New management at Pelion Systems sees "Lean" opportunity
by Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 11/1/2004 7:00:00 AM
The big problem with lean manufacturing programs is sustainability. According to Dick Slansky, an analyst with Dedham, Mass.-based ARC Advisory Group, there was a lot of interest in lean manufacturing in the late 1980s and early '90s—especially in the automotive industry—but only a few programs survived.
"A consultant would come in, analyze operations, and come up with a way to optimize," says Slansky. "But unless the company has internal resources to maintain the program, it fades over time."
Pelion Systems is one of a handful of companies working on a solution to this problem. Its manufacturing process optimization applications use software to put a structure in place that supports and sustain programs like lean, Six Sigma, and demand flow.
Pelion's president and CEO, Dave Alcala, says it's key to remain philosophically agnostic—i.e., to support whichever program is most effective for the manufacturer, based on the market and equipment mix. Thus, the Pelion offering includes assessment functionality to determine how to effectively manage a plant on a daily basis. It then provides a road map to get there.
Pelion was founded in 1996 to develop enterprise application integration software, but in 2000 changed course, dedicating itself to lean and other forms of optimization. Now, with interest in lean expanding, Pelion has broadened its management team to include a number of manufacturing software industry veterans.
Joining Alcala are Richard Sherman, senior VP of marketing; and Rich Cialabrini, senior VP of sales. All were at EXE Technologies during that company's growth and IPO phase.
"We've spent the past decade working on getting the right product to the right place at the right time," says Sherman. "But build-to-forecast operations aren't good enough anymore. Optimization bases build decisions on actual customer demand and turns the factory back into the critical node in the supply network.
Slansky has seen resurgence in interest in lean principles, but says up to 90 percent of manufacturers have some form of lean, Six Sigma, demand flow, or Kaizen in place. Yet only about 10 percent of those companies are satisfied with progress made.
"You have to establish a lean culture," says Slansky. "Software can give a company tools to sustain lean initiatives."
