Software Meeting

Every component manufacturer should hold a ‘software meeting’ as a regularly scheduled event. The software meeting is a recognition of the importance of design and management software to the organization and a proactive attempt to use that software to gain the fullest advantage for the organization.

Why hold a software meeting?

The software that plays such a significant role in our businesses is complex and ever-changing. How do take maximum advantage? We have to invest time as a company to review all aspects of our software use. What’s new in the latest release? Should we be using it? How does it work? What problems do we have? What do we most need that we don’t have? These are all questions that are best answered in a group setting, with everyone participating and contributing – even the boss!

How often?

At least once every quarter, but it also makes sense to hold one every time a software release is announced. For MiTek customers this means five time a year. This may seem like a lot, but the features and fixes are coming fast, and the only way to stay on top is to have frequent group reviews.

Proposed Software Meeting Agenda

This meeting, like all meetings in the organization, needs to be time-boxed and laser-focused.

Feature Review – Two weeks prior to the meeting the design manager reviews the latest Release Notes and assigns one (or more) new features to each designer to research. Each designer comes prepared to show the feature, describe what its intended uses are, and offer an opinion as to its value to the organization.  A general discussion then decides if the organization is going to begin using the new features and what steps are needed to implement it. The group should be mindful of how to use the feature to the organization’s best advantage and how to do so consistently. This means everyone is on board, doing things in the same way so as to deliver a consistent product to customers.

Problem Review – What’s slowing me down or holding me back? What’s annoying me? What do I wish I could do that I can’t now? Every designer and software user should be called on to contribute. The group should attempt to expose as many of these problems as possible, Having participated in many software discussion like this, you can expect that between 25% and 50% of the problem raised will be solved by other software users who have simply learned (better) how the software works, or developed tricks or workarounds that take much of the sting out of the problem. The others should be noted on a “Problem List” that is then forwarded to the software rep.

Idea Time – What could really make us more productive? What would we like to know that we don’t know now? What part of my job would I most like to unload, and why? These type of questions frequently touch on both software and business processes and the Software Meeting is a good time to talk about improvements in both. It is essential that managers participate and talk about the information that they need to allow them to manage better. Every organization could improve if it knew more about itself, particularly about performance. Can we get that data? How? Again, a software wish list may be the result – a list that should be shared with the software rep. Alternatively, why not invite the rep to the meeting?

The software being discussed should ‘cover the field;’ it should not be restricted to one vendor. In many companies the ERP software plays a key role, in others, several different vendors provide design and estimating software. Its best to look at the overall picture to look for duplication of effort or discovering ways to integrate the different solutions.

Grading Software Features

“Features” are simply the "things we can do" with a given piece of software. Component design and production software now possesses an overwhelming number of them; so many in fact that rather than being excited about new ones, many software users carry around a sense of permanent guilt - fueled by that gnawing feeling that they only know about a fraction of what the software can do. New releases just add fuel to the fire.

It's fair to say that as a software community we haven't figured out yet the best way to keep up to speed on all the things that the software we use can do. Some form of continuing education is no doubt needed. The suppliers, still in transition from an era where most of the training needs were for new users, have created a lot of training content but have not figured out the best way to package that content so it is easily digestible. Software users on the other hand frequently pay lip service to learning more about the software, but when opportunities are presented, many frequently don't take the time to take advantage of those opportunities. Sounds like a good subject for a future article.

Back the features themselves. Here is a suggested method for evaluating them.

Utilitarian

A feature usually can be classified either as "I can use that," or "I have no use for that." If a feature appears to have no useful value to you, it's a good idea to ask the person showing you the feature or a representative of the supplier, "Can you think of the way that this feature might be useful to me?" This is a good double check, to make sure the feature has no practical value to you. Asking this question also tests the recipient -- their answer will demonstrate how well they understand what the feature does.

Implementation

Elegant – The feature is surprisingly easy to use. It requires no instruction, except on the finer points.

Okay - The feature is certainly usable, although there are obvious things that could've been done better.

Lacking - Perhaps the supplier had the best of intentions, but the implementation fails to hit the mark. Significant desirable functionality is missing, and/or the user interface is confusing or awkward.

Accessibility of Features

Recently I’ve realized how important this is to the true value of a feature. Evaluating the customizability of a feature is often overlooked because we generally assume when a feature is introduced that anyone will be able to use it - and customize it. It's pretty obvious that a feature is much more valuable if I can customize it, vs. having to call someone and ask them to do it for me.

Grade A - Any sharp, computer savvy user can make a feature do what he wants. Many times This is dependent on the elegance of the implementation of the feature. Did the software team really spend a lot of time thinking about how the user would configure the feature? If they did, the feature usually ends up with an “A” in this evaluation.

