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Are Boringly Predictable Operations Possible?

Self-help gurus like Tony Robbins claim that the more uncertainty and unpredictability we can tolerate in our lives, the greater our quality of life. But we don’t want uncertainty and unpredictability in our operations. Click here to see why not.

Without question, we have excelled at developing new technologies, new materials, and new processes, and we continue to do so. This is exciting, creative stuff where we thrive and appreciate the statement, “variety is the spice of life.” But, what we have grown to accept in our operations are the unpleasant surprises and problems that too many of us describe as “burning platforms.” Is there anything we can do with our operations to make them significantly more predictable? Or is our only strategy throwing darts at the wall?

A big part of making our operations more predictable is by being able to model and simulate our PCB plants. The ability to simulate our operations, like an airline pilot can in an aircraft simulator, would allow us to sharpen our skills, broaden our intuition, and develop and test new strategies, with the goal of achieving boringly predictable operations. As nice as this sounds, there are three reasons why modeling is often instantly rejected before a discussion can even start: 1) we don’t understand it; 2) we believe our operations are far too complex to be modeled; 3) nobody seems to have built a useful one in our industry (or has shared one publicly).

Read the full column here.


Editor's Note: This column originally appeared in the February 2014 issue of The PCB Magazine.