Decintell Falco Customer Experience Management (CEM) Module
Decintell Falco Customer Experience Management (CEM) Module
Decintell Falco Knowledge Platform is a complete enterprise suite consisting an array of modules to cover enterprise wide transactions and workflows. The platform comes with its own Admin Centre. Admin can create roles, create users, assign roles and access rights. Configure alerts, emails etc. Admin can also monitor users' login sessions in real time and can force logout or suspend a user. Admin Centre is a very powerful tool to grant user level access to ensure information integrity. Apart from Admin Centre, Falco combines a set of standard modules and customised modules to handle complicated workflows within an Enterprise. (for more about Admin Centre click Decintell Falco Admin Centre) www.decintell.com
The standard modules are My KRA BI Dashboards, DOIT (IoT module to monitor equipment performance), WAC (weighment calibration app). The customized workflows are SWAS (an aftermarket suite), CPC (Constraint based Capacity Planning and Control), ECM (Engineering Change Management), CEM (Customer Experience Management), TPM (Total Preventive Maintenance), NPD (New Product Development) and many more. (for more on Decintell Falco Knowledge Platform click Digitise with Decintell Falco Knowledge Platform).
For the scope of this blog we will discuss CEM module in detail. "Customer Experience Management" is beyond standard CRM modules.
There are standalone off-the-shelf CRM platforms available. However, these platforms need to be adopted and even customised to suite specific workflow requirements of any organisation. Most of CRM platforms do not have proposal or quotation building engine. The complicated and costly licensing policies is another roadblock to adopt several of these platforms.
Decintell Falco CEM Module
CEM module goes way beyond just basic CRM solution. It is customised solution to fit your needs. CEM comes pre-loaded with value added features such as
- Customer or Competitor Directory - Store address and contact information of the customer. Not just one location but any number of customer locations, their plants, offices, branches, warehouses. It is possible to flag the company as either Customer or Competitor or both.
- People Directory - Register not only key people contact details, but also softer aspects about them, such as their role within the organisation, their relevance to your organisation i.e. influencer, user, decision maker, beneficiary, inclined towards competition, against, neutral etc. CEM has feature to track a person if he/she changes the role, location within customer organisation or joins another customer/competitor organisation. While generating a quote or proposal for any customer, these people specific attributes and their relevance to your organisation pops up and serves as guidance.
- New Query Registration - Query registration from multiple sources such as website, exhibition stalls or your sales team. Query forms are designed to be internally allocated to different business verticals based on the query type. Each query form can be analysed for basic sanity, to decide if it is to be pursued or otherwise, saving huge time of generating proposals which end up nowhere.
- Visit Reports - Register every customer visit and details of conversations. Generate and track action plan, assign actions to respective internal owners. If your organisation is already on Decintell Falco SWAS or DOIT modules, CEM allows seamless information feed from these modules. While preparing for visit it is easily possible to have complete overview of current status of customer complaints, spares orders as well as performance of your supplied equipment. This puts you at an advantage
- Competitor Information - Log competitor information, including proposals submitted by them to customers, enabling “apples to apples” comparative analysis of commercial terms and technical specs offered by a competitor.
- Market Intelligence - Log market information about your products, competitor products, photos, features, feedback received from customers. All this can be channelled into improving your product as well as new product development.
Decintell Falco CEM Module - Customised features
CEM has some unique customised features. Currently we have developed Proposal building for manufacturers and seller of equipment such as Lifts, Gen Sets, Industrial Compressors, or industrial machines.
- Proposal Building and Vetting (escalation approvals) - Gather detailed user requirement (URS). Create huge Knowledge Repository of equipment features, accessories, site dependencies such as layout, power supply, compressed air circulation etc. URS is automatically validated against your equipment features, site conditions, other dependencies and correct equipment is selected. CEM also computes the price based on internal policies. If sales team wants to offer discounts, the proposal is automatically escalated for approval. And only approved quotation / proposal can be sent to customer. Thus every quote/proposal is vetted technically as well as commercially.
