COE Member Spotlight with Craig Helm

Beginning in 2007, the COE NewsNet will feature one outstanding COE member and get to know a little bit more about them. For our inaugural issue, COE would like to introduce Craig Helm.

 

COE: How long have you been a member of COE?

CH: I have personally been a member for two years, but have gone to COE through other companies for a couple more.

COE: As an active member of the COE Discussion Forums, explain how this community can benefit all Dassault Systèmes users. CH: The forums present a wealth of knowledge, but more importantly, they present that knowledge through people that are eager to learn, teach and collaborate. It is a win-win situation for everyone. Sometimes, I will get questions that I don’t know, so I figure them out in my free time and give the answer. Now, when I reach the same problem, it is no longer a problem for me. I don’t have to spend valuable project time hunting for a solution.

 

COE: Was there ever a specific problem that occurred at your job that you were able to utilize COE members to solve?

CH: There have been many problems that I have encountered, both while working for other companies and working for myself that I have retrieved help through COE and its members. You basically have an online tech support full of experts at your fingertips.

 

COE: What part of the COE Annual PLM Conference & TechniFair do you most enjoy and look forward to?

CH: I am a bit of a technology geek and I am very into efficiency, productivity and processes. So, I would have to say that seeing all of the new things coming out from Dassault, new implementations of both old and new tools, and different methodologies from different people and companies help make me much more knowledgeable and capable at what I do. I also enjoy meeting the people that I talk to on the forum face-to-face. It is always nice to speak to someone in person.

 

COE: Do you attend the COE Industry Workshop – Aerospace & Defense? If so, how does the education and information differ from the COE Annual PLM Conference & TechniFair?

CH: Yes, I have found that at the industry workshops there tend to be more examples that apply directly to you or your field, and it gives you an idea of where other companies are at in their PLM world.

 

COE: What is the biggest benefit to being a member of this organization?

CH: There is a vast knowledgebase that you can draw from and apply to your own projects.

 

COE: As a committed member of this association, what aspects of COE would you like to see grow in the near future?

CH: I would like to see greater focus on intermediate process changes (IPCs) in the PLM world. We all pretty much have the micro scale of the process figured out, and if we don’t, we know where to get the information. The global PLM process is out there and it’s constantly being improved upon, and it needs to be tweaked for every company. We get plenty of information about this and I’m glad we do. It should be an ever-evolving thing.

 

It seems that most companies focus on the silver bullet remedy. The problem with this is that it is a very slow, cumbersome and expensive process. I know companies could save a very substantial amount of money if they focus on many smaller, intermediate process changes and what I call “efficiency tweaks.” They could do this along side, or instead of the silver bullet methodology. The problem with this is that it forces a company to change their thought process a little. Of course, the problem with both solutions, especially the latter is the lack of up front and definitive quantitative analysis for your cost savings and return on investment. I try to show people the time they can save with these processes, and EVERY time I do something for them, they are impressed, but there is still no way to say doing “X” will save you “Y” amount of time BEFORE the fact because you don’t know what “X” is. You have to have someone there that can see these things, but to have that person there; you need to tweak your organization a bit.

 

To clarify this, let me give a real life example.

 

While I was doing a job for a company, I went to ask a person that worked there about some parameters for the project. When I got to his desk, he was doing something in Excel that seemed to be a very cumbersome process. I asked him about it, what it did, and how long it took for him to do it. I went back to my desk for less than 10 minutes and wrote a quick and dirty program and gave it to him. It turned out that he and seven of his co-workers spent a day or two each week just working on this task. After I gave him the program that I wrote in 10 minutes, he was able to do his job and all of theirs in about 15 minutes. That is at least a 26,000% improvement on that intermediate process for them, and it only took 10 minutes of my time. That is also almost 100 hours PER WEEK saved, and they had to do this for four or five months! All this savings came from a very small intermediate process change. Every company can figure out their own savings off of something like that. The problem with this, is one can not come in before hand and give you a number because most companies and their employees have no idea how much more efficient they can be.

 

Things like this happen to me all of the time, whether it is in UNIX, CATIA, Word, Excel, Access or something else. There is so much that can be done that companies are not doing, and they are wasting millions. Companies could easily save this money if they just hire or find someone they currently have that knows what they are doing in areas like this. All the employee would have to do is just walk around, talk to people, see what they are doing and how they are doing it, and then make it better. If that person only did a few things a year, the business would still come out way on top, plus make their employees happy because they no longer have to perform mundane and tedious tasks.

