VOL1|ISSUEo n e |SUMMER2007
PERFORMANCE
MATTERS We bring people and technology together.速
COMPLIANCE:
Across the Globe & Across the Industry MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIRMAN
Dr. Robert W. Deutsch
LEAN MANUFACTURING
The Benefits of Thinking Green
PRODUCT UPDATE
RWD uPerform
TM
S AV V Y S O LU T I O N S & BRIGHT IDEAS
Inside
VOL1|ISSUEo n e |SUMMER2007
PERFORMANCE
MATTERS We bring people and technology together.®
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR Welcome to the first issue of Performance Matters, a quarterly publication focused on our readers. You can expect up-to-date information on the latest technologies, current market trends and information that is pertinent to keeping your business profitable. Our clients are the focus of everything we do. Impacting industries around the world, we continue to be committed to providing products and services that support continuous improvement. We welcome your feedback regarding content and your suggestions for future issues. Enjoy!
Message from Dr. Robert W. Deutsch
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Welcome to Your Newsletter
XML: Why Do You Care? The wealth of existing product information is a vital asset contributing to brand value, and competitive advantage.
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Lean Manufacturing and its Relationship to Environmental Performance and the Regulatory System
At the heart of successful lean implementation efforts lies a continual improvementfocused waste elimination culture.
PRODUCT UPDATE RWD uPerformTM A performance-support tool that makes compliance a matter of course.
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SUE VARNER | EDITOR Corporate Marketing & Communications For questions and additional information on the content of this newsletter contact Sue Varner at 1.800.677.3688 or svarner@rwd.com.
A MESSAGE FROM
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n the nearly two decades since I started RWD Technologies, the Company has been committed to improving the productivity and effectiveness of workers in complex operating environments. “We bring people and technology together”® became the RWD logo and succinctly describes RWD’s mission. RWD initially focused on serving the automotive industry. Over the years, the Company has expanded its offerings and the markets it serves and now provides human and operational performance improvement solutions to clients in over 20 industries, not just in the U.S., but worldwide.
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GLOBALLY SPEAKING RWD UK Receives IITT Accreditation Discover how RWD is commended for being a “forwardthinking” organization.
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ANNOUNCING Performance Matters eCommerce Website
Capture this additional opportunity to tap into our resources.
™
Dr. Robert W. Deutsch In the process of helping other companies use technology more effectively, RWD became a very successful technology enterprise in its own right. Beginning in the mid-1990’s RWD started to develop custom software to solve clients’ problems. In our quest to help our clients simplify their training efforts and accelerate their enterprise software implementations, we developed RWD Info Pak®, which has been adopted by over 1,500 organizations, and is being used by over 4 million end users! RWD also developed the u360 Global eLearning System, a complete end-to-end solution that drives business performance by optimizing the creation, management and delivery of enterprise knowledge. Today, RWD offers
its clients a number of propriety software solutions, which are all designed to enhance their performance. As technology in the workplace has become more complex over the last 20 years, RWD has been there to help our clients learn how to effectively use that technology. As the pace of technological change accelerates in the coming years and decades, we will continue to provide your workers with the means to master new technologies, from manufacturing systems to software to nanotechnology. To stay in the forefront of performance improvement, RWD will continue to develop new products and services. This newsletter, Performance
Matters, is one of the ways RWD will stay in touch with you and keep you informed regarding what is happening in the field of performance improvement. In future issues, we’ll discuss new technologies and share with you what RWD is doing to help its clients use technology to drive performance improvement.
DR. ROBERT W. DEUTSCH | CHAIRMAN
XML Why Do You Care? Companies are in the midst of an information explosion, with the growth of content created and managed by organizations increasing dramatically. The wealth of existing product information is a vital asset contributing to brand value, competitive advantage and the ability to meet customer expectations.
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et, close to 90% of companies’ information is unstructured and stored in disparate repositories, making it difficult to locate and nearly impossible to reuse. Organizations seeking a consistent, flexible method for creating and managing content are now looking to XML technology to increase information access and content reuse. XML enables a holistic approach toward information management that makes it easier for companies to share information inside and outside the enterprise. Many companies’ information management systems are tailored toward discrete, disconnected areas of the organization, such as Manufacturing, Sales, and Research. This fragmented approach reduces the flow of information and counteracts business strategies focused on the management and control of corporate content. In short, it means staff members are forced to spend valuable time
searching for, formatting, and recreating content that exists elsewhere in the organization. XML addresses this problem head on, streamlining the content creation, review, and approval process, and enabling companies to efficiently search, reuse, and dynamically publish information. For example, the use of XML for creating Operating and Maintenance documentation within the Energy industry enables significant advantages over the current method of Microsoft Word, commonly used across the industry. By storing documents as reusable information components, organizations can lower their overall content creation costs and more importantly, create a detailed audit trail tracking compliance with management of change procedures. Additional benefits such as decreased regulatory and safety risks and increased operational effectiveness are also achievable. Many of the benefits mentioned above have caused XML to become popular with both companies and the government
agencies that regulate them. For instance, the FDA is currently mandating a Structured Product Labeling initiative that requires companies to submit product labeling in XML format, and the FDIC requires all of the U.S. banks it manages to submit their quarterly reports in XML. Georgia and Massachusetts, among other states, are also promoting the use of XML in their state agencies. The days of content silos and formatting nightmares may soon be gone. With the promise of increased compliance, decreased costs, and enhanced productivity, successful companies are rapidly adopting XML-based content management strategies. Are you getting the most out of your content?