- Handling Non-Standard URS - Many times customers ask for non-standard features in an equipment/machine. If the customer URS does not fit into standard equipment features, the query is automatically routed to engineering function to vet the URS. Engineering will study the same, decide if URS can be met with necessary modifications in the standard BOM. And if possible, what will be the cost of such modifications including lead time. Engineering then feeds necessary cost and lead time information in the query form. CEM calculates the price based on internal guidelines and from this point on the Non-Standard query flow follows the same workflow as a standard query. Since workflow for Non-Standard URS is separately handled, it doesn't hold processing of normal queries. This frees up engineering resources to focus on non-standard URS and conduct thorough vetting.
- Quotation/Proposal Tracking - CEM tracks the proposal thru all stages till Win/Loss decision. Possible to generate multiple revisions of the proposal. Every revision is separately vetted and escalated, if necessary, for commercial approvals. The system decides if escalation is necessary.
CEM also hosts a Knowledge Repository (KRè). KRè stores data for equipment specifications, working conditions, accessories and thousands of combinations of interdependencies of all such variables. Ensuring URS is accurately vetted every time, without any manual dependencies. KRè allows hundreds of man years of experience and knowledge within your organisation to be centrally stored, drawn upon and effectively used, rather than this knowledge becoming proprietary to individuals. The knowledge gathered thru individual experience can be put to organizational benefit. KRè has controlled access and any change in data goes thru several steps of approval, before updating relevant masters.
CEM ensures seamless interconnectivity across various modules of Decintell Knowledge Platform, to bring data feed from SWAS, DOIT, WAC. True power of digitisation can be realised with Decintell Falco Knowledge Platform. CEM is currently under pilot testing. However, we appreciate that each organisation has its own specific needs and constraints. Leveraging our domain knowledge, we work closely with your team to map existing flow. Reengineer the same to remove non-value add activities. Optimize the flow to suite organisation specific requirements.
Decintell Falco Knowledge Platform helps your organisation to be a data driven, digitized enterprise.
Other relevant topics decintellfalco.blogspot.com
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Decintell Falco Total Preventive Maintenance (TPM) Module
Decintell Falco Total Preventive Maintenance (TPM) Module
Decintell Falco Knowledge Platform is a complete enterprise suite consisting an array of modules to cover enterprise wide transactions and workflows. The platform comes with its own Admin Centre. Admin can create roles, create users, assign roles and access rights. Configure alerts, emails etc. Admin can also monitor users' login sessions in real time and can force logout or suspend a user. Admin Centre is a very powerful tool to grant user level access to ensure information integrity. Apart from Admin Centre, Falco combines a set of standard modules and customised modules to handle complicated workflows within an Enterprise. (for more about Admin Centre click Decintell Falco Admin Centre
The standard modules are My KRA BI Dashboards, DOIT (IoT module to monitor equipment performance), WAC (weighment calibration app). The customized workflows are SWAS (an aftermarket suite), CPC (Constraint based Capacity Planning and Control), ECM (Engineering Change Management), CEM (Customer Engagement Management), TPM (Total Preventive Maintenance), NPD (New Product Development) and many more. (for more on Decintell Falco Knowledge Platform click Digitise with Decintell Falco Knowledge Platform).
For the scope of this blog we will discuss TPM module in detail. TPM stands for Total Preventive Maintenance. Frequently TPM is also as defined as "Total Productive Maintenance" or "Total Predictive Maintenance".
Even at the cost of a little digression, I would like to discuss various definitions. Properly maintained machines and equipment does have high productivity, higher uptimes, higher quality reliability and of course longer machine working life. And collectively calling all these as "Productive" may be the intent behind using the term "Total Productive Maintenance".
