Home Grown or Not?

The majority of small companies I have come across during my career as a software systems designer, have tried to create their own ‘ home grown ' software systems, to one degree of success or another. In this editorial I want to take a look at the reasons behind this methodology and the for ' s and against ' s of its inception and outcome.

The main reason behind the decision to go down the self created systems path is not, as you may think, cost. This may surprise you and in point of fact cost usually comes further down the list (but not by much). No, the main reason is indolence. Commonly defined as either laziness (which I do not intend to infer) or its other meaning “ painless and slow to change ” which is much closer to the mark.

Systems created in this manor have grown by meeting emerging situations with semi-immediate solutions. So for example, you have to plan production, you get all your information together and you create a spreadsheet, or maybe you have to create a test certificate, again you gather the correct test information (easier said than done) and open your word processor. Off the shop floor and in the office the same process is repeated with sales orders, purchasing, invoicing and so on. You may throw into the mix a database application or an accounts package. It all hangs together fairly well and because most of the immediate problems have been addressed nobody sees any reason for change. In fact; given that most of the people involved are busy solving a myriad of other issues (we ' ll come to that later) they see any change in their way of working as expending time and energy they do not want or need. They also see their problems as unique and that their solution is the only one practicable, another reason not to change. This combination is the main reason why home grown solutions are a difficult habit to kick.

Why Change?

You may well ask, why if everything is working well would your company need to change? The answer is that the solutions your company found tended towards solving the immediate problem and not looking at the overall picture. Take the above example of production planning and test certification, not much of a link you would think; but if your systems had been integrated the production plan would have effected which melts were poured and in what order, which in combination with test requirement information from sales orders would effect the scheduling of when the tests would be required. By the time the test certificate is needed all the information is ready and the test certificate ready to print. On top of this any potential problems with the test results are spotted well before document generation and much earlier in production. Another example is shop floor inventory management, non-integrated systems generally suffer from a lack of up to date information of what finished inventory or part made inventory you have and where its located (a basic requirement). Fragmented systems usually isolate information to their discrete areas not updating others before the need arises (only usually after). Take for example a spreadsheet created for inventory management purposes, ideal locally speaking but not if you are the production controller who needs to know at the time of production planning how many items he actually needs to make. Consider sales order entry and informing the customer of pending shipments, your probably thinking ‘ well I could always share the information over my network and get around this issue ‘ ; but this neither efficient or pro-active. How will the person entering orders know that inventory has changed? Should they check every time they enter a new order item or change a customers existing schedule release? The same could be said of the production planner, does he need to re-check inventory every time an item is scrapped in production, or every time a customer return potential needs rework? These are only a couple of very small examples of wasted time, energy, and perhaps more importantly efficiency. I cannot stress too strongly the amount of time, money, and effort saved in using a fully integrated system. If the people in your company are too busy and unable to consider the benefits of an integrated system, you should stop and ask yourself why are they so busy?

So far, I have concentrated on the type of home grown system that the majority employ, fragmented and for the most part made up of lots of smaller sub-systems. But there are some very talented people out there that have had a stab at creating their own in-house integrated solution, and it has to be said a great deal of time and effort spent in creating the ‘ ideal system ‘ ; in my experience out of all the small to mid range companies I have met over the years not one has successfully achieved what they originally set out to do and all of them have spent a lot of time and money trying to get there. This is simply because the skills required to design and logically comprehend the needs of the whole company and then program a system to meet this objective is beyond most small teams.

What's the solution?

The cost of commercial integrated systems designed specifically for the cast metals industry (and is important that they are industry specific) has dropped considerably over the past few years; you have to ask yourself is the cost of creation and maintenance of your own system worth it? The time spent on design, fiddling about with databases, creating usable interfaces, not to mention maintenance, bug corrections, constant additions, adjustments to design, and ever growing requirements. Further more, when designing your in-house solution how much consideration is given to the fact you may be re-creating the same (perhaps faulty) way of working? What you need to ask is how much of your time (or others) is dedicated to this pursuit? How much on an annual basis does this all cost? And remember this is not just cost of time spent on the project but also the cost of lost time that would otherwise have been spent in other directions, and for what? A home grown system that costs a fortune to maintain and does not introduce any new methodology?

I have designed and written production control software systems ( specific to the cast metals industry) for over twenty years. I am now onto my fourth complete system (www.synchro32.com) and still adding new functionality. Hundreds of cast metal companies, and thousands of users, all of which I encourage to have their say in order to constantly improve our systems. Think of it like this, when you needed an accounts package did you think ‘I'll write my own' or ‘I'll manage with a spreadsheet' no, you went out and found a suitable accounts package. The same could be said for production control, arguably just as important and yet many companies still choose to slog it out with their own home grown systems. What you need to ask yourself is this, should my company be re-inventing the wheel and paying not only more than is needed in cost but also lost time in expertise or using an industry specific, tried and tested solution (involving thousands of man hours of design and programming) which provides everything you need (and room to grow into) at less than you probably spend on a part time office assistant? I think the answer is obvious …

Die Casting Times
July/August 2008

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