with Newt tomorrow.” After Fritz had left, Jane asked Mr. Sauer about next steps for the Support of Use phase, starting with the team. “For the team, for Hanover, there’s Patrik Meyer. And me from here. Then I was thinking Sandy and Rich Rand from Cleveland. And perhaps Mr. Martinez from France. I don’t know about Atlanta. Would it make sense to include one of your people, Larry?” “Sure. Let’s say Al Mondolfo for the moment.” “And for the activities of the next steps?” “The same approach as for the other phases. We need a convincing business case for change.” * Later in the afternoon, Sandy and Larry went to the hospital to see Newt. When they came back, they told Jane that Newt was doing fine. He wasn’t in danger, but the hospital would keep him in until Saturday morning.

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23.4 Friday 23 August The team was in the Container by 8 am. Mr. Sauer said he’d called the hospital, and they’d told him that Newt was making good progress and would be able to fly home tomorrow. “That’s great news,” said Jane. “But it’s a pity he can’t be here. Today, we’d planned to look at the Retirement and Recycling phase of the product lifecycle. Mr. Sauer, will you take the lead again? Let’s start with Dr. Bender’s request to document the issues. And then suggest the next steps for the project.” “Yes, Jane. Let’s start with the issues. I’ve taken the same approach as yesterday. Here’s the list: difficulties to take back returned products; difficulty of keeping procedures up-to-date; high cost of disassembly; high cost of environmental fines; high disposal costs; high waste disposal percentage; incorrect configuration information; incorrect identification of parts; low remanufacture rate; low reuse rate; manual data entry; materials wasted; missing applications; multiple databases; not designed for disassembly; not enough training; poor communication; poor documentation and processes undefined.” “That’s quite a list!” “It’s shorter than the others, but there are some big issues in there.” “And the team for the next steps?” “For the team, I was thinking of Patrik Meyer and me. Then I was thinking Steve Zielinski and Newt from Cleveland. And Marie-Cécile and Mr. Martinez from France. Again, I’m not sure about Atlanta. Who do you suggest, Larry?” “Let’s say Al Mondolfo again for the moment.” “And for the activities of the next steps?” “The same approach as for the other phases.” “Sounds good, let’s have a break.” * During the break, it was agreed that Larry and Sandy would visit Newt again after lunch. Then Jane said she had a new subject to discuss. “It seems we’ve missed something. When I did the interviews, executives and managers would often start off by telling me that one of their activities was to develop their Department’s or Group’s strategy and plan, to set and manage its budget, to define its operating procedures, to define its organisation, and to hire and train people. But we haven’t addressed that. We have processes describing what’s happening to the product from beginning to end, as Dr. Bender once said. Or, as we would now say, across the five phases of the product lifecycle: Ideation; Definition; Realisation; Support of Use; and Retirement and Recycling. And a Product Portfolio Management process. But we don’t have any governance. Isn’t it for us to define that as well? The individual departmental executives can’t do it because they only see products for their parts of the product lifecycle.”

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“That sounds interesting,” said Sandy. “What are you thinking about?” “Maybe suggest a Chief Product Officer role, a CPO, with responsibility for a 5year vision, strategy and plan for everything concerned with products. And Product Managers who report to the CPO, not sometimes to the Engineering Director and sometimes to the Marketing VP like today. We could outline the Product Manager role with product vision, strategy, roadmaps, and participation in the five phases of the product lifecycle. And perhaps we should also suggest the Product Portfolio Manager role.” “Awesome! And you come up with that just before we leave!” “It wasn’t planned like that. It’s just emerged from all our discussions. I know it’s putting you on the spot at the last minute, but what do you think? Shall I mention it to Dr. Bender?” “Sure. He wants to know what we think. If he doesn’t like it, he can always tell you to forget it. But I have a feeling he’ll like it.” * Marie-Cécile and Achim left at 4 pm. Soon after, the others decided to check on Newt. This time he was able to talk to them. He said the hospital had organised a taxi to get him to Gasthaus Adler at 7:30 am on Saturday morning.

