Many years ago I graduated from Michigan State University (in my slightly biased opinion one of the greatest institutions in the country). As a student I was fortunate enough to land the right job that afforded me to forge some great relationships within the campus. Over two summers I worked security in the dorm rooms at night, which allowed me to get a free room in the dorm over the entire summer. (By the way, living alone in an entire dorm that has 500 empty rooms is a little on the spooky side.) During the day, I was a member of a maintenance crew responsible for painting all of the dorm rooms. You would be surprised at what a college student can do to a dorm room in just a few short months. Really, how many ceilings should require painting because they are littered with burn marks? Again: burn marks. On the ceiling. Also, it should be noted that before a room can be painted, there are many undetermined foreign substances that have to be scraped off the walls, which is as gross as it sounds.

I think I’m digressing.

The point is that on campus there are many dorm rooms spread across many square acres. MSU for example, is over two miles wide (I know, I had to walk it in zero degree weather) with multiple dorms and literally thousands of rooms. Each area of the campus had its own maintenance crews responsible for painting the dorms over the summer. Amazingly, back in late 80’s early 90’s, this was an all-manual operation. The maintenance supervisor would go through each room, inspect it, leave a little piece of paper that indicated what required painting (and sometimes scraping) and that was the work order for the room. There was no automated solution, there was no solution that connected all of the work that needed be completed across the campus and there was no way to understand collectively if work was on or behind schedule.

Today, this all is changing in higher education campuses. Many universities already run PeopleSoft Campus Solutions and are extending that with a fully integrated PeopleSoft Maintenance Management solution, which is a logical and efficient step. This begets many benefits for the higher ed client: work orders can be generated as specific or general as required, crews assigned to the work, costs of labor and supplies measured, work progress in terms of on schedule or behind schedule analyzed on a continuous basis. This also all can be extended to a mobile solution so the maintenance supervisors can go room to room and enter information related to the asset and work order directly into PeopleSoft.

Compared to what I saw back in my days at MSU, it’s another world. Like, entirely.

We have come a long way from a manual, disconnected solution to a fully automated, integrated and mobile solution that provides us all of the information on a real time basis. I have spoken to clients about this on many occasions, and there’s a tremendous need in the marketplace to integrate these seemingly routine campus tasks into a maintenance system that ties back to larger campus solutions and finance apps. The level of pain and happenstance we dealt with back in the day needn’t be a reality today.

We have the tools. We should use them.

If you would like to understand more about the PeopleSoft Maintenance Management solution, don’t miss our white paper (the second one on the page). Likewise, if you have any questions about this, drop your thoughts in the comments or to me via email.

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MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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You know that moment when you think you’ve lost an important Microsoft Word DOC and desperately think of every possible way to get it back, including praying to your coffee mug? Amplify that by a eleventy-million and you’ll have an idea of what the team at Pixar was feeling when they figured out someone was doing an RM*, or ‘remove everything’ on the drive where its Toy Story 2 files were stored.

If it weren’t for a telecommuting employee, Toy Story 2 would have been erased in its entirety.

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MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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2012 vs. 2012

How do you say the year – 2012? Do you say, “twenty twelve” or do you say “two thousand twelve” or have you been hit in the temple by a golf club and say, “two thousand and twelve”?

There are arguments both ways. Mathematically, with maths being the de facto language of the natural world and known universe, the number 2012 is spoken as two thousand twelve. Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is said two thousand one. Nobody says, “Oh, twenty oh one? Yeah, good movie” unless he’s just coming back from dental surgery.

But.

Who are to ignore the semantics of past centuries? In the 20th century, when the years were all 19xx, we said, nineteen eighty seven or, if you’re Prince, nineteen ninety nine. The year 1776 is seventeen seventy six, not one thousand seven hundred seventy six.

Personally, I’m growing fond of the twenty twelve method, simply because while I respect mathematics and Stanley Kubrick, the precedent seems pretty heavily established thanks to 2000 recent years of concrete, real-world evidence. So.

If we could all decide to get comfortable with a way to say the year without someone raising an eyebrow, that’d be great. I do believe I’ve just settled it for us. You’re welcome. WE SHOULD HAVE THIS FIGURED OUT BY NOW.

What about that there metric system thing?