 

The main advantage of this process is you don’t have all of your “eggs in one basket.” If any hiccups occur in the process, you are out anywhere from a few minutes to maybe a couple weeks tops. The silver bullet technique relies heavily on one process which takes a lot of money to create, fix, maintain and update. If something happens, you are held hostage by that process because now it has to be fixed and you don’t have time to do it the “old” way. Now you are spending overtime hours for people to fix it while others are idle. Then, when it does get fixed, you spend even more overtime dollars to catch back up to the curve. In addition to all of this, by the time the silver bullet remedy is ready for production; it may already be an outdated process.

 

There are obviously needs for each type of process. As with any business decision, you must weigh the risks and rewards. By looking to tweak these intermediate processes, you become more nimble and your ability to adapt to a wide variety of situations increases. You vastly minimize your risks, and you still have very large rewards. I think this is an area that COE should look at to help improve the performance of all of its benefiting member companies and people.

 

COE: Based on the current status of the marketplace, where do you think COE should focus its energy and resources in the next few years?

I think with technology being so widespread, we should try to use some more of its potential to focus on innovation, breaking molds and changing thought processes. This refers not only to IPCs, but the way people do business in general. We have a great tool with CATIA V5, but many use it on some levels with outdated processes. It is like using a nail gun to beat in a nail. You have a great tool, but you use the old process. I have found this to be the case with most of the vastly underutilized computer tools that we use today. A constant desire for improvement is needed from COE, the companies and people that are part of it. We need to remember that we must constantly forge ahead. Mistakes will be made, and this is inevitable. However, we need to make them as quickly as we can because with each mistake we make, we have learned something, and we can all proceed being smarter and better than we were before.

For more information, contact Craig at craig.helm@helmconsultingllc.com.

 

COE Welcomes New Members

Congratulations to the following individuals on your decision to join COE! Members who have joined since November include:

 

Dexter D’silva, Airbus
Yuri Danilov, Airbus
Richard Johnson, Aircraft Braking Systems Corporation
Deiva Durai Rajendran, Altair Engineering
Zeng Ly, Ansys
Gary Poling, Areva NP
Roger Leach, ATK Space Systems and Sensors
Martin Ross, Bell Helicopter
Mike Wilson, Bell Helicopter
Daniel Chalifoux, Bell Helicopter Textron
David Cousins, Boeing
Ronald Steckman, Boeing Commercial Airplane Group
Joe Burch, C&D Zodiac
Horst Heckhorn, Cenit AG System Haus
David Albright, Computer Sciences Corporation
Johnny Ng, Contour Aerospace
Negah Ayatizadeh, CSC
Stefan Evans, DaimlerChrysler
Jason Whaley, DaimlerChrysler
Shashikant Patil, DaimlerChrysler
Matt Klais, DaimlerChrysler
Stan Marc, Dassault Systèmes Americas
Malte Nordlander, Dassault Systèmes Americas
Daniel White, Electrolux
Roger James, Erie Engineering
Tony Michalovic, General Dynamics C4 Systems
Sreekanth Jayanti, Geometric Software Solutions Co., LTD
Kokoe Estrada, Goodrich
Mallie Clark, Gulfstream Aerospace
Clarke Knorr, IBM
Daniel Lishudong, IBM
Phillipe Legault, Idcad Consulting, Inc.
Paul Lipovanciuc, Imera Systems, Inc.
Manish Kohli, Incat
Amit Ramachandran, Incat
Stephan Hilby, Intel Corp.
Tal Shalmoni, ISCAR
Jon Jenkins, Mahco
Shelly Husek, Manuf & Ind. Tech., Inc.
Andrew Bell, Northrop Grumman
Brian Phelps, Northwest Tool & Die
Nathanael Condon, P&H Mining Equipment
Thomas Verpillot, Pratt & Whitney Canada
Edwin Liou, Rand Worldwide
Douglas Snell, Rand Worldwide
Ryan Patry, Sikorsky Aircraft
Sondra Pfortmiller, Spirit Aerosystems
Michael Pontious, Spriit Aerosystems
Kevin McMinnville, Square Peg NC Solutions
Ross Burghardt, Takata Restraint Systems
Vikas Shetty, Tata Consultancy Services
Teja Chandra, Tata Elexi
Rolando Garza, Tec-Westinghouse
Thomas Cooney, The Boeing Company
Victor Montenegro, The Boeing Company
Dan Armeni, The Boeing Company
Rachelle Fitzgerald, The Boeing Company