Published in the Independence Daily Reporter March 2018

Industry 4.0

There’s a global “upheaval” going on in manufacturing “using advanced sensors, feedback loops, generative design, automation, robots, the Internet of Things (IoT) and a myriad of other new tools that integrate digital, biological and physical worlds,” Some are calling this the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” or Industry 4.0. Sarah Boisvert explores this new world and the entrepreneurial and workforce characteristics that are needed to operate within Industry 4.0 in her new book, “The New Collar Workforce.” Our work and the way we combine Fab Lab ICC with entrepreneurship is featured.

A simple example of 4.0 is a liquid bottling factory in a company that offers, say, custom drinks to customers. The customer selects the custom ingredients through an Internet form. A radio frequency (RF) chip is generated for each bottle of drink in the customer order, containing the instructions for making the custom drinks. As the bottles go through the automated production system, along with the bottles for custom drinks of all the other customer orders, various machines read the RF chips to determine what and how much of each ingredient to add to fulfill the customer orders. To each bottle is attached a custom label, perhaps personalized for each particular customer.

 

Industry 4.0 Means Customization

In 4.0, instead of making 1,000 bottles of the same drink to have in inventory, followed by 1,000 bottles of the next drink, drinks are custom-made for each customer. Factory workers don’t have to touch the bottles too much as everything is automated and the machines all talk to each other using the Internet. Everything will be fine until something goes wrong, and it will. The factory workers in 4.0 will need to be problem solvers that can figure out what went wrong and fix it. The quicker the workers in 4.0 can analyze and fix things, the more valuable they will be to the company and the more fulfilled they will be in their work.

 

Number 1 Skill Needed is Problem Solving

Boisvert did a study in 2016 of 200 manufacturers, ranging from large multi-nationals to small start-ups, all making a wide variety of both high and low-tech products. Even before all have entered the world of Industry 4.0, the unequivocal number 1 skill wanted by 95% of the employers interviewed is the ability to solve problems. Coming in at number two is the ability to work with their hands. It sounds exactly like what goes on at Fab Lab ICC. People learn to solve problems that come up in making projects and most of the projects involve a combination of digital technology and work with hand tools.

 

Fab Force Creates Problem Solvers

When lab manager, Tim Haynes and I started talking about a new kind of workforce training about a year ago, I don’t think we knew of the term Industry 4.0, but we did see big changes coming in the way customer orders are fulfilled. We also saw a disconnect between what skills would be required in that new world and the one-sided training approach by many traditional workforce programs. Tim coined the phrase “Fab Force” to mean a new way to give people an introduction to the many disciplines needed in this new world. The disciplines are introduced by project-based experiential learning methods that naturally create problem solvers that can work with their hands.

We believe that problem solving and “hand” skills will be needed by entrepreneurs and small business owners as well as the factory employees. Indeed, factory companies will be using more and more contract entrepreneurs to accomplish the work they need to do.

Today, we are moving forward with our Fab Force curriculum that will include a core of coursework to facilitate problem-solving and communication skills along with a buffet of technical classes in several disciplines. The idea is that creating the basic problem solving, “hand” skills and a variety of introductory technical skills will set the stage for learning that will be required of all entrepreneurs and factory workers. Fab Force is set to launch next fall.

 

Jim Correll is the director of Fab Lab ICC at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship on the campus of Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349, by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu or Twitter @jimcorrellks.

 

Published in the Independence Daily Reporter March 2018

After attending the 2018 USA Fab Lab Network Symposium recently, I was happy to see nearly all USA Fab Labs are engaging youth from K – 12 grades in the “maker movement.” Wisconsin is working on a substantial movement to build a Fab Lab in each K – 12 school district. The good news is that these kids, empowered by the self-efficacy increases of learning by making, will be much better equipped to enter a world where traditional ways of doing business, including manufacturing, are being turned upside down. Manufacturers and communities betting their future economies on repetitive manufacturing jobs will discover increasing difficulty in finding workers willing to do that kind of work. Today’s world is much different than that of our grand and great-grandparents that went to work in factories in the early 20^th century. The genie is coming out of the bottle for today’s kids with every Fab Lab experience as they learn to become creative problem solvers wanting to do meaningful work in their lives. They are not going to be satisfied with traditional manufacturing jobs, doing repetitive, non-meaningful work every day.

Not So Easy Back Then (1905 working for Henry Ford)

In the early 20^th century, making a living and providing for a family wasn’t so easy. As the country continued to recover from the devastation of the Civil War, a factory job, such as those Henry Ford offered, although repetitive, paid enough to provide for families and many were satisfied doing that kind of work.

The Repetitive Work Factory Model Worked for 60 – 80 Years

Despite the Great Depression of the 1930’s and the advent of labor unions to improve working conditions, the repetitive work factory model remained intact. The educational model was changed to provide workers for the factories and the nation’s business schools taught people how to be managers in the large corporations. Vocational and work-force training programs were developed to teach people how to do the repetitive work and a fast and efficient manner.

Internet Advent and Fall of the Wall Changed All

In the 1980’s and 1990’s the Internet and the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union gave people around the globe a hunger to produce products for the vast American market and they were (and are) willing to work in repetitive jobs for much less money than their American counterparts. Somewhere along the line, we decided the answer was for everyone to have a college degree to a point that today, half of college graduates can’t find the work they believed would result from their degree.

Work Force Training Remains Even As Youth Lose Interest in Manufacturing

Today, some say “Everyone doesn’t need college. We need to bring back vocational training programs for those not smart enough to get a college degree.” OK, they don’t quite say it that way but that’s the message that comes across to the students that don’t do well in the one method used in our educational models for the last 100 years. Most students today are not interested in manufacturing jobs, as they perceive them as dirty and repetitive, regardless of whether they go to college or not. Meanwhile, experiential learning, the learning of Fab Labs and Maker Spaces, tells us most students that don’t do well in traditional academia, are really very smart; they just learn in different ways.

