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November 2015 • SMT Magazine 41 es—so that people look at the same thing the same way on a regular basis. One of the most gratifying experiences I have is when I visit customers and we're walking by the conference rooms and we see that people are sitting there and they're all looking at a screen discussing what's going on. People haven't walked in with mounds of paper, their own Ex- cel spreadsheets, etc. Everyone knows that, "Hey, this is real-time, right now, a reflection of what's going on in our business." So you're right, it's more than just the cost. It's consistency and it's continuity. All of that plays into it. Matties: i don't know if most companies have what i would call a document data strategy. Moradkhan: A lot of companies don't. You'd be surprised, and it may be shocking how even large public companies don't have a cohesive strategy for this. You know, regimes have come and gone, different tools have been tried, dif- ferent approaches, and you really have a mish- mash of things going on. Matties: in your experience, what's the most sought-after data in the manufacturing envi- ronment? Moradkhan: You're going to get two camps, and the deciding factor is going to be what type of manufacturer you are. If, like in Silicon Val- ley where we are, a significant portion of the cost of your product is the raw materials and labor, and overhead represents a smaller por- tion of the cost, then the supply chain data is the most critical. That supply chain data usually is in your ERP system, Made2Manage, Oracle, and you're trying to slice and dice and manage your supply chain, because it is such a big part of your costs. In other types of manufacturing, the raw materials are really trivial, especially in process manufacturers. I guess you could think of it like a steel manufacturer. They only have one form of raw material at the limit, which is iron ore. Their cost is in the operations, the equipment, and the labor, so now analyzing the equipment utilization and labor utilization and labor ef- ficiency becomes more important. The type of manufacturer you are makes a difference, but for the most part you're either talking about supply chain information or labor and over- head information, and the deciding factor is which comprises most of your costs. Matties: When i look at what iBm is doing with their iBm analytics through Watson—you are probably familiar with that—it seems like there's a big push of data management and awareness. Moradkhan: I actually saw a commercial just over the weekend that had the best tagline, but it wasn't IBM. It was one of their competitors, HP, and they're using a line that says, "Your IT strategy is now your business strategy," mean- ing, how you integrate with your employees, your suppliers, your customers, and how you're able to communicate and exchange informa- tion is now, in a lot of ways, the competitive advantage that people seek. Clearly if you're a product company then, yes, if your product is ten times cheaper and ten times faster, it's go- ing to win; but that doesn't happen that often anymore. People are competitive, and it's not ten times cheaper and ten times faster. They're about the same price, they're about the same speed, and now what makes a differ- ence is who's easier to do business with. Who has their act together more? Now all of a sud- den, to get that extra edge that puts you over the finish line is how you manage your data and how you do analytics that could be the actual deciding factor. If you're a service business, it's already there, because with service businesses— especially like contract manufacturing—you're selling a service at that point. It's not a prod- uct. You can't point to a product and say, "Look, mine is faster and cheaper." The customer's looking for how good you are at doing what you do, and how well they can inte- grate with you so they're not scared about where you are in the manufacturing process, because they've bet the farm on you. If you don't deliver, they don't make their sales, right? You can use how well you manage data as a differentiator. Matties: is there a time where one of your cus- tomers would allow their customers into the por- tus system? ImProvING ProDUCTIoN eFFICIeNCIeS WITH beTTer DATA STrATeGIeS FeaTure INTervIeW