Telling your Business Story Vikki Kirby of Vibrato Consulting here telling us a story at Glued Ltd headquarters This is the second half day workshop I have attended this year organised by Rob Harrison of Glued, this time with guest presenter and specialist in telling a business story Vikki Kirby.
Compelling content that opens your mind on what your business actually says to clients or prospects. Namely 'Why?' do you do what you do, and what is your story, how and what drove you to be in the business you are in and more importantly why should we care? I have found them so useful that I'm working with Glued, sense checking our brand and story by finding out what UPTIME Consultant is really about after nearly five years, setting us up for the next chapter of our story that we will share with clients, in fact anyone that will listen! You can find out more about Glued Ltd at www.gluedlimited.co.uk and Vibrato Consulting at www.vibratoconsulting.com
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Corrugate Production & Prediction How about a mid 1950s Park Ward Bentley DHC to great you at the hotel! Hope you like the classic car above, I will not be sharing any photos of the Smurfit Kappa processes in this post for confidentiality reasons.
I had an eye opening day long visit to one of their sites in Norwich, where I met a great team of capable engineers taking prediction seriously when it comes to managing their assets. It was a very collaborative visit with SK, Malone Group, Omron, Senseye and Uptime Consultant pooling our knowledge to deploy a joined up solution quickly and at lower cost. This saves a lot of false starts and wasted energy by getting the key people in the room to offer their experience and solutions. I'm sure this will be one of the quickest and wide ranging deployments I have seen yet. Talking the Torque with Norbar Norbar in Banbury - The home of Torque Tools I met Julian the Marketing Manager the other week at the 'Brand and Marketing Workshop' at Glued in Leamington Spa. We were sat next to each other and paired up in a couple of the exercises we carried out, we were a good match as he had an engineering background and we could talk about torque (sorry that had to be done!) I learnt so much about the Norbar company and Julian kindly invited us down to take a further look at the manufacturing and production, I know, I didn't realise myself that they actually manufactured them down in Banbury, but that is where Norbar were founded back during the early 1940s and continue to this day. We spent a very enjoyable two hours touring the extensive site and talking about both our marketing plans, about how to engage people in what we do and more importantly why we do it. Jenny spotted the Norbar sweets first in reception, what a great marketing tool! The advances in Torque wrenches and multipliers was impressive, they not only have production including full machining on site but a special products cell and accredited laboratories for calibration control. Great event at Kenilworth School Some questions to answer and props to give them ideas Excellent event at Kenilworth School and Sixth Form here in Warwickshire organised by the schools careers adviser Marie Brennan.
The idea was simple enough, about 25 professionals from all backgrounds seated in the hall at tables in rows. Two groups of students from year 6 (about 13-14 yrs old?) and around 260 in total came in groups of six to sit with the adults and quiz them for six minutes about their job, then like musical chairs they all move around. You can see the questions above, I turned the first question around and asked them what they thought I did as a job, most said builder or surveyor because of the hard hat and hi-viz! The kids were a credit to the school and actually looked interested in what we had to say. My main message when I talk to students about Mechanical Engineering is the transferability of skills between sectors, I go on to describe my own journey through aerospace, prototyping, motorsport, food industry, utilities and now consulting across all of these sectors to 'sell' the profession of engineering to them. I often hear engineers calling out for more youngsters to join our industry, I say the way to go is to get into schools and talk to kids about the opportunities, that's the best way of getting new engineers in my opinion. Glued® is the name for sticky brands and marketing! The GLUED Workbook we worked our way through over three hours I've been looking forward to this for a few weeks, Branding and Marketing Audit Workshop by Rob and David of Glued® who are local to me in Leamington Spa. The format was simple, bring along your brand ideas, marketing materials and be prepared to assess if they might work out in the real world. Without giving too much away the ten attendees discussed their outlooks guided by Rob and David. There was a broad range of business owners and marketing professionals from larger companies so there were tips that could be shared along the way. The basis of some of the content was around the Simon Sinek idea of people usually buying from you because of 'Why' you do what you do, not 'What' you do or 'How' you deliver it. I kind of get this in some respects, but there are still clients I would say don't give a damn about the Why, they just want you to deliver it, now! It gave me some ideas and I will be back at the Glued Warehouse I'm sure soon to brush up on some hard copy marketing materials. Interesting visit to BEV transition site Mini Plant Oxford Visitor Gate 6 in the winter sunshine This is going to be one of those updates where my lips are sealed as to what we discussed or why I was there!
