Lose Waste in 2017

Posted by Scott Tully on Tue, Dec 27, 2016 @ 12:19 PM

Tags: support, process, improvement

I resolve to...

In the last week of the year, it is not uncommon to be considering a New Year's resolution. Many of us put our health at the top of the list, resolving to quit smoking, eat better and exercise more. I suspect that your work or workplace is worthy of a resolution or two; as nobody is, nor is any process, perfect.

At your place of work, make a healthy bottom-line difference by resolving to lose waste.

That's right, Lose waste. And my friend, Tim Woods, can help.

Who is Tim Woods?

Tim Woods isn't a consultant or personal motivation trainer. Tim Woods isn't even a "he". Tim Woods is a tool, a mnemonic device in the toolbox of every Lean/Six Sigma practitioner. You see, Tim Woods helps us recall "The Eight Wastes".

The Eight Wastes are:

T – Transport – Moving people, products & information
I – Inventory – Storing parts, pieces, documentation ahead of requirements
M – Motion – Bending, turning, reaching, lifting

W – Waiting – For parts, information, instructions, equipment
O – Over production – Making more than is IMMEDIATELY required
O – Over processing – Tighter tolerances, higher grade materials than are necessary
D – Defects – Rework, scrap, incorrect documentation
S – Skills – Under utilizing capabilities, delegating tasks with inadequate training


Get Lean

Now, regardless of your role, rank or position, take a look at the tasks and operations you perform while working. No matter the activity, there is sure to be one or more of the eight wastes in play. So, in these final days of 2016, resolve to lose waste in 2017 by making Tim Woods and NAPC the cornerstone of your process improvement program.

Start the new year right by making sure you and your teammates have Flathead U [your on-demand, self-help video resource] bookmarked in the browser. Schedule a Xinet System Audit [its covered in your support agreement] to make sure the platform is operating as efficiently as possible. Arrange for some topic-driven training to make sure you and your colleagues are masters of your domain. Check with your NAPC Account Manager to see if you have any unused Professional Services time [an example of "I" inventory] remaining. Request a workflow audit to identify wastes [notably the dead-WOOD] that could be remedied with a demonstration, instruction or intelligent automation.

You can do it, and NAPC is here to help !


 

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To our Northeast and Mid Atlantic customers

Posted by Rob Pelmas on Fri, Nov 02, 2012 @ 02:25 PM

Tags: support, knowledge, DAM Systems, Xinet How To, Linux

As our region recovers, we hope you and your families are safe and sound. Our thoughts are with the communities that have been hit the hardest. We want you to know that NAPC will stand with you as the recovery effort continues.

Your systems have been designed for resiliency and should come through just fine upon restoration of utilities. We'd like to offer some common suggestions on re-powering equipment to minimize the effort required to get back in business.

Once you're back in the building and ready to start powering up the systems, work from the outside in-

Power up the Tape library, fiber and ethernet switches.
If bound to directory services, make sure the DCs and DNS servers are up and running
If your raid has multiple chassis' daisy chained off the head unit, power those on first, and wait for them to come up and settle down to a steady state (usually a few minutes)
Power on the Raid controller, and wait for a few minutes again, until it's settled down and is fully up.
Finally, power on the Production server.
Your Portal server can be turned on at any point through the process.

Please let us know if there's anything we can do to help you through this crisis and recovery.

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Staying Current on Support

Posted by Robert Sullivan on Tue, Oct 13, 2009 @ 11:28 AM

Tags: support, Xinet, XMP, Adobe, metadata


I ride dirt bikes and recently incurred a 700 dollar repair bill on my sons bike.
What? What was the cause of this? It's a two stroke motocross and the engine had
seized up, which is not all that unusual, but we had done a new top-end not all that
long ago. So why had it blown again so early?

The 'real mechanic' I brought it to explained that pump gas has changed drastically
from what the engine was designed to run on. But the bike is only four years old..!
Pump gas these days is going Greener with at lease 10% ethanol or more, and is so
oxygenated that it burns hotter, expanding the rings tighter around the piston...
you get the idea. Ring-ding-a-ding, goes to bwop-bwooooop... silence.

As back yard mechanics working on dirt bike engines we hadn't done anything wrong with
our top-end. The gas we run had changed and we didn't ever realize the consequences.

I had an issue last week that drove home the importance of staying current
with system wide support. My customer was having difficulty with XMP metadata
that was not showing up in Venture. This was for XMP fields that were working
correctly not that long ago. Venture syncs were also not showing the field values
either. The first instinctive question is "what changed?" And the answer is
"we're not doing anything differently." Like me with my dirt bike.

Xinet engineering had me activate fpod vlog per a specific tech note which will
create a special output file. Copy on a questionable file again and watch for it to
show up in the log. Verify that the XMP data is not showing in the browser and then
run the syncxmp command in debug mode to capture what the sync is actually doing,
or having issues with. Verify if the data still doesn't show up and send the logs and
sample file in to them for analysis.
They came back with a new syncxmp binary file to slip in, and this was the resolution
to the problem.

I inquired with Xinet engineering about the 'why' and 'how' questions having to do with
the metadata not showing up in Venture. Xinet replied that from their perspective,
the issue had to do with a non-compatible file: specifically,  the jpeg image that I
had sent, which caused syncxmp to fail with these errors:

syncxmp(87535) malloc: *** error for object 0x512060: Non-aligned pointer being freed (2)
syncxmp(87535) malloc: *** error for object 0x512390: double free

Now this error is gobbly-gouk to me. I would have thought a pointer being freed was
a good thing, but I'm not a code writing engineer for several reasons, which is why I
have a very defined escalation path.

The way they "fixed" this was to test my sample file against a newer build of syncxmp,
from the new Suite 16 code, which incorporates some newer XMP libraries provided by Adobe.
In short, the newer Adobe libraries resolved the issue.

So as far as my customer was concerned, they were "not doing anything differently"
But apparently Adobe was. The problem came from the fact that Adobe doesn't stand
still. Ever! They continue to evolve and improve their XMP libraries and those
changes were not recognized by the Xinet version my customer was running.
This is the intrinsic value of having support. We were able to update to a newer
binary to stay current with the ever changing world.

So even though you may not be doing anything different... Change Happens!
My dirt bike solution is to run race gas. The world keeps changing around us without our
consent or input and will not wait for us to adapt or catch up. The leading edge is really
not all that far ahead. But by falling behind, the distance becomes huge and costly.
So stay current with good support.
And if you ride dirt bikes, check your gas.

-Sully

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