Grade B - Many, if not all, technical support representatives can customize the feature. Customization can usually be implemented within a day. Many powerful features such as the batch cutting routines require a considerable amount of knowledge and experience to implement them quickly. As long as the technician is readily available, these skilled at the listening the needs, and is able to turn around the request quickly, the feature will be readily embraced.

Grade C - A small number of technical support representatives can customize the feature. The feature is either so complex, so new, or so poorly implemented that only a few technical support representatives have mastered it. Reaching the right person is usually the biggest difficulty. Turnaround time to customize the feature is usually measured in days.

Grade D - Any customization must be done by a programmer. The customization is treated internally as a programming project, with all the delay in bureaucracy that that entails. The user may need to wait weeks or months in order to get the customization. The feature ultimately gets an “F” in this evaluation if, from a practical standpoint, the user can't get the customization no matter how long he waits.

In evaluating any feature make sure you think about how it’s customized. Some features appear to be very exciting, opening up rich new areas of functionality. For each of these features it's worth exploring the question, "Who does the customization?" The answer may have a tremendous impact on the usability of the feature. 

Things You Can Do With MBA

MiTek’s Business Application (MBA)has grown a lot since its inception 15 years ago. That presents a problem, and several people I’ve talked to have said, “I know I’m not using all of its capabilities.” To help, I’ll present a short summary of its capabilities.

Overview

MBA enables a component manufacturer to keep records of all of the quotes and orders processed by the business. By directly reading the design files (trusses, wall panels,) the actual material used can be quickly and accurately summarized. Ancillary items, such as hangers, loose material, and any other items supplied can be added to quotes and orders. Using the wealth of information available about the components, labor estimates can be generated. Customizable reports allow the creation of quotes, production lists, and management reports.

Managing Your Business

You can get started with MBA with nothing more than a numbering system. However, the more information you store for each job, the more information you can get out of the system. Setting up customers and sales reps is a first step, enabling you to see how many quotes are becoming orders and tracking sales rep activity. Different markups can be applied to different customers or customer groups.

Classifying the job by type (Roof, Floor, Custom, Ag, Government, Multi-Family, etc.) allows you to look at subsets of your job mix. The more categories, the more you can examine the work you do and look for problems and opportunities.

Territories are an underutilized concept. You can use Territories for tracking your success in different markets, or set up loading territories so that you can make sure that the correct codes and loads are applied to the jobs delivered to a given area. Different tax codes and delivery charges can be linked to different territories.

Quotes and Orders can be stored separately, so that a record of the original quote is preserved even after extensive changes to the order.

Some of the most complicated customizations of MBA have been in labor estimating. Although the user can set up an almost endless variety of different schemes, custom programming is sometimes needed if you want to “look ahead” at the other trusses in the job to determine setup costs and labor.

Detailed analysis of individual orders and ‘summary reports’ of a group of orders can be done with the report writer. The reports “out of the box” are never enough for creative managers, who will always think of new ways to look at the accumulated data. Technical reps can make some changes to existing reports “over the phone,” and many customers have a person on their staff that has learned how to customize reports, and thus avoiding any delay in seeing how the ‘latest change’ on a favorite report will look.

As the Design Console

The MBA is best utilized as the “desktop” for all of your design work. Once a job or quote is started, you simply hit the “layout” button and MBA creates the job folder, launches the layout application, and keeps track of where everything is. This saves a lot of time when compared to creating the layout or the trusses first, and then having to ‘show’ MBA where the job is when you want to import the design work.

Comment or changes can be recorded in the job’s Call Log and minor changes (such as a delivery date change) are recorded automatically in the Change Log so the entire history of the order can be tracked. Attachments, such as a scan of the customer’s purchase order or photos from the job site can be attached to the order. The Job Navigator allows you to create customized lists for each user, for example a designer could have a list of “Work Assigned” to them, and another list of “All Orders Overdue to the Shop.”

Production Pre-planning

One of the most popular tools in MBA is called Build-a-Batch, which allows a user to organize all of the components in a job into production (table) groups. Once ‘batches’ are created, production paperwork can be generated for each group, including batch cutting. Build-a-Batch’s ability to see each truss, the quantity, span, pitch and visually ‘drag and drop’ into different groups makes the process very easy. Individual trusses can even have their quantities split into more than one group, if needed.

Although a simple “Delivery Date” field can be used for scheduling , a flexible Calendar Scheduling feature allows work to be assigned to the whole shop, or particular workstations. As work is added, a graph shows remaining capacity for each resource.

Other Tools

A set of standard trusses can be created, and used to create price lists or do “quick quotes” without having to (re-)do design work.

User security is managed in MBA, limiting access to defaults, making certain changes, and running certain reports.

A stand-alone Inventory module is available to help manage lumber and plates.