Back when I was a kid obsessed with cap guns and, later, Micronauts (no correlation), every school was ramping up to teach us the metric system, a completely logical, structured, base–10 system of units and measures that almost the entire rest of the globe was using. We were told that our weird, legacy Imperial system was going the way of the dinosaur, and that everything would make more sense, and we would be able to understand how fast we were going when we drove in Canada and how much wine was in a bottle.

Even after learning the entire metric system and taking tests and saying silly things like “milliliter” and “hectare” in front of other people, nothing ever happened. I have entire sections of my brain storing metric system information that could be remembering beer names, and they’re wasted, forever. Just like the section of my brain that still vividly recalls both pair of moon boots that I owned, including how the silver foil-looking part started to flake off on my second pair and the material underneath was sort of pinkish. COME ON, BRAIN.

Anyway.

Me? I’m in favor of the metric system. Almost the rest of the globe uses it, and it’s high time we get on board with the better system. WE SHOULD HAVE THIS FIGURED OUT BY NOW.

I was told there’d be flying cars.

Speaking of 2012, THE FUTURE IS DISAPPOINTING SO FAR. I remember being 10 and doing some quick math about the year 2000, which seemed eons away at the time. I figured:

• It would be 2000 in 21 years. 21 years was, like, forever.
• I would be 30 years old when 2000 rings in.
• I would have some scraggly facial hair.
• I still wouldn’t know how to wear cowboy boots.
• My name would still be a horrible thing, because the “F” and “V” blend into one another in a classic example of parental non-planning, such that my name sounds like “Jeffentura” when spoken aloud. If only my parents understood that you should never end one word and begin another on a fricative. This should be a law.
• We would have flying cars.

See anything strange about that list? Strange becase it hasn’t happened? Yeah, so do I. It’s called two-dimensional travel, and it’s boring.

Sure, we have the iPhone, but that doesn’t relieve the fact that it’s 2012, and we’re still driving on the X and Y axes. Nothing flies, and there are no cars with jet options. Sure, there are Mustangs with 662 HP right out of the box, but fat lot of good that power does me if I’m stuck behind someone going 35 MPH in a 55 zone. Why stuck? BECAUSE MY CAR DOESN’T FLY. WELL, IT DOES, BUT NOT IN THE AIR. YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.

WE SHOULD HAVE THIS FIGURED OUT BY NOW.

(Note: when I say “my car,” I don’t really mean “my car”. I don’t have a 662 HP Mustang, but if you recently won the lottery and want to buy one for me, that’s totally fine. I mean, I would feign a demure refusal to allow you to do so, but I would totally buckle and let you. TOTALLY let you. I mean it.)

Have a good weekend, everyone.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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Have you heard of PeopleSoft Program Management? If not, you’re not alone.

Program Management is one of the lesser known applications within the PeopleSoft footprint.  However, when utilized in conjunction with PeopleSoft Project Costing, Program Management can provide organizations a tremendous amount of value by consolidating project information into one neat repository.

Having all of the projects in one repository allows for a level of consistency amongst projects and empowers project managers to have common work plans, progress, project milestones and definitions.  With a standard view of projects, an organization can have a better understanding of project or program profitability and an overall comparison of budgets and actual to forecasts across projects.  Users utilize the Enterprise Program Tree to group like projects together to summarize data and create project dependencies.  Similar projects can be templated which promotes the ability to compare similar project efforts.

It’s really an amazing piece of software for project-heavy organizations.

Here are a few snapshots of the features of PeopleSoft Program Management (click to enlarge):

Snapshot of the Enterprise Program Management Tree: All projects within a business unit, all projects rolling up into programs.

Snapshot: See the status of all projects rolled up into a program “at a glance”.

Consistent projects rolled up into programs allowing for a consistent view and analysis will better power your organization to successfully manage enterprise programs.

If you’re curious or interested in learning more, feel free to reach out to me and I’ll get in touch with you right away. No BS, no sales. Promise.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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Stop me if you heard something similar before. Ready?

