Rapid Application Development Team

Communications is Key

The key to building great automated systems is respect for other disciplines and great communication skills.  For example, we have seen many projects fail because the mechanical engineer did not care about what the electrical engineer said.  Likewise, sometimes electrical engineers may not listen to mechanical engineers and later find out that it will now cost them much more to make the system "right". 

Another trick you need to know is when to recommend solutions and when to be especially careful to only recommend requirements.  For example, our background is control, monitoring, and information systems.  If we are talking to a mechanical designer, we have to be extremely careful to only state requirements of the mechanical system and not tell the mechanical designer how to design something.  Hopefully, the mechanical designer is much better at designing mechanical system than we ever will be.  Tell them what the design needs to accomplish but not how to do the design. 

Likewise, if a mechanical designer comes to us needing control, monitoring, and information system then they need to just give us the requirements and not tell us how to do it.  In some cases it does not matter and we will ask their preference.  For example, a mechanical guy needs to control a motor.  If the mechanical guy comes to us and says he needs a A-B PLC-5 to run this motor, we might think okay, but that will cost a lot more than if we just put a drive out there.  But he told us he needed an expensive PLC-5 that will basically do nothing. 

Typical Project Team

Rapid Vertical Application Development consists of five roles:

1. Vertical Application Expert
2. System Architect
3. Project Manager
4. Programmer
5. Other disciplines

Vertical Application Expert

The vertical application expert is someone with at least 20 years (preferably 30 or 40 years) of experience in the vertical market.  You may already have one or more vertical application experts in your company or you can use ours.  Even if you have your own vertical application expert, you may want to also use ours to gain additional insight and perspective.  When you look at the process over and over you begin to lose objectivity and an outside look can often give you better ideas. 

The vertical application expert  is the person that knows this process or operation better than anyone else.  Depending on the application, the expert may not understand many of the technologies that make the process faster, better, and cheaper -- but they do understand the process better than anyone.  They can clearly define what the process does, what each step of the process is, what the inputs to the process are, what the expected conversion of each step is, and the output. 

For example, in a chemical process, the process expert would most likely be a chemical engineer that thoroughly understands every chemical reaction and every chemical process.  For a training application, the vertical application expert would be someone that best understands training.  For an MES expert, a person that has been involved with manufacturing applications for 40 years. 

NOTE that although some companies want someone with 40 years of experience in their specific industry, our experience is that you want someone with 40 years of experience in similar, but different industries.  There is a saying that "When everyone thinks alike -- no one things much".  When people come from different companies and disciplines they bring new and innovative ideas. 

The first step is to design or reengineer the process / operations.  Optimize the operation of the process.  Then wrap technology around the process to enable and enhance your operations.  Technology should be used to run the process faster, better, and cheaper.  Use it to minimize errors and mistakes, reduce variation, and provide metrics and key performance indicators so that the process expert can continue to fine tune the process. 

If you automate a poorly designed process, you just make bad things happen more consistently.  That might be okay if you believe in continuous improvement and you need data to start measuring your process.  But typically the best approach is to redesign first. 

The vertical application expert will be able to tell you the metrics and KPIs that need to be measured and reported.  They can tell you the sampling rate. 

After the project is started, the vertical application expert is used infrequently, perhaps once a week to answer questions and review the project.  With e-mail, faxing, and such the vertical application expert does not have to visit the site or development team each week. 

System Architect

The system architect sits down with the vertical application expert and develops a technology architecture from the top down.  The system architect goes over each step of the process with the application expert defining the inputs, outputs, and conversions.  Our system architects typically have 20 years of experience. 

Project Manager

The first task of the project manager is to do the detailed design from the bottom-up.  The project manager resolves problems with the system architect and application expert.  The project manager is responsible for keeping track of all the details of the projects, scheduling all the different key players, and tracking cost and performance.  Our project managers typically have 10 years of experience. 

Programmer

Poor old programmers have the enviable task of sitting in front of a computer all day, every day, creating code.  Then they have to test and debug their code.  It's a good thing they like that. 

Other Application Specific Disciplines

For chemical operations this may include experts in heavy industrial, pumps, valves, tanks, etc.  For manufacturing this will include experts in the raw materials and specialty machinery used to convert the raw materials.  Not only is it other disciplines but includes vendors who have much more detailed knowledge about specific items. 

Tools

What tools you use can help a lot.  UML / CASE tools, Microsoft's Visual Studio, and standards all support rapid application development.