Just What is XML,
Anyway?
Here’s what the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has to say: Extensible Markup Language, abbreviated XML, describes a class of data objects called XML documents and partially describes the behavior of computer programs which process them. XML is an application profile or restricted form of SGML, the Standard Generalized Markup Language [ISO 8879]. By construction, XML documents are conforming SGML documents. XML documents are made up of storage units called entities, which contain either parsed or unparsed data. Parsed data is made up of characters, some of which form character data, and some of which form markup. Markup encodes a description of the document’s storage layout and logical structure. XML provides a mechanism to impose constraints on the storage layout and logical structure.
XML ADDRESSES INFORMATION MANAGEMENT HEAD ON BY STREAMING: Content Creation Review Information Aid the Approval Process Search Information Reuse Information Publish Information
XML BENEFITS:
Increased Operational Effectiveness
Decreased Safety Risks
Decreased Regulatory Risks
By storing documents as reusable information components, organizations can lower their overall content creation costs.
PRACTICAL APPLICATION Using RWD infoMaestro IMCS, a service representative in a call center can automatically assemble separate pieces of product information into a personalized response package without requiring manual, error-prone authoring and formatting tasks. This results in quicker customer response times, higher productivity of call center staff, lower costs and increased customer satisfaction.
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THE BENEFITS OF THINKING GREEN
and its Relationship to Environmental Performance and the Regulatory System LEAN MANUFACTURING
At the heart of successful lean implementation efforts lies an operationsbased, employee-involved, continual improvement-focused waste elimination culture.
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hile environmental wastes (e.g., solid waste, hazardous wastes, air emissions, wastewater discharges or excess consumption of costly, precious, or limited resources) are seldom the explicit targets of or drivers for lean implementation efforts, case study and empirical evidence shows that the environmental benefits resulting from lean initiatives are typically substantial. The business case for undertaking lean projects – substantially lowering the capital and time intensity of producing products and services that meet customer needs – is frequently tied to “flow and linkage”. Although not explicitly targeted, environmental benefits are embedded in creating this smooth and rapid flow of products throughout the production process with minimal defects, inventory, downtime, and wasted movement. For example, reducing defects eliminates the environmental impacts associated with the materials and processing used to create the defective product, as well as the waste and emissions stemming from reworking or disposing of the defective products. Similarly, reducing inventory and converting to a cellular manufacturing layout lessen the facility space requirements, along with
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is remarkably similar to the organizational culture being promoted by public environmental management agencies. Standard work establishes clear procedures for the proper performance of jobs and tasks, and visual controls reinforce desired procedures and practices; Kaizen events involve employees from the shop floor in rapid process improvement events to identify and eliminate waste; 3P taps Common elements of this organizational culture, as identified by public agency EMS and pollution prevention guidance include: • A systemic approach to continual improvement • A systemic and on-going effort to identify, evaluate, and eliminate waste and environmental impacts that is embraced and implemented by operations personnel
water, energy, and material use associated with heating, cooling, lighting, and maintaining the building. The cumulative effect makes lean manufacturing a powerful vehicle for reducing the overall environmental footprint of manufacturing and business operations, while creating an engine for sustained and continual environmental improvement.