Kentucky limits on debt issuance have hindered high-priority university construction/renovation projects.  Detailing this is a great piece over at Inside Higher Ed, by Kevin Kiley. To wit:

Even though the university would fund its new debt through non-state revenues, lawmakers in the Kentucky state legislature, which wrapped up its budget process earlier this month, denied the state’s universities the authority to issue any bonds for the next two years, fearing that more debt by state institutions could hurt the state’s credit ratings.

Now the state’s universities will likely not be able to finance projects through debt until the legislature reconvenes in two years, and there is no guarantee that it lawmakers will approve bonds then. For the University of Kentucky, that means the university will put off several projects, and the already old infrastructure will continue to age, which administrators say could hinder student and faculty recruitment.

Clearly, the theme of the article is the challenges the University of Kentucky is facing with financing capital projects and expansion. But here’s the rub: it’s not just the University of Kentucky.  It’s every state and nearly every institution, both private and public, that are being asked to do more with less. We hear it literally every week. It’s such a common constriction that it’s almost assumed at this point.

PeopleSoft presents solutions for Capital Planning along with Asset Lifecycle Management.  Chances are, your role spans more than just figuring out how to get it done.  You must also figure out how to keep it running, for a long time, at a reasonable cost.  Construction is just a small piece of the puzzle and extending the life of an asset is just a small part of the answer.  The reality is that you cannot allow your hands to be tied if you are going to succeed.

It’s fun to think it’s a workable constraint, but it’s not. Reality is reality.

We work with organizations every day that are forced to engage this dilemma head on.  If you are curious and want to talk (or just vent), drop me an e-mail.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and LinkedIn.

About this blog.

Last weekend I went fly fishing for the first time. Here’s a rundown on what happened versus what I expected. So.

What I Expected

Before I went, everyone, in tense, dire language, told me to be prepared for a few things:

• The inevitability of bodily injury by hooking myself through the ear or back of the head.
• Inhuman frustration with casting, because it is, by almost every measure, the hardest thing to do in the known universe.
• On the off chance I could figure out casting, I should prepare for a Zen-like relaxation experience, a direct commune with nature. But don’t count on it, you oaf.
• A friend called it, “the most difficult easy thing ever.” He had low ceiling fans in his house growing up.

What Really Happened

• No injuries except a fairly deep cut I inflicted on myself while slicing tomoatoes for dinner. Tough guy? YOU BET.
• Two solid days of dressing up as a space marine fighting a chemical war by donning an entire suit made of rubber and other liquidproof materials. All I needed was one of those old steampunk helmets and I would look like the dude on the cover of the BioShock games.
• Immediately upon getting in the river (Michigan’s Ausable) the first day, I caught two small trout. I mean, like immediately. I thought I was a flyfishing superhero until someone told me they recently stocked the river, using our location as the stocking point. In other words, I could have caught one by reaching down and letting one bite my hand. Which, DID YOU KNOW, is a real style of fishing?
• I came to the relatively quick realization that beer and cigars make flyfishing so much more interesting when you’re out there for six hours straight. Beer moreso than cigars.
• BUT HOLD ON A SECOND, SIR: Pursuant to the beer idea, trying to use a bathroom while dressed up like a vaguely algae-covered latex soldier takes about 20 mintues and involves sweating. Calculate liquid intake volume wisely.
• It’s very possible to have a good time even when you’re not catching anything. That bit about communing with nature and feeling relaxed? Totally true.

Here is a picture of me (left) and Dad (right) standing in northern Michigan’s Manistee river, which is the river we tackled (please take a moment to appreciate that fishing pun) on our second day. Acute observers might notice the beer and cigar theme here. They might also note my Dad is wearing a real fishing hat, whereas I’m wearing an orange baseball cap I got out of a sale bin one time. Generally, I look like a rank newbie who is borrowing 98% of his gear from another, more prepared fisherman. That’s because I am.

The beer and cigar are not mere props.

To illustrate my noobishness, here’s a tangent I didn’t know where I could fit in, so I’ll just force it on you awkwardly here: I brought my own set of waders to the trip (not shown above), which I have in the garage because I occasionally have to muck around a pond at home. I thought these were fine waders, but when one of the guys saw them, he said, without even picking them up and inspecting them: “Yeah. No.” He then went and got me a pair of loaner waders, which did not smell like decaying plants or weigh 30 lbs. Had he not done that, I probably would have died somewhere along the line.