23.5 Saturday 24 August Newt’s taxi arrived at 7:25 am. He went upstairs to collect his stuff. At 7:40 the taxi left for the station with Sandy, Newt and Larry. Jane waved them goodbye, then went back inside. For a moment, she felt alone, but then Frau Adler came in and asked if she was going to relax at last. “Unfortunately not, Frau Adler. Now I have to write my report for Dr. Bender and my research report for the university. Is it OK if I work down here today and tomorrow?” “Yes, no problem. There are no other guests this weekend.” “And do you mind if I make a sandwich for later?” “No problem. Would you like another coffee in mid-morning. And something at lunchtime?” “Yes please, Frau Adler. That will help me make progress. I have a lot to do before I present my report to Dr. Bender on Friday at 3 pm.”

23.6 Friday 30 August Jane prepared the Containers for her presentation to Dr. Bender. In addition to the written report, she wanted to show him everything she’d done since her first day, June 3. Some of the material was on the tables and the walls of the first Container, some

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in the second Container. She started by taking him through the interview notes and the information in them. Then explained again the Big Pictures on the whiteboards and the One-Page summaries. She reminded him of her steps to get to the five phases of the product lifecycle, the six-form model and the Product Happenings. Then she suggested they go to the second Container where she showed him the As-Is Process maps the team had developed, and the lists of tasks, activities, documents, applications and improvement projects. She reminded him that he’d asked the team to document the issues with the processes as that would help everyone understand the need to improve. And he’d asked them to think about next steps for the project, who should be involved and what needed to be done. She showed him the lists of issues, and the proposal for the next steps. She finished with “That’s it, that’s everything. Do you have any questions?” “Jane,” he replied, “In early June, I asked you to find out what happens with our products from beginning to end. Here we are in August, less than three months later, and everything is here. I can see exactly what’s happening with our products across their lifecycle. All the way through. Starting in Ideation, and then moving on through Definition, Realisation, and Support of Use to Retirement and Recycling. And you’ve shown the different paths that products take. You’ve even started on a To-be blueprint that we can build on. Thank you. You’ve done a great job. I’m only sorry that you can’t stay longer to help us with the next steps. What’s your plan now?” “I have to finish my research report by the end of September. Then submit it by Friday October 4. It should be graded by December. My last course runs in October and November. It’s continuous assessment, so I should also have the grade for that by December. If all goes well, the degree will be awarded in December, but I don’t know when I’ll get my certificate. That usually takes a few months. Maybe in March next year.” “I’m sure you’ll want to concentrate on your degree until the end of the year. Let’s talk in January. You can tell me about your progress, and I’ll give you an update on ours. I expect you’d like to know the result of all your efforts.” “Yes, Dr. Bender. Thank you.” “Thank you, Jane.”

Appendix A

List of Interviews June 4; Dr. Stefanie Wimmer; Marketing Department June 4; Dr. Fischer; Engineering Department June 4; Karl Ramsberger; Engineering Department June 4; Oliver Pfeiffer; Production Department June 4; Wilfried Sauer; After Sales Department June 4; Frau Klumpf; Finance Department June 4; Lianne Jansen; Quality Department June 5; Dr. Walther; IS Department June 5; Ulla Rosen; HR Department June 5; Klaus Becker; Corporate Group June 5; Hans Guenther; Product Management Area 1 Group June 5; Angela Kreitz; Product Management Area 2 Group June 5; Ulrich Beck; New Markets Group June 6; Stan Drzewiczewski; Sales Group June 6; Robert Storm; Help Desk Group June 6; Barbara Scholz; Marketing Communications Group June 6; Marco Schwarzenberg; Proposals Group June 6; Rolf Ragaller; Pricing Group June 6; Urs Steller; Mechanical Group June 7; Matthias Riedi; Electrical Group June 7; Karl-Heinz Dietz; Electronic Group June 7; Annette Maier; Software Group June 7; Roman Bachmann; Common Services Group June 7; Sebastian Haerdle; Production, Plant Group June 7; Anton Egli; Production, Planning Group June 11; Hans Bauer; Production, Preparation Group June 11; Willy Walker; Production, Supply Chain Group © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. Stark, Product Lifecycle Management (Volume 5), Decision Engineering, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46887-2

