Erfolg durch Meilensteintrendanalyse

Success with milestone trend analysis

Long-term projects can sometimes be difficult, long, or seem impossible. At the beginning of a challenge like this one people are always highly motivated to reach the goal, but this motivation continues to decline until the end. Motivation is often related to productivity, so no manager should allow a decrease in performance.

A successful method that is widely used is the milestone trend analysis. This project management tool includes the evaluation of the development of a project through specific objectives within the larger general goal. Thanks to the milestones,  the staff can verify if they are getting step by step closer to the completion of the project. When the employees mark a task as completed, this automatically represents a progress in the process, and success will always motivate the employees, while productivity will consequently be increased.

Milestones can also be used for a detailed project tracking. Precise time lags of each step are definitely helpful to be on time with appointments and trustworthy towards customers. Modern project managers therefore take care of various tools, for example the Gantt chart. InfoBoard  embraces not only this evaluation method, but also improvements in the current operations.

Project management is usually managed with Gantt charts, although there can be many problems with them. One flaw we can find in this method is the distribution of resources for a task because the chart assigns to the same employee two tasks at the same time. This is absolutely impossible to happen with infoBoard. Each resource occupies its own row and no one can be assigned simultaneously with two mpre than one task. In addition, the set of tasks is also available in form of a collection. You can, of course, also export a Gantt chart from an infoBoard planning board, but in this case without any possible errors!

The milestone trend analysis WebView takes into account various aspects that often cannot be evaluated with a single tool. If you are interested in this function of infoBoard, you can read the user guide or watch the milestone trend analysis video tutorial on the infoBoard TV YouTube channel.

 

 

infoBoard Partnertagung in Hamburg

infoBoard Partnertagung in Hamburg

 

“infoBoard is international” this is the first sentence the two colleagues from infoBoard Netherlands / Belgium said.

After eleven years, infoBoard has reached high levels of professional service. The planning software reflects the economy of the country which is sold to and from which it will be used. Unlike what a university theorist would believe or what you would think, infoBoard Australia focuses on the production of kitchenettes, landscaping and the construction of sheep houses. Only the RDSA, Rock Drill Australia that produces drills for Australia’s mineral resources, reminds people of what Australia’s core competence is.

In Belgium our clients are mainly the “better Dutch people”, the Flemish and – the German-speaking companies, while in the Netherlands service providers companies.

In addition to a more powerful translation program will also be offered a reseller portal. A system against Bugs has been invented and it can be used worldwide.

In the following hours were shown under observation of our foreign university students the extensive marketing, development and sales activities while partners told about their customers.

The conclusion of the meeting took place in the harbor museum Övelgönne on the Elbe. We ate North Sea crabs with infront of us the view of the captain’s house  and Hamburg’s mountains. I proudly showed our partners the city’s district called Hamburg-Altona (Which I think is the only true Altona), since the Altona on the australian coast, near Melbourne, is named after the german one. Later after doing little research on the Internet we find out that Altona is really everywhere in Germany since Altona in German means “all too close”.

I am happy: I am an active globalizer. The world is close to me!

infoBoard an der Ostküste der USA

infoBoard on the East Coast of the USA

 

It was our first flight to Boston. Fortunately, the check- in was faster than the usual, because there were self-served terminals, where you could have your passport, fingerprints and photo controls done by yourself.

Once I arrived I wanted to – as suggested by the guide – get a water taxi from the airport to Boston City and I looked for a taxi sign but didn’t find any…..later I discovered that our hotel actually had a water taxi stop but I told myself it would be for the next time. The visit to the headquarters of our new customers’ company, which works in the aereospace sector, was a “very american” experience and we had so much fun. Everyone in the group could ask questions, it was a very colligial relationship, as you can read in the pertinent books. The easy-to-use database interface was especially appreciated.

There is no planning interface in the new ERP system, and new options are kept on being added: personnel planning, vacation planning, time recording. It will be easier to use also for the companies here in the USA since we have already solved the difficulties in the material supply processes in the German production plant. It took them almost two years to decide for infoBoard, they needed to first understand they wouldn’t find anything comparable to infoBoard in the Us.

On the highway, that led us past some famous universities on the East Coast, we learn how exit numbering with letters works and the difference between “58 a” and “58 b”; first one is a 7 mile drive, the second a 25 mile one.