As fishing law dictates, the best part about these weekends with a bunch of grunting, snoring guys is what happens after fishing. In our case, the apres-fish scene involved food, beer, and sitting outside in 39-degree temperatures huddled around a chimnea talking BS with whoever would listen. I remember this as much as the fishing.

So, the Takeaways

• Would I do it again? Yes.
• Was it a life-altering experience? Not in the Nicholas-Sparks-gonna-write-a-book way, but I think back on it more fondly than I thought I would before going.
• Good gear pays off. And it also costs upwards of $3K for a decent full setup. Herein lies the problem. My strategy? Mooch until I figure out if this is a sport I’ll do more than once a year.
• Don’t forget the beer.

Have a good weekend, everyone.

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MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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Speaking from years of experience, I can definitively tell you that the most successful implementations are those that have done thorough training for project team members and end users.  As many of our clients know, the time, resources and costs associated with training development and execution can be quite significant.

One of the best tools for training on PeopleSoft is the web-based UPK (User Productivity Kit).  You can purchase developer licenses or you can purchase the content.  If you purchase content then you get all of the pre-developed training for a particular module.  For example, if you buy UPK and the content for Inventory you would get all the training associated with all of the business processes for Inventory.  This includes the online training as well as documentation such as job aides, system process documents and test aides.

One of the areas that many clients underestimate when it comes to training is the knowledge required to maintain the system. Employees will leave, new employees will be on-boarded and unless you have a perpetual training program similar to what was established during the actual implementation, you run the risk of insufficient ongoing training (the loss of tribal knowledge).  The beauty of UPK is that it is always available for current employees who need a refresher as well as brand new hires who need to be introduced to the current software and business processes.

UPK is a key component to PeopleSoft training, and it shouldn’t be ignored. Here is a datasheet on UPK [PDF] that delves into more detail.

While a datasheet is nice, there is nothing better than seeing it in action.  Below is a brief video outlining some of the features of UPK.  Enjoy.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and LinkedIn.

About this blog.

If this doesn’t get your week started right, nothing will.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and LinkedIn.

About this blog.

I see you injure yourself a lot. Can you help me?

When I’m not being an annoying blogger/web wonk, I often do athletic things like lift weights, play soccer and injure myself. When people see me do these things (even including the injury part, oddly), they invariably ask me questions about how they can get in shape, what they should eat, what workout program they should do, and why my neck makes crunching noises.

Instead of try to be coherent and give anyone who’s interested a logical guide to these questions, I will instead secrete a bunch of bullet points from my finger motion, which are below. If you are an astute reader (and you are), you’ll notice these are in no discernable order. That’s OK, because order isn’t important, mainly because I lack the discipline right this second to infuse this post with even the slightest bit of structure. And if you’re honest with yourself, you’re reading this before your first meeting, coffee in hand, while the printer spits out some documents for said meeting that you’ll doodle on for 45 minutes. So let’s not get carried away with formality.

So, yes, anyway. These bullet points about health and fitness:

• I wish everyone would understand that fat isn’t necessarily the enemy. We’ve been led for years to believe fat is what makes us fat, and that’s calorically-speaking: fat has 9 calories per gram, whereas carbs and protein only have 4. So, with over double the caloric value, fat must make you fat, right? Not really. It’s not the main culprit.
• Sugar is the main culprit, which means instead of counting fat grams, you better start moderating your carb intake. Without getting into the biochemistry and forcing you to pass out face-down on your keyboard, let’s just say carbs invoke your body’s insulin response, which in turn stores excess sugar (glycogen) as fat. Excess or wrong-type carbs create a metabolic cascade that is very much at the center of the obesity problem we’re seeing today.
• Again: don’t freak out about fat. I know you want to. Everyone does. But understand that your fat-free dressing is full of nasty vegetable oil and additional sugar and salt to make it even somewhat palatable, which is far, far worse than a couple tablespoons of olive oil on your salad. Eat real food.
• Exercise isn’t optional. It really isn’t. Yes, you can manage your weight by keeping a really tight diet, but eventually you will cheat or fall off. We all do. Without stoking your metabolic furnace, you’re really pushing a boulder uphill.
• What kind of exercise? Not endless cardio. I tell folks to lift heavy things 2–3 times per week for no longer than 30 minutes, and to sprint twice per week. If you can’t run, do very short, intense 20 second intervals on a bike, rowing machine, or elliptical. Intervals mean you should go at 90–100% of your max effort for 20 seconds, then take 40 seconds to recover. As your fitness improves, you’ll be able to reduce your rest interval all the way down to 10 seconds. Doing 20 seconds of high-intensity work followed by 10 seconds of rest is known as the Tabta Protocol. In just eight minutes you can get a better cardio and metabolically-stimulating workout than 45 minutes doing steady-state cardio work.
• When you lift, don’t be afraid of going heavy. Heavier weights build more muscle, and they hit metabolic pathways that help you burn fat, gain lean tissue and even impmrove your cardio capacity. Ladies, you do not have the hormones required to put on much bulk, so concerns about you turning into a hulking, stinking she-devil are unfounded.
• Walk. A lot. As many times as you can per week. Beats the heck out of staring at TV.
• Don’t ignore sleep. Amazing things happen in your sleep, and I’m not talking about having that dream where you are a robot superhero and fly around on a chocolate dragon. I’m talking about tissue recovery and growth, fat loss, stress reduction – you name it. We’re a nation of overtired, super-stimulated people, and we need sleep. Don’t skimp it – especially if you start exercising more.
• Avoid grains if you can. I mean it. All grains. I can go on and on about this, but I’d rather refer you to Robb Wolf’s excellent The Paleo Solution or Mark Sisson’s The Primal Blueprint for thorough explanations. This should actually be bullet point #1, but I didn’t want to freak you out right way. (But I am OK with freaking you out now.)

See? No discerable order, yet pretty reasonable advice. Is it Friday or what, baby?

One last thing: supplements. Everyone asks what supplements they should take. Here’s what I recommend:

• If you can’t get enough protein from real food (with enough being .6-.7 grams per pound of bodyweight; more if you are an athlete), get yourself a good whey protein supplement. I use this daily.
• Fish oil for omega–3 fatty acids. Back when we ate more off the land, we had many more omega–3s in our diet. Today, with the preponderance of grains and processed food, we have a 20:1 omega–6 to omega–3 ratio. That’s way upside-down. We should be closer to 2:1. Fish oil helps this massively. Here’s what I take.
• Unless you spend a lot of time outdoors, I recommend a Vitamin D3 supplement. Nearly every single blood panel I’ve seen is deficient in this, and often massively so. I use a liquid version.

So. Yeah. Friday post. Okay then.

Seriously, if you have any questions, you let me know in the comments. If you prefer email, no problem.

Have a good weekend, everyone.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and LinkedIn.

About this blog.

Good article from Mike Schmidt over at Manufacturing Business Technology about how a lack of proactive, intelligent asset management is a true risk to the organization:

If you’re not managing assets properly, you don’t know what the cost of those assets are and (what the cost is) to repair those assets,” he says. “That creates a big risk to an organization.

That’s really the crux of it. Said another way, if your organization is not managing its assets properly and systematically, you are throwing money away!  In my daily conversations, I often find myself surprised at how many companies do not have an asset management system. Of those that do, I’m finding that many don’t use the solution to its fullest extent — if at all.

My daily conversations jibe with what Schmidt found:

According to the survey, only 37% of respondents currently have EAM/CMMS solutions in place. In addition, 49% do not use applications to manage documents about their assets.

Organizations need to understand that’s some powerful shelfware.

Schmidt’s is targeted at the manufacturing sector, but is directly applicable to all asset-intensive industries, such as higher education, utilities and power generation, energy and healthcare.

Another key quip about whether or not executives realize the true risk poor asset management represents:

And it’s that risk that is only going to lead to more pressure in the coming years, says Zirnhelt.

“The pressure’s been there, but my impression is that executives, in an average sense, don’t appreciate it,” he continues. “It has just taken them a long time to appreciate the severity of it.”

Bottom line: if your organization is not managing its assets effectively and efficiently, there is no better time to start than now. If you’re an Oracle/PeopleSoft shop, check out our whitepaper about PeopleSoft Maintenance Management: An Introduction and Overview of Benefits for a good jumping-off point.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and LinkedIn.

About this blog.