Let us look at another definition of TPM. Total Predictive Maintenance. Can we really have "predictive" maintenance. For anything to be "predictive" one assumes that all potential failures of a machine, can be predicted. Yes, in theory it can be. But practically it is extremely difficult to achieve that, if not impossible. All the predictions are possible only thru past data. For any predictive pattern to be established, large amount historical data is needed and that too, accurately recorded. If an organisation starts building record for every machine thru regular preventive maintenance, breakdowns, spares changes, over years, then that can certainly be used by an artificial intelligence algorithm to come up with certain predictions. But therefore, calling it Predictive is going a bit overboard. I would suggest, not to get influenced with terms like Artificial Intelligence or Block Chain etc. As technologies, they may be advanced and effective, but the question is more about their actual utility in absence of consistent and large amount of data.
I am, therefore, personally more aligned with "Total Preventive Maintenance" as a definition of TPM. Total Prevention is a feasible target for an organisation. The intent of TPM is to ensure equipment health, so the breakdowns are minimized. And as a consequence, capacity calculations get more reliable. TPM has to be part of culture and has to be sustained constantly. TPM is not a one-time project, an activity for the month, or some yearly program. It is a culture. Many a times TPM initiatives fade out over a period because of lack of consistent monitoring.
Decintell Falco Knowledge Platform hosts a powerful TPM module.
TPM module enables the maintenance team
- Draw maintenance schedule for every equipment for the entire year
- Assign teams for the schedule
- Keep team attendance and holiday calendar especially because they will have staggered weekly off schedule and will be entirely different from the rest of the personnel.
- Centrally prepare checklists for every equipment along with part replacement plan
- Plan spare parts
- End to end breakdown ticket handling
- Realtime feedback loop with Falco Capacity and Production Control (CPC)
- Analytics
Other relevant topics. decintellfalco.blogspot.com
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Decintell Falco Admin Centre
Decintell Falco Admin Centre
Decintell Falco Knowledge Platform is a complete enterprise suite consisting an array of modules to cover enterprise wide transactions and workflows. The platform comes with its own Admin Centre. Admin can create roles, create users, assign roles and access rights. Configure alerts, emails etc. Admin can also monitor users' login sessions in real time and can force logout or suspend a user. Admin Centre is a very powerful tool to grant user level access to ensure information integrity. Apart from Admin Centre, Falco combines a set of standard modules and customised modules to handle complicated workflows within an Enterprise. (for more about Admin Centre click Decintell Falco Admin Centre)
Other relevant topics. decintellfalco.blogspot.com
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Decintell Tech Pvt. Ltd.

Decintell Falco Constraint based Capacity Planning & Control (CPC)
Decintell Falco Knowledge Platform is a complete enterprise suite consisting an array of modules to cover enterprise wide transactions and workflows. The platform comes with its own Admin Centre. Admin can create roles, create users, assign roles and access rights. Configure alerts, emails etc. Admin can also monitor users' login sessions in real time and can force logout or suspend a user. Admin Centre is a very powerful tool to grant user level access to ensure information integrity. Apart from Admin Centre, Falco combines a set of standard modules and customised modules to handle complicated workflows within an Enterprise. (for more about Admin Centre click Decintell Falco Admin Centre)
For the scope of this blog we will discuss CPC module in detail. CPC is a customized module to plan capacity loading, levelling the production load and tracking actual production against plan. It is designed to suite specific needs of an organisation. Many ERP systems normally assume infinite capacity model and therefore there is no visibility of available capacity.
Both, over and under capacity is highly risky. Definition of capacity includes installed capacity and manned capacity. In loose terms Installed capacity is the capacity of machines installed. And installed capacity can be productive only when it is adequately manned. Beyond these loose terms however, capacity is a very dynamic phenomenon, because of multitude of variables. The product mix, demand variations, equipment uptime, material availability, quality yield, absenteeism, to name a few.
Installed capacity is a sunk cost. It cannot be reduced. And addition to installed capacity has substantial cost and lead time. However manned capacity can be adjusted to cyclical variations in demand, with much lesser lead time. Even adding manpower can be a lengthy process due to learning curve of newly added headcount. And till the new hires achieve a certain degree of expertise, they tend to imbalance entire line.