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June 11; Jochen Tempel; Quality Dept, Product Quality Group June 11; Cornelia Blum; Quality Dept, Quality Manual June 11; Lisa Kuhn; Finance, New Ventures June 11; Martin Reich; Finance, Product Costing Group June 12; Ravi Kumar; Operations Director Group June 12; Lutz Lange; ERP Manager Group June 12; Marlene Busch; Business Analysis Manager Group June 12; Tomas Niemann; After-Sales, Installation Group June 12; Murat Polat; After-Sales, Maintenance Group June 12; Tobias Mueller; After-Sales, Returns Group June 12; Werner Reiter; After-Sales, Maintenance Group June 13; Ralf Lehmann; Software Architect Leader Group June 13; Viktor Nagel; Head of Programming Group June 13; Karen Born; Human Resources 1: Skills matrix June 13; Madeleine Krause; Human Resources 2: Sustainability June 13; Kerstin Sunderman; Legal Group June 14; Nadja Beck; IP Group June 14; Steffen Lampert; Patent Group June 14; Kai Hartman; Corporate Purchasing Group June 14; Grigor Kanfer; Research and Innovation Section June 14; Farida Qureshi; Key User, Mechanical Engineering June 17; Norbert Stein; Key User, Production Department June 17; Frank Hoffmann; Engineering, Document Control June 17; Otto Maeder; Mechanical Engineering, Configuration Manager June 17; Tillman Schwarz; Electrical Engineering Group Power User June 17; Timm Weber; Mechanical Engineer June 18; Maria Schuster; Product Management Area 1 June 18; Mattheus Wermuth; Document Control and Record Management June 18; Jon Trap; Project Management Section Leader June 18; Nadine Kramer; Purchasing Section Leader June 19; Max Feldman; After-Sales, Installation Group June 19; Marco Jovanovic; After-Sales, Maintenance Group June 19; Lothar Kreis; After-Sales, Returns Group June 19; Willy Hirschfeld; Software Group June 24; Dr. Ralf Koch; Site Executive June 24; Martin Graf; Proposals Department Leader June 24; Felix Portmann; Program Management Department Leader June 24; Patrik Meyer; Service Department Leader June 24; Jan Schmidt; Finance Department Leader, CFO June 24; Prof. Dr. Andreas Vogt; Engineering Department Leader June 24; Claudia Schuler; Operations Department Leader June 24; Tanja Dietrich; Sales Department Leader June 24; Achim Klein; Medical Sales Leader June 25; Dr. Ernst Gersten; Technology Group Leader June 25; Dr. Kraft; Innovation Group Leader

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June 25; Dr. Roth; Project Engineering Group Leader June 25; Carsten Nyffenegger; Medical Engineering Group June 25; Jens Alff; Prototyping Engineering Laboratory Head June 25; Werner Weigl; Project Management Group Head June 26; Mr. Metzger; Engineering Analysis, Test and Simulation Laboratory June 26; Lukas; Analysis Section June 26; Franck; Simulation Section June 26; Armin Freisleben; Engineering Department Support Technology Group Leader June 26; Holger Bindbeutel; Engineering Department Mechanical Engineering Group Leader June 26; Petra Holler; Engineering Department Electrical Engineering Group Leader June 26; Helena Thoben; Engineering Department Software Engineering Group Leader June 26; Andrea Wyss; Engineering Department Electronics Engineering Group Leader June 27; Florian Kreis; Engineering Department Configuration Management Group Leader June 27; Catharina Schneider; Engineering Department Technical Writing Group Leader June 27; Daniela Wagner; Regulatory Affairs and Industry Relations Group June 27; Bettina Mangels; Purchasing Manager June 27; Uwe Stelzer; Manufacturing Group Leader June 27; Anders Raschke; Planning Group Leader July 3; Henning Jensen; Material and Logistics Group Leader July 3; Constance Flieg; QA Group Leader July 3; Johan Buss; Process Improvement Group Leader July 3; Erich Gruenig; Packaging Section Leader July 3; Karla Tontsch; EHS Group Leader July 3; Renata Albrecht; Customer Support July 3; Jens Feuerbach; Training Centre July 4; Julia Moritz; Product Support July 4; Franziska Huber; Bids and Proposals Group July 4; Pia Rudiger; BI Group July 4; Daria Kaufmann; Complaints Team Leader July 4; Sascha Vogele; Product Manager July 4; Anton Weiss; IT Manager July 4; Karsten Zumstein; Product Costing July 8; Christophe Laurent; Site Executive July 8; Philippe Dubois; F&A Director, Finance VP July 8; Thierry Giraud; Operations Director July 8; Roger de Brouckere; Business Unit 1 Manager July 8; Edouard de Neuve-Eglise; Business Unit 2 Manager July 8; Jean Martinez; Services Group Leader

