What Models & Standards Do We Use?

That is a hard question because there are so many great ideas out there.  Our philosophy is to try to combine all the research, standards, and best practices with our experience and customers requirements. 

One point we would like to make is -- we believe strongly in a "cross pollination" of ideas between different groups and industries.  We often run into prejudices in people saying "that is not how we do things in the _____ industry" or "how many years of experience do you have in the _____ industry?"

For example, we have bit our tongue while a customer lectures us that the chemical business is nothing like the cosmetics business and nothing like the yarn dying business even though they all measure raw materials into a reactor and then mix, ramp and soak through temperatures and pressures until some chemical characteristic tells them they are done. 

One of our favorite quotes is:

For example, we recommend a CIM framework from SEMATECH, a semiconductor manufacturing group.  A lot of people would instantly dismiss all of this great work simply because they are not in the semiconductor industry. 

21 CFR 11, a "good manufacturing practice" for the Pharmaceuticals industry is great stuff.  Any other industry that would not adopt this practice simply because they are not in pharmaceuticals is, in our humble opinion, crazy. 

NOTE that we are not suggesting every company accept every section of SEMATECH and 21 CFR 11.  For example, sections about clean rooms should be ignored in most other industries.  However, pharmaceuticals should pay attention to SEMATECH's advice on clean rooms.  Likewise, the way pharmaceuticals lock down raw materials may or may not apply to other industries.  We have know some companies that have locked down nuts and bolts in order to reduce pilferage and the magnitude of inventory adjustments. 

In summary, we try to use standards, models, and best practices from a whole source of industries.  From CSIA on how to run our business, to CIM architectures for framing our work in context of the big picture, to Microsoft Visual Studio to be compatible with 80% of the world's hardware and software, to FxCop to make sure the code we write is understood by other programmers, ISA, ANSI, NEMA, and other standards, models, and best practices. 

We try to combine all of these to help our customers become faster, better, and cheaper. 

Our generic operations model