Bottleneck neither is a fixed point, nor it is static. Bottleneck in a value stream is a completely dynamic phenomenon. For a given installed capacity, bottleneck keeps shifting due to multiple variables such as demand variation, product mix variation, manpower, equipment breakdown, input material quality. There are two types of bottlenecks. Short term and long term. Short term bottlenecks tend to be impacted more by near term reasons like, product mix variations, sudden demand fluctuations, equipment breakdowns, material shortages, poor quality of inputs. However, long term bottlenecks are governed by installed capacity, line balancing, pacemaker operation, process routing, product cycle time and two to five-year demand cycle.
Knowing the existing capacity or when and how to reduce or increase the capacity, is very critical to survival. It is like knowing where your off stump is. Capacity management is therefore a very complex subject, may be too complex to be handled manually. It is therefore highly desirable to digitise Capacity Planning.
Neither can one depend on standardised capacity planning, that is generally available as basic module in ERP systems. This workflow is a typical example of requiring a customised flow and therefore it is essential that this handled by domain experts.
At Decintell, we have deep domain knowledge to comprehend complexities of capacity planning and production tracking.
CPC brings instant visibility to existing as well as future capacity, based on the demand. If one were to load 12 months demand for viewing impact, CPC will show the stress areas and bottlenecks, both short and long term.
CPC considers all variables creating constraints on capacity, such as machine availability, manpower availability, material downtime, number of workdays, process routing, process cycle time.
Monthly demand, finished good stock and backlog is considered to arrive at net production load for the month. Net demand is uploaded to CPC Capacity module. Capacity module considers all near term constraints as explained above to arrive at loading. The capacity loading will show the under loading or overloading of various operations across all value streams. CPC Capacity module allows multiple iterations to arrive at best possible level loading of capacity to achieve max possible order fulfilment. Once the capacity loading is confirmed, CPC generates production tickets. Actual production can be filled against each operation. While production is in progress, Production Tickets allow change of route if there is any down time due to "man", "machine" or "material". Once the requisite production quantity is achieved production ticket can be closed. Production Tickets can be also short closed allowing back log to be transferred to next ticket or next production cycle.
CPC allows two methods of demand loading. "Regenerative" demand loading. New demand for monthly cycle is uploaded. Finished Goods stock is allocated against demand. This feature closes all open tickets. Transfers backlog to new demand.
New production tickets are generated. "Regenerative" run is normally taken once a month. The second method is "Net Change". Net Change method is used to accommodate small number of orders received during the month. Then instead running "Regenerative" cycle, it is better to run "Net Change". This method creates only net additional demand and generates additional tickets or adds to existing ticket, if same SKU ticket is already live. Existing production tickets are not affected.
CPC is a fully functional module of Decintell Falco. However, we appreciate that each organisation has its own specific needs and constraints. Leveraging our domain knowledge, we work closely with your team to map existing flow. Reengineer the same to remove non-value add activities. Optimise the flow to suite organisation specific requirements.
Decintell Falco Knowledge Platform helps your organisation to be a data driven, digitised enterprise.
Other relevant topics. decintellfalco.blogspot.com
Co-Founder
Decintell Falco Engineering Change Management (ECM) Module
Decintell Falco Engineering Change Management (ECM) Module
Decintell Falco Knowledge Platform is a complete enterprise suite consisting an array of modules to cover enterprise wide transactions and workflows. The platform comes with its own Admin Centre. Admin can create roles, create users, assign roles and access rights. Configure alerts, emails etc. Admin can also monitor users' login sessions in real time and can force logout or suspend a user. Admin Centre is a very powerful tool to grant user level access to ensure information integrity. Apart from Admin Centre, Falco combines a set of standard modules and customised modules to handle complicated workflows within an Enterprise. (for more about Admin Centre click Decintell Falco Admin Centre)
The standard modules are My KRA BI Dashboards, DOIT (IoT module to monitor equipment performance), WAC (weighment calibration app). The customised workflows are SWAS (an aftermarket suite), CPC (Constraint based Capacity Planning and Control), ECM (Engineering Change Management), CEM (Customer Engagement Management), TPM (Total Preventive Maintenance), NPD (New Product Development) and many more. (for more on Decintell Falco Knowledge Platform click Digitise with Decintell Falco Knowledge Platform).
