It was back! The all-too-familiar multi-colored, cycling globe of doom dominated the screen. My lovable old computer and I waited patiently for it to go away. It didn’t. PowerPoint shut down, accompanied by the usual polite but unproductive announcement that it had to quit. “Nooooooo…! It happened again, Ed!” I wailed. “You’ve got too many programs open; restart the computer,” mumbled by business partner and first husband. After repeated expletives and numerous “force quits,” I persuaded the computer to take a nap. I rebooted, only to discover that, despite repeated “saves,” most of my scintillating presentation was gone, undoubtedly eaten and digested by the inexorable, cycling globe of doom.
Computers and cleaning process equipment must be updated. If you’re replacing process equipment, please don’t do what I did – don’t wait till it becomes totally unbearable to use, or even worse completely stops functioning.
Control the process, don’t baby-sit the cleaning equipment
My computer had given me warning signs of disaster. It was pretty old and had to be coaxed along. The problems happened gradually, so I felt I could cope with each one, usually at the expense of convenience and productivity.
Are you running into analogous problems with your critical cleaning processes? Is your cleaning equipment gradually becoming dysfunctional? Think about it. How often does it have to be repaired? Downtime on the system costs money. Is the reject rate increasing? Poor quality and lost product cost money. Have you become accustomed to running parts through the cleaning system two or even three times? That takes time and money.
We have colleagues and even a few clients (don’t worry, we’re not mentioning names), who put up with sub-optimal cleaning processes, who put off making the decision about investing in a new cleaning process. They repeatedly patch up a degreaser, often when workers repeatedly complain about the odor. They add patches to the patches. They throw away money by tolerating evaporative losses of costly cleaning solvents, because they purchased so-called bargain cleaning equipment. They simply mop-up puddles of cleaning agent or rinse water, or put up with excessive foaming because someone has tweaked the controls on the equipment or substituted a new cleaning agent without looking at how the process would be affected.
Get expert, independent advice
We advise you to get independent assessment of your cleaning process requirements. Fortunately, I did take my own advice and found an independent consultant – one who actually listened. Here’s what we advise.
• Don’t fix the process on your own. You’re too close to the situation. Cleaning processes are a big investment; and you need the perspective of someone who is not currently gnashing their teeth at the problems, who can take a step back. Copying what your friends and colleagues use is not the answer; they probably do not have your manufacturing and business goals and issues.
• Find an independent adviser. We found a group that operates the way BFK Solutions does – we (and the group we work with) don’t accept commissions or referral fees. By all means, listen to sales reps and technical reps; and be aware that they know their own product line best and have an affiliation to their own product line.
• Find a group with the scope of expertise you need. In our case, we knew the type of computer we wanted, but we found a group that could integrate the hardware and software and that could help us deal with our internet issues. In manufacturing, in terms of critical cleaning, you need a group with expertise in all sorts of cleaning agents and cleaning processes.
• Find an experienced group that will partner with you and collaborate with you, a group that doesn’t try to force a particular approach on you. Find a group that listens. I figure that the craft of listening and understanding is a life-long educational effort.
Update and integrate the entire process
In our case, we realized our phones were a bit out of date. This was made clear when a perhaps a dozen people at the computer store gathered around, gazing at our phones and marveling that they were still functioning. Ok, by comparison with the new phones, ours looked like something Jobs and Wozniak built for a science fair project… in middle school. And, we’d had signs that we couldn’t completely coordinate our phones with our computers.
When you think about updating your critical cleaning processes, consider the entire manufacturing picture and make sure to integrate cleaning into the total manufacturing process. We did not try to limp along with our pre-historic phones, because they would have hampered the rest of our operation. Unfortunately, we see too many examples of where manufacturers did not take a holistic, cost-effective approach to process change. An old hoist or older automated materials handling system is often at best marginally adaptable to newer cleaning systems. Trying to repurpose existing fixtures can be false economy. Old fixtures may not allow you to optimize the new system; and the materials used in fixtures can degrade, introducing particles that contaminate the product.
Don’t procrastinate!
Last-minute decisions are difficult, can be more expensive, and can result in lost productivity – and I can tell you that from recent, first-hand experience. We have shiny new phones; we have a nice new monitor. The rest of our computer system is probably on a slow boat from China.
There are more decisions to make about cleaning processes than about computers; and you need to do some research and perhaps some testing. Most cleaning and automation equipment is custom-built. Build time can take months.
We can help you even if you procrastinate, but it’s better for all of us if you don’t wait until the last minute.