We will travel from Massachusetts to the nearby state of Conneticut to meet a potential new software and hardware partner, whom we met at a fair in Chicago in September of the previous year. We are received by one of the three owners together with a consultant from the manufacturing industry. After we had made some conversation with them we realized why infoBoard was so different to them. Our hosts were astonished to be able to visualize the dependencies with connecting lines in the resource instead of the business processes -I, myself, could hardly believe it-. Infinte scheduling, linked to capacity was already available but now also the so called “dynamic scheduling”, the function that permits dependencies to be shown. It became clear that we not only could visualize the actual data from the production, but had also a powerful planning tool in our hands. When we later used the guest access to internet, we understood by the network’s name “Jesus Reigns” that we all had the same beliefs. At lunch we would all pray together for the food we were about to receive.

After two days of Conneticut we drove through New York, on the other side of Manhattan, to New Jersey. By the way, we are fans of “The Jersey Boys”, we saw the musical in London and on Broadway. We took the highway from Newark airport and pasted the Atlantic coast: we drove on the old 2-3 lane highway while an of another three lanes with a guardrail was being built built next to it three lane. It was a highway in a highway. There was in fact just enough space! Now…how do we turn right into an exit? On the left there was a service area accessible to us and the opposite direction. How could the service area be on the left side of the highway? My brain had difficulties adjusting to the american customs, I had to react quickly; driving on the right is always right! And finally we were able to exit the highway thanks to a bridge. It’s crazy how much space it consumed! We switched our navi – or better in English our GPS-  to English. The German pronunciation of the US street names was not funny anymore, like it had been in the beginning.

We payed a visit to a potential new customer. As always we are happy with Excel and a cardboard planning board. This will be a technological leap! The interface  was completely irrelevant to the ERP, but the automatic scheduling alone with sample orders and connecting arrows would make them save a lot of time, said the two invited production planners. Our contact person ha been complaining for 5 years that he wants to have the cardboard on the wall.

We drove on to get to our customer, 45 minute drive from where we were. A “pimped” warehouse management program generates production orders that are scheduled manually with warehouse orders for infoBoard planning objects. The production itself was brought from almost 0 to 100 within 4 years. The stock list has been now set up in the infoBoard panel and scheduled as needed. “Keep it simple” is the motto, for God’s sake no interface!

We almost took the same path to travel back to Boston. From experience, I knew that Google Maps calculated reliable travel times, but that didn’t work so well in Google’s homeland. The two-lane freeways and highways of New England are full of rush hour traffic until 9pm but we had planned ahead of schedule at the hotel that was 2hrs drive outside of Boston.

Once back in Hamburg we began to post new online presentations for New Jersey companies. We drove past tose places. And the only direct connection between Hamburg and the USA is: Newark Airport in New Jersey. That creates a certain feeling of closeness!

P.S. Three months later my family and I learned that one of my three daughters was moving to Boston with her family. Good thing we had been in Boston …

infoBoard analysiert ERP Daten schonungslos

infoBoard analyzes ERP data relentlessly

“Have you already realized an interface with MyOneOutOf 100,000 ERP WorldWide systems?”

The decision of a company with often only 10 customers, for any ERP system with should now be supported by us. ERP systems can sometimes visualize your data. That’s the biggest control station for machine allocation, without dependencies on upstream and downstream operations. The visual surface can never serve as a graphical planning surface. Therefore, the responsible production manager can not make planning changes in an easy and intuitive way: the extensive ERP data must remain consistent, since then new delivery notes and other papers might fall out, and you really do not want that.

The other way around: if you “release” the operations via the infoBoard-Sync interface to an infoBoard, the planner can graphically “push together” optimal sequences within the framework of the specifications. When these planned orders are sent forward to the shopfloor, then a functioning system has emerged.

But what if the ERP data, in particular work step times were not entered correctly or the calculation factors were not stored correctly? What if the capacity rate is displayed incorrectly? Then the capacity will visibly / apparently be insufficient to get everything ready in time.

infoBoard can help to make inadequate ERP databases or imbalances visible. If one notices the imbalances, one examines the underlying data in the ERP system and can correct the wrong time specifications. How much is this worth to you? Are you going to keep your eyes open and go through with it?

Changes in business organization are often made under pressure and not in time. There is no guarantee for success when management changes are made. Wouldn’t it be better if the managing director worked on a strategy to improve his/her company’s market position and provide it in time with personnel and money resources? In some companies, the planning board shows relentlessly inadequate and on that data decisions are made. Isn’t it good to be able to see the truth?

Businesses have two options to improve the database in an ERP system:

1. A structured approach through 30,000 records without seeing anything

2. An efficient approach by changing the most important data with the support of the visualization tool on an infoBoard planning board

Changes in the company organization require a considerable effort. You see the success first on the planning board, second in the business evaluation and third in the balance sheet.