For the scope of this blog we will discuss ECM module in detail. "Engineering Change Management" is one of the most critical and least controlled processes.
Part Numbering System
Engineering Change is about mapping change in part drawing to correct bill of material. However, one needs to consider a broader definition of engineering change. Before we even talk about engineering change management, it is essential to begin from part number generation. Having a system to generate an accurate and unique part number for every single part is basic hygiene. Every organisation should have its own standards of designing part numbers and structure for building bill of material. There should be standard for number of digits for a part number. Each digit must mean exact same attribute. For each attribute there must be a controlled master, to ensure parameters for each attribute are strictly controlled.
Attributes can be defined as Material of construction (MOC), dimensions, process specs, tolerance specs, surface treatment, whether the part is assembly or sub-assembly or a child part, etc. There needs to be a digit in a part number to indicate current engineering level of the part. This digit typically starts at "0" indicating first level. And with every engineering change it is typically incremented in alphabetical series as "A", "B" and so on (some companies follow numeric series instead of alphabetical). Once the revised engineering level for a part is finalized, the part drawing needs to be suitably updated to reflect the change. Every BOM in which the part number appears, needs to be changed to reflect the changed part number.
Bill Of Material Architecture and Engineering Change
The BOM architecture policy has an impact on Engineering Change Management workflow. The architecture will decide how to designate assemblies, subassemblies and child parts. There has to be a digit within part number to indicate its place in the BOM tree. If part number engineering level digit is incremented, it will have an impact on sub-assembly part number and cascading all the way up to main assembly part number. As a typical policy if an engineering change is applicable retrospectively then BOM part number remains same, as the revised part is interchangeable with older revisions of the part. However, if the changed part is not interchangeable, it is a must to change the number of entire BOM tree, indicating new version of the BOM itself.
Since we are discussing BOM structure, I would like to mention that the architecture has major impact on production planning and reporting in ERP. While a layered structure allows better BOM management, it does create problem for production reporting and back-flush of material from WIP. A flat BOM is easier while reporting production and manage inventory accounting. However, this is a topic for a separate article.
Engineering Change impact on Part Drawing
Drawing standards is a vast subject. It is almost like a language. The stricter adherence to drawing standards ensures accurate communication to part manufacturing. However, for the topic at hand I will mention standards directly related to engineering change. Once an engineering change is confirmed and duly approved, drawing needs to be suitably amended and drawing revision needs to be incremented to reflect the change.
The next process flow falls under document management. This revised drawing then needs to be published, old drawing must be removed from the active system and all hard copies of old drawing must be destroyed. Revised drawing must be immediately accessible to all stake holders and if any hard copies are issued, an acknowledgement must be obtained from every recipient. Typically drawing users are, internal quality, production, field service, customers and part vendors (if the part is outsourced). A record must be maintained of every single copy. While the theory of document management is known to all, it is very difficult to follow in practice. Many a Non-Conformances (NCs) are scored during ISO audits for this workflow alone.
Managing Engineering Change
We will discuss basic of Engineering Change Workflow. It begins when an Engineering Change Request (ECR) is generated by quality, engineering, service, vendor or sometimes even customer. The request has to be duly processed by engineering function. The change needs to be technically validated.