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July 9; Didier Fournier; Engineering Director July 9; Dominique Renard; Mechanical Engineering Group Leader July 9; Olivier Lelouch; Electrical Engineering Group Leader July 9; Thomas Lopez; Electronic Engineering Group Leader July 9; Denise Masson; Software Engineering Group Leader July 9; Henri Anciaux; Technical Documentation Group Leader July 10; Julien Colin; Engineering Department Project Management Group July 10; Kevin Nguyen; Systems Engineering Group July 10; Virginie Arnaud; Analysis Group Leader July 10; Roland Moreau; CAD specialist July 10; Angélique Dupont; Test Department July 10; Nathalie Brun; Lean Project July 11; Céline Meunier; Big Data and Analytics specialist July 11; Michel Perec; Logistics Group July 11; Claude Milhaud; Factory Management and Automation Manager July 11; Marie-Cécile Rousseau; Operations, Quality Group July 11; Nicole Martin; IT Manager July 11; Louise Tatin; HR Manager July 22; Chuck Marek; Site Executive July 22; Nate Miller; VP Marketing Department July 22; Bill Dixon; VP, Proposal Department July 22; Sue Estadt; VP, Legal Department July 22; Megan Smith; Finance VP July 22; Jared Johnson; VP, Sales Department July 23; Steve Zielinski; VP Operations July 23; Brenda Weaver; Proposals Department July 23; Rich Rand; Product Manager, Marketing July 23; Karen Sarkissian; Marcom, Marketing July 23; Pamela Berejik; HR July 23; Anna Maria Hochstettler; Sales July 24; Lisa Francioli; Supply Chain July 24; Jim Kozak; Mechanical Engineering July 24; Joe Yurkovich; Electrical Engineering July 24; Cheryl Carroll; Electronic Engineering July 24; Jerry Troyer; Software Engineering July 24; Art Braun; Plant Manager July 25; Kimberley Williams; Legal July 25; Dale Ingram; Installation July 25; Bob Lewandowski; Maintenance July 25; Donna Zimmermann; IT, DT Project July 25; Vijay Narayan; IT, System Manager and Key User July 25; Rahul Varma; Mechanical Engineering, designer July 26; Brad Unger; Technical Documentation July 26; Debra Kowalski; Configuration Management July 26; Al Lewis; Advanced Engineering

Appendix A

July 26; Ashley Novak; IIOT Project July 26; Newt Thomson; Quality, QMS July 26; Sandy Stone; Project Management July 26; Tina Zhang; Systems Engineering Project July 29; Larry Loeffel; Site Executive July 29; Dick Schlotzhauer; Marketing and Sales VP July 29; Hank Johnson; Operations VP July 29; Mark Levine; Legal VP July 29; Mary Webster; F&A VP

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Appendix B

Exercises 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11.

Draw the organisation chart for the Josef Mayer site in South Germany Draw the organisation chart for the Mayer site near Hanover Draw the organisation chart for the Mayer site near Cleveland Draw the organisation chart for the Mayer site near Atlanta Draw Jane’s several attempts at representing what happens with Mayer products (e.g., on June 10, June 15, July 6, July 13, July 14, July 31) Describe the advantages and disadvantages of using applications from only one vendor Describe the advantages and disadvantages of using the best applications from several vendors List five typical activities in each of the following Departments and Groups: Marketing, Engineering, Production, After Sales, Finance, Sustainability, Packaging, Software, Sales, Training, Project Management, Patent, Human Resources, Legal List five documents used in the Definition phase. List five applications used in the Definition phase. List five activities in the Definition phase List five documents used in the Realisation phase. List five applications used in the Realisation phase. List five activities in the Realisation phase Draw a Swimlane Diagram of the type described on June 24 and August 6.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. Stark, Product Lifecycle Management (Volume 5), Decision Engineering, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46887-2

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