Time to value (TTV) is the amount of time elapsed between the purchase and experience of the proposed value of the technology, software, or widget. Time to value is a critical metric to consider when surveying options for industrial software because it frames expectations of the buyers and users. Have you ever experienced the emotional roller-coaster of software implementation in IT or OT? For many users, the experience amounts to a brief spike in excitement about how the software will make your job easier and provide insights, followed by the reality of implementation challenges. For the CFOs and IT buyers, they lavish at the thought of being the champion of the new system that saved the company thousands (if not millions) of dollars. The business case for the solution is reliable, and the sales team presents beautiful charts to you, displaying how your return on investment might look.  But then something happens, and the excitement about the solution fades. You find yourself spending more time with implementation consultants and building workarounds so that your processes can fit the programmed biases in the software on how you should run your operations. Gartner captures this process well in the technology hype cycle. The “trough of disillusionment” is where the excitement wears off, and implementation hits roadblock after roadblock, delaying the buyer’s time to value. CFOs and IT departments have become weary of agreed-upon prices and promised value only to experience their budgets increasingly infringed upon with implementation costs.

TTV in Industrial Software

Industrial software users have become resigned to the enterprise software value proposition. Namely,  hundreds of thousands of dollars to get systems up and running, often with more features than are needed, and delays and hidden costs to boot. What are small and medium manufacturers (SMMs) to do when they’ve been conditioned over many years that enterprise is the only suitable option? Time to value is even more critical when margins are tight. Two possibilities are routinely presented to CFOs and IT/OT departments:

1. Purchase enterprise software, even if it doesn’t precisely fit your needs.
2. Continue with the status quo.

If your company pursues option one, the hidden costs emerge shortly after the contract is signed and the payment clears. The hidden fees function similarly to the hidden factory that manufacturers know well. Hidden factories are the extra activities in an operation that are not planned. These activities are events like reworks or workarounds (like trying to fit your process to fulfill a software requirement).

But what if there was a third option where SMMs could realize the time to value measured in days, if not hours?

Up and Running By Lunch

The rise of low-code has shifted the paradigm in manufacturing software and accelerated the time to value. Applications based on manufacturing solutions using low code and pre-built, interoperable accelerators expedite your TTV. The accelerators do the hard work by being preloaded with APIs to integrate with your current data structure and process. Think of them as the pieces of an Erector Set – you get the main sections and then get to build and assemble what suits your company best. We designed our software Libré with the above framework. Libré is a manufacturing performance management tool that does OEE (operational equipment effectiveness) and more. The beauty is that implementation is uncomplicated. You simply need the software to connect to a PLC or have the ability to wire simple inline sensors to an edge device, and the system could be up and running by lunch. The best part? We’re offering free Libré software licenses to qualified Small and Medium-sized manufacturers. How’s that for accelerated time to value?

A Manufacturing Case Study

We recently worked with a discrete manufacturing company that uses cheese as a component in one of its products. Of the ingredients used, cheese had the most variability due to the fluctuations in dairy prices. Within 24 hours of standing up Libré, they found that they were losing thousands of dollars per week due to wasted cheese that did not end up in the final product. With the help of Libré, they were able to identify the losses and quickly implemented solutions on the line to eliminate the loss, thus increasing their margins. This SMM experienced TTV measured in hours!

Click here to learn more about Spruik Technologies’ free software licenses to Libré – a manufacturing performance management tool that has all of the functionality of OEE and more. You could experience time to value for your industrial software by lunch.