If it is a critical part, then thorough testing needs to be carried out, including accelerated life cycle testing. Once the trials are approved, engineering needs to generate a formal note referred to as Engineering Change Note (ECN). ECN is then circulated to Quality, Supply Chain, Production, Finance functions for their approvals. (sometimes it is also mandatory to obtain customer approval especially for critical parts)
Quality function will vet the changed part and part drawings and will sign off on the release. Production function needs to vet the part drawing to ensure that they have proper methods, tools, training to produce and assemble the part. Supply Chain vetting is very critical. They need to ensure vendor readiness to produce the part, estimate lead time to procure the part, accurately calculate stock of old revision part in warehouse, pipeline and at vendors' place. Any special raw material required for old revision part which will be no more required. And finally come up with best possible date of implementation to ensure that vendors are ready and there is no obsolescence cost impact. Supply Chain also needs to assess the costing of revised part if procured from vendor. After necessary approvals and vetting from Supply Chain, the ECN finally lands up at Finance. Finance will calculate cost impact and sign-off the Engineering Change.
Once these steps are duly processed, engineering function needs start implementation. All the revised drawings must be issued by withdrawing old drawings, all BOMs must reflect the revision change and ensure that the effective date is strictly adhered to, otherwise phenomenal obsolescence costs will be incurred.
Engineering Change Cost Impact
Silent and incremental therefore deadly. The cost impact of Engineering change has two separate impacts. One the part cost in itself. Cost per part per piece may be relatively insignificant. However, if we calculate the total quantity of these parts used across all BOMs, only then the true impact is realized. Besides, if one were to consider collective impact of all engineering changes during a year, on BOM cost, it sums to significant BOM cost increase.
The second impact is Obsolescence cost. If while implementing an engineering change, the total pipeline including warehouse stock, is not calculated accurately, it raises substantial obsolescence risk. Obsolescence is a direct hit to bottom-line. Many organizations do not recognize this obsolescence on false hope that someday this material will be used. And more often than not, this day never comes. All it ends up doing is carrying this obsolete material in warehouse, occupying shelf space and incurring heavy inventory carrying cost, not to even mention the weakness it creates on balance sheet. Huge obsolescence as a singular reason, is responsible for many insolvency cases.
The date of implementation of Engineering Change is the deciding factor. If Engineering Change is implemented after considering lead time to first consume pipeline stock, then there is minimal risk. However, many times it is not possible to do so, due to some urgency or other, including implementation timeline driven by the customer. Under such circumstances, it is must to compute obsolescence impact and negotiate with customer to compensate suitably.
ERP and PLM and Engineering Change
How do ERP systems or PLM systems help in managing engineering change. Several ERPs have feature to handle BOM impact. They allow new version part to be introduced with a phase-in date and phase-out date for old version part. This allows ERP systems to automatically control the ordering of new parts on vendor. However, for this to work as designed, basic hygiene of ERP master data base must be maintained.
PLM systems allow control of drawing number, incrementing engineering change, release of drawing in the system and replacing the old drawing.
Decintell Falco ECM
There is a major gap that ERP and PLM systems typically do not address. Managing the workflow in itself (as explained in detail above). Workflow that tracks the ECR, ECN, vetting by various functions, calculation of obsolescence, assessment of BOM cost impact.
At Decintell, we have deep domain knowledge to comprehend complexities Engineering Change Management.
ECM workflow allows strict control over part number generation, managing the entire workflow and computing cost impact. But ECM is more than just about Engineering Change workflow. ECM also hosts a Knowledge Repository (KRè). Majority of product and process knowledge is generated and stored in engineering. KRè stores data for part specifications, process routing, value stream and operation sequence, equipment registry, allocation of equipment to value stream per process route, cycle time per part per process, by equipment type. KRè allows hundreds of man years of experience and knowledge within your organisation to be centrally stored, drawn upon and effectively used, rather than this knowledge becoming proprietary to individuals. This knowledge gathered thru person specific experience can be put to benefit of the entire organisation This data repository has controlled access and any change in data goes thru several steps of approval, before updating relevant masters.
ECM is a fully functional module of Decintell Falco. However, we appreciate that each organisation has its own specific needs and constraints. Leveraging our domain knowledge, we work closely with your team to map existing flow. Reengineer the same to remove non-value add activities. Optimise the flow to suite organisation specific requirements.
Decintell Falco Knowledge Platform helps your organisation to be a data driven, digitised enterprise
Other relevant topics decintellfalco.blogspopt.com
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