Standards increase design creativity, not restrict it

During a remodeling project at my son's house, a trip to the home improvement store revealed that the track and fixtures that they now carry aren't compatible with the track and fixtures that my son already has. Result: he can forgo the improvements, or he can tear it all out and start over with new track lighting, or he can waste time and resources to try to find the parts he needs.

If all of the manufacturers of track lighting would agree to a design standard, it would open bigger markets for track and fixtures to everyone, thus potentially encouraging more people to use more track lighting. And agreeing to the geometric relationship amongst the parts would not limit the creativity of the manufacturers to innovate in their designs to add real value for customers.

In packaging lines, we have the same issues.

We are not developing and applying standards that provide flexibility for the customer. Too many machine builders choose neither to use existing standards nor to assist in developing new ones. And customers don't always know about or care about these issues when the buy a machine. They realize the problem later when they try to improve, add or change functionality. I'm sure my son didn't ask about a track lighting standard when he made the original purchase, but he will be much less likely to buy more track lighting in the future.

Standards are too often looked at as "limiting creativity" or "adding cost" or "facilitating loss of account control". In reality, using standards allows one to focus on creative solutions, reducing cost, and adding value for the customer. Use of standards leverages the work of hundreds of engineers who collaborated to find some of the best solutions. There is no value in every company recreating trivial design details. Standards allow an industry to focus upon enlarging its pond rather than on guarding its shoreline. If you doubt this, look at what the Internet standards and Windows has done for computing.

These two examples bring up the issue of "open standards", "proprietary standards" and "de facto standards". We'll debate in future posts some of these issues. But for now, I encourage packaging machine builders and end users alike to think about the value of applying standards as they design, specify and install packaging equipment. Too often, packagers are forgoing competitive advantage because the lack of application of standards makes automation, integration and continuous improvement of packaging systems just too difficult.

In case you don't know where to look for potentially beneficial standards, I would suggest starting by taking a look at the OMAC Packaging Workgroup's Guidelines for Packaging Machinery Automation, version 3.1. This represents the work of hundreds of the best engineering minds from technology providers, packaging machinery builders and end users applied over the last 5 years.

It references a number of international and open standards that facilitate the design and application of packaging machinery in a way that provides connect-and-pack™ flexibility. These include Ethernet, Sercos, Profibus, PackM/L, PackTags, PLCOpen, IEC61131, S88, etc.

If you are in the business of designing, selling, specifying or buying packaging machines, these terms should all be familiar to you. If they aren't, you aren't giving adequate care to the use of standards in your business.

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Comments I am fascinated by your perspective on risk aversion and risk awareness. I have long had a strong negative gut reaction to people and particularly organizations which formulate plans and policies around being risk averse. Government regulators particularly see their role as protecting (pick one) a) the environment or natural resources b) public health etc. and that they must be highly risk averse in doing so. This more often than not confounds innovation or steers innovation in a particular direction such as that which accomplishes the regulatory goal of protection with no effort toward productivity/efficiency of production. This has led, in my opinion, to many US industries becoming uncompetitive. This is a knotty issue for me and I would appreciate your comments as well as suggestions for additional reading on the philosophy behind risk aversion and risk awareness and the potential pitfalls of risk aversion. Keith replied: Thanks for your reply. I get very frustrated with the government thinking that it has to protect me from risk. In every case, that serves the benefit of a special interest and limits the options for my own life. When you limit options, you stifle innovation. I too have some pet peeves - such as EEOC compliance audits stifling industrial training leading to a less competitive workforce. I can't direct you to any particular reading - other than the blog and the replies that have been coming in. Would be happy to keep open the discussion. Posted by: Chris Nelson on February 22, 2007 Post a comment (If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.) Name: Email Address: URL: Remember personal info? Comments: (you may use HTML tags for style)