Closing the Gap

How do we close the gap between the work that’s needed and the work that youth is willing to do? It’s the work in our factories that needs to change. Automation, robotics and lean manufacturing methods will change the work while making companies more competitive. The work will involve a variety of skills and require the critical thinking and problem solving skills that result from the experiential learning possible in a Fab Lab environment. The genie is out of the bottle and we’ll likely not see a generation anytime soon willing to do the repetitive factory work of the past.

 

Jim Correll is the director of Fab Lab ICC at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship on the campus of Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349, by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu or Twitter @jimcorrellks.

 

Published in the Independence Daily Reporter February 2018

The topic of business succession planning, or a general lack thereof, always comes up in discussions about helping rural American small towns prosper. No one likes to see established businesses simply close down instead of transitioning to new owners. There has only been limited success in promoting and facilitating business succession planning. I think we’ve made the concept too complicated, thinking it’s all about what the accounts, lawyers and consultants need to do. Those people are necessary, but there are several things that need to be done before getting the heavy-hitter professionals involved. After several years of observation and my involvement in a few transition efforts, here’s my top 10 list of things business owners should do to set up a smooth transition to a new owner.

• Give yourself some time. Businesses generally don’t transition within a few months. Allow a year or two to find the right prospect and situation. Don’t wait until you’re 3 months from total burn-out.
• Keep up appearances. Keep the store nice and updated. Repaint, remodel and rearrange over the years. This not only makes the business worth more at transition time, but your current customers will come more often if they know you’re always making changes and improvements.
• Keep up with the changing times and markets. Markets are changing and changing fast. You’ll have a much better chance at transition success if you’re products and services have been updated to be in demand now, not what was in demand five or ten years ago.
• Create your “cook book”—how you do things. Well documented procedures of how you do things will open up the transition market to people that aren’t necessarily experts in your trade if you can point to a book and say “Here’s how we do things here.”
• Separate real estate. We counsel entrepreneurs and potential small business owners not to buy the building that goes along with a store, unless they want to be in the real estate business. Be prepared to keep the building and lease it to your new business owner.
• Be prepared to finance. As a rule, it’s very difficult for the buyer to obtain full financing to buy a business for any more than the assets are worth. Most of the time, current owners have to be willing to finance a part of the purchase.
• Consider your income tax strategy. Serious prospects, eventually, will want to see your tax returns to verify the business is performing as you say. Be aware that a tax strategy to minimize profits will also minimize the profits the prospect sees in reviewing your returns.
• Where will the money go? Assuming you’ll have a successful transition, be thinking about where you want to proceeds from the transition to go. This would be a good thing to discuss with your financial planner.
• Contact your accountant and attorney. Finally, after all the above have been considered and done, consult your accountant and attorney. Consider making up a transition team of your financial planner, accountant, and attorney.
• Contact a business broker—maybe. There are plenty of people that will be eager to confidentially help you find a buyer, without charging you a commission. These include representatives of Network Kansas and the Kansas Small Business Development Centers. We know who to contact in both of these organizations. Don’t forget your banker.

Selling a business is somewhat like selling a house. Keeping it updated and in good repair over the years is not only more beneficial to you but makes it worth much more when it’s time to transition to someone else.

 

Jim Correll is the director of Fab Lab ICC at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship on the campus of Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349, by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu or Twitter @jimcorrellks.

 

Published in the Independence Daily Reporter February 2018

I’m not fond of the idea of paying big money to retail consultants and branding experts to come into a city, telling us all the things we need to do to be prosperous.  They pretty much tell us things we already know or could come up with if we sat around a table at a brainstorming session.

One of the things nearly all of them say is “You have to figure out what you want to be known for.  What is it that will make your city a destination?”  Cities come up with all kinds of ideas, many based on historical figures or events with which they’ve had some success in the past in attracting visitors.  There are usually other nice attractions in each city and the debate goes on about which one should become “the one thing” for which the city is known.

The experts stir up the pot, getting everyone discussing what “the one thing” should be and then they leave town to go into the next town to do the same thing.  There are a couple of problems with this approach to choosing “the one thing”.  First, with every passing generation, interest in the historical figures and events will wane.  While it is sad (and perhaps a topic for another time), by and large youth don’t realize the value of history as a great teacher in how to stay out of future trouble.  So, they don’t care so much about the historical attractions.  Second, once chosen, how are the rest of us supposed to go about our daily lives supporting how “the one thing” can attract more interest?

But wait.  What if we made innovation “the one thing”?  What, if instead of a parochial city by city approach we made innovation “the one thing” for a whole region?  That’s pretty much what Northwest Arkansas has done and it’s one of the hottest regional economies in the United States.  The people there have learned that a culture of innovation can make the whole region become a destination.

Everyone can support innovation and innovation will never become dated.  Companies that innovate continuously not only stay viable in their markets, but in themselves become destinations for new workers and related suppliers or even competitors to move into the area.  Historical attractions can innovate to find new ways to be relevant to each generation of youth; interactive displays that blend the lessons of history with very effective and exciting experiential learning.  Schools can become innovative in the way they help students learn.  Local governments can be innovative in the way they serve their constituents as customers.

Innovation provides the “one thing” attraction while allowing all the segments of a regional economy to contribute in their own way.  A region “where innovation happens” attracts tourists, residents and new businesses to the region because they want to be where the action is.

Jim Correll is the director of Fab Lab ICC at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship on the campus of Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349, by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu or Twitter @jimcorrellks.