Suffice to say it was a very interesting site visit to see first hand the plant in action manufacturing the newest Mini models at Oxford that are now all battery powered vehicles. Looking forward to subsequent visits if Uptime Consultant can help them out in the future. One word to sum it up... Impressed Addition to our handheld devices for Thermography FLIR E8 XT wifi enabled Thermal Imaging Camera unboxed Whilst Uptime Consultant is not into the 'services' aspect of Condition Monitoring we do invest in the occasional new instrument that are used lightly for demonstration purposes mainly. One of the things that clients frequently ask is if a certain technology will provide benefits for them. It makes sense then for me to have available the handheld equipment to show the true value. Although I'm equipment agnostic (I don't re-sell for anyone) I do let people know what I choose to spend company money on and when it comes to industrial thermal imagers my money is with FLIR. You get great value for image resolution and their MSX makes the images much more versatile, the software I find is excellent and the handheld devices are very ergonomic compared with the competition. Look out for some Thermal Images in the near future. NEC Birmingham Maintenance Show RMS's Andrew Loder demonstrating Motion Amplification to Uptime and PepsiCo colleagues Another show that I always try to attend as it is very local located at the NEC in Birmingham, it's just a 15 minute train journey away from Coventry. It's a bit hit and miss this show, some years like last year it is very busy, unfortunately the location this year cut the footfall as it wasn't located near the Engineering Technology Show halls. It was great to catch up with contacts again from RMS, Interflon, Pruftechnik and UE Systems, also good to make new ones at InVMA, InControl and others. I also went over on the second day to catch up with clients and prospects as we were all available to attend. Hopefully the feedback will get the organisers (who are new I believe) to get this show next to the Engineering Innovation/Technology Show next year, the bridge walkway is too far for many to make the trip. See more photos below: Collaboration - The Key to Scaling Predictive Maintenance Hosted by Jonathan and Adam from Senseye with Uptime Consultant as guest speaker This is the third webinar I have guested on with friends at SENSEYE down at their headquarters in Southampton. For those that don't know I have been collaborating with Senseye for the past two years as they have what I consider to be the best (only) product that can truly scale prediction in the industrial sector. I keep in touch at regular intervals and we run these webinars every six months with a different angle, they are great to work with and give me a lot of input into how the conversation is framed which I think works well for both. This time we had agreed the webinar should look at collaboration and about the importance of leveraging partnerships to reduce the time to deployment and get quick and meaningful results. If you have ever taken part in something like this you will appreciate the amount of time that goes into script, travel, editing, promoting and most importantly how to use the 40-50 minutes to add maximum value for the attendees. If you would like to hear the recording send me a message or visit www.senseye.io Here's a couple of other photos to give you an isight:  Jason Trantor founder of Mobius Institute bringing together CBM Professionals from across the world This was a new event and one that I had on my calendar to attend since I got wind of it from Dean at RMS, thanks Dean. The word was that if you go to just one CBM event in the UK in 2019 then this is the one. It was a three day Monday-Wednesday show if you wanted the certified training that Mobius were running along side; I opted for the two day Tuesday and Wednesday and wasn't disappointed. It was a very relaxed affair all about sharing knowledge and best practices; I would guess there was a 50/50 split of delegates who were already practicing CBM in one form or another along with others at the start of their predictive journey. The choice of workshops was varied but in the main based around Vibration, Ultrasound and some software applications, alongside great real stories based on experiences using the technologies in industry. There was a broad range of sectors in attendance that I spoke to including, power, turbines, food, automotive, pulp, chemicals, steel and that's just the people I spoke to. They are looking at 2020 and if it revisits I will certainly get along if my calendar says yes! Here are some more photos to give you an idea of what went on; the equipment stands were all bought in to the 'less sales more learning' approach so it was heavy on support but very light on selling. |
Andy
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