Fostering a Continual Improvement, Waste Elimination Organizational Culture Over the past twenty years, public environmental regulatory agencies have worked to promote waste minimization,
pollution prevention, and sustainability through environmental management systems (EMS), voluntary partnerships, technical assistance, tools and guidance, and pollution prevention planning requirements. A common theme emerges when one looks across such federal, state, and local initiatives: to make sustained environmental improvement progress that moves beyond the “lowhanging fruit,” an organization must create a continual improvement-focused waste elimination culture. The organizational culture engendered by lean methods,
• Environmental and pollution prevention metrics that provide performance feedback • Engagement with the supply chain to improve enterprise-wide performance
worker creativity to develop innovative process and product designs that improve efficiency and effectiveness; and total productive maintenance empowers workers to maintain and improve operations and equipment in their work areas, preventing breakdowns, malfunctions, and accidents. Lean experts and implementers consistently point to culture change as the most difficult
THINKING LEAN aspect of lean implementation. Overcoming the inertia, skepticism, and even fear that can inhibit behavior change is typically the greatest hurdle to creating and sustaining an organizational culture conducive to lean production and waste elimination. Leadership and organizational need are two key factors affecting the success of efforts to change organizational culture. This is consistent with the challenge often identified by environmental experts of incorporating pollution prevention and waste minimization into an organization’s culture in a sustained manner. Similarly, many organizations wrestle with the challenge of “breathing life” into their EMS and integrating EMS elements and procedures into organizational operations and activities, to avoid the EMS becoming just a paper pushing exercise. Lean drivers for culture change – substantial improvements in profitability and competitiveness by driving down the capital and time intensity of production and services processes – are consistently much stronger than the drivers that come through the “green door,” such as savings from pollution prevention activities and reductions in compliance risk and liability. When improved environmental outcomes can ride the coattails of lean
culture change, there is a win for business and a win for environmental improvement.
This table lists seven common types of waste that lean works to eliminate, along with the environmental impacts that are often associated with each of them. WASTE TYPE DEFECTS
Mechanisms for Environmental Improvement through Lean Implementation With the expanding evidence consistently demonstrating that lean implementations yield environmental improvements, it seems appropriate to ask what are the mechanisms by which these improvements are being achieved. Conceptually, the link between lean production and environmental improvement is strong. The fundamental objective of lean systems is the systematic elimination of waste by focusing on production costs, product quality and delivery, and worker involvement. At a whole systems level, advanced manufacturing methods work to lower the resource intensity necessary to deliver a product or service to meet customer needs. This means that organizations implementing lean methods continually seek to reduce the materials, energy, water, space, and equipment needed per unit of production. Even though environmental endpoints, such as hazardous waste, air emissions, and wastewater discharges, are frequently not directly identified in the types of manufacturing wastes targeted by lean initiatives, improvements in these areas are deeply embedded in other types of manufacturing wastes.
Funny You Should Ask...
EXAMPLES
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS
Scrap, rework, replacement production, inspection
• Raw materials consumed in making defective products • Defective components require recycling or disposal • More space required for rework and repair, increasing energy use for heating, cooling and lighting
Stock-outs, lot processing delays, equipment downtime, capacity bottlenecks
• Potential material spoilage or component damage causing waste • Wasted energy from heating, cooling, and lighting during production downtime
Manufacturing items for which there are no orders
• More raw materials consumed in making the unneeded products • Extra products may spoil or become obsolete requiring disposal
WAITING
OVERPRODUCTION
MOVEMENT Human motions that • More energy use for transport are unnecessary or • Emissions from transport straining, carrying work • More space required for WIP in process (WIP) long movement, increasing lighting, distances, transport heating, and cooling demand and energy consumption • More packaging required to protect components during movement
INVENTORY Excess raw material, WIP, or finished goods
• More packaging to store WIP • Waste from deterioration or damage to stored WIP • More materials needed to replace damaged WIP • More energy used to heat, cool, and light inventory space
More parts, process steps, or time than necessary to meet customer needs
• More parts and raw materials consumed per unit of production • Unnecessary processing increases wastes, energy use, and emissions
Lost time, ideas, skills, improvements, and suggestions from employees
• Fewer suggestions of waste minimization opportunities
COMPLEXITY
UNUSED CREATIVITY
This table lists seven common types of waste that lean works to eliminate, along with the environmental impacts that are often associated with each of them.
Significant environmental benefits typically ride the coattails of lean initiatives. The powerful economic and competitiveness drivers behind lean drive a willingness to undertake substantial operational and cultural changes, many of which have important environmental
performance implications. United States Environmental Protection Agency October 2003 – EPA100-R-03-005 Lean Manufacturing and the Environment: Research on Advanced Manufacturing Systems and the Environment And Recommendations for Leveraging Better Environmental Performance
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Company-Wide Compliance Is on a lot of People’s Minds These Days RWD uPerform™ is a performance-support tool that makes compliance a matter of course.
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s you implement enterprise-wide solutions such as Enterprise Resource Planning, Customer Relationship Management, and sales force training programs, you are likely seeking ways to improve application functionality, ensure consistency and compliance, and maximize your return on investment. We all know that successful implementations hinge on human performance. If your employees have the knowledge, skill and performance support to do their jobs effectively, your business will succeed. So, what do employees need to achieve success? The answer is simple— RWD uPerformTM. By incorporating this powerful performance support tool into your learning ™
strategy you’ll put the information employees need at their fingertips. Through the collaborative creation, storage, and management of application simulations, procedural documentation, and eLearning courses, RWD uPerform offers a systematic way to ensure compliance by enabling business process consistency. The tool’s advanced collaboration features, central XML-based authoring capabilities, and scalable architecture empower employees to obtain and exchange the knowledge and materials critical to their job function. This allows your users to transfer best practices and processes every time they use the tool. The latest release of RWD uPerform brings new features and
RWD uPerformTM Environment A rapid eLearning feature uses pre-defined stencils (eLearning templates) to ensure consistency across the materials you create. This feature will empower authors to create both new courses in the RWD uPerform environment as well as import and repurpose existing content such as presentations.
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functionality to RWD uPerformTM transfers into empower users to create and deliver Best Practices & Process to eLearning courses offer users benefits such as: quickly and easily. RWD uPerform now gives • Better collaboration companies a more • Cost effective cost-effective and efficient approach • Efficient workflow to developing eLearning • Enables business process materials while consistency offering your end users contextual, on-the-job performance support and Systems and Learning collaboration benefits. The Content Management rapid eLearning feature uses Systems. RWD uPerform pre-defined stencils (eLearning works with most standard templates) to ensure consistency enterprise applications and across the materials you Microsoft® Windows webcreate. This feature empowers based applications. authors to create both new Other new RWD uPerform courses in the RWD uPerform enhancements include environment as well as import additional website and repurpose existing content customization for the end such as presentations. This user interface and enhanced feature is critical to ensure language support including 100-percent compliance during support for Chinese, complex and urgent technology Japanese, and Korean. rollouts. All published courses are SCORM-conformant, making them compatible with most Learning Management
The latest release of RWD uPerform may be just what you need to meet your compliance requirements and ensure employee performance. RWD uPerform allows you to combine the potential of your workforce with the efficiencies that can be gained with your enterprise software to maximize your technology investment.
RWD UK Receives IITT Accreditation GLOBALLY SPEAKING
currently accredited worldwide.
The Institute of IT Training (IITT) recently awarded training provider accreditation to RWD’s United Kingdom group. The award puts RWD on the elite list of IITT accredited companies.
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he IITT was founded in 1995 to promote excellence within the IT training profession. IITT accreditation identifies providers as a “forwardthinking organization that is seeking to deliver quality solutions to its clients, with potential for delivering real competitive advantage.” The accreditation comes as the result of a rigorous, 10-week validation program that included an assessment visit and an examination of core RWD services and
infrastructure. During the process, IITT executives assessed all aspects of the organization, including the quality of training and development staff, delivery methods and procedures, business integrity, sales and marketing operations, and customer feedback evaluations. Upon completion of these assessments, the IITT awards accreditation to companies that continuously raise standards of professionalism within the training industry. Only 250 training organizations are
ANNOUNCING
I
n conjunction with the release of our newsletter, Performance Matters, RWD is also launching an eCommerce site with the same name. The Performance Matters eCommerce site will be hosted through RWD’s University360 learning management system and will make available to the public for the first time all
COURSE TOPICS AVAILABLE Applied CRM Strategy Plant Mentor® and eSimulation Courses
of our eLearning titles. Course topics include: Applied CRM Strategy, PlantMentor® and eSimulation, Accelerated Learning for SAP, and SAP and Oracle Navigation Courses. We also offer a series of Life Sciences courses on topics such as Biopharmaceutical Technology, Regulatory and Compliance, and a number of Therapeutic Categories. Courses can be purchased on a per course basis or bundled using a credit card.
As an Accredited Training Provider, RWD publicly commits to adherence with the IITT Code of Practice. The code maintains a strict set of product and service quality standards, such as compliance with best practices and ethical conduct, trainer qualifications, course control, publicity and promotion, and complaints procedures. RWD has long demonstrated a commitment to providing quality solutions that exceed customer expectations in the learning arena. RWD received the accreditation in March 2007. It will be renewed annually based on additional assessments and efforts to continuously improve RWD’s product and service offerings.
RWD is honored to receive this distingished plaque.
ASSESSMENT CRITERIA • Quality of training • Development staff • Delivery methods • Delivery procedures • Business integrity • Sales & marketing operations • Customer feedback evaluations
Performance Matters eCommerce Site!
Accelerated Learning for SAP 4.6 SAP and Oracle Navigation Courses Biopharmaceutical Technology Regulatory and Compliance Various Therapeutic Categories
To visit our Performance Matters eCommerce site go to: http://www.university360.com/performancematters
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PERFORMANCE
MATTERS We bring people and technology together.速
OM I NG RWD U PC 7
EV E NTS
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RWD Technologies 5521 Research Park Drive Baltimore, MD 21228 1.888.RWD.TECH