By Tom Inglesby

Trade shows are my life. I love to walk halls filled with exciting new products, see exhibits with MTV-style flashing lights and garish colors, stop at booths where the exhibitors are talking to themselves since no one else comes around (not garish enough?), and drop cards into fishbowls for a chance to win something I can't use, don't understand and couldn't carry if I won it.

For a systems nut, National Manufacturing Week (NMW) was close to perfect. Not that there were a lot of "systems" exhibited, but because it presented in one venue everything from the lowest tier sensor or component through the top level ERP systems with controls, hardware and software represented in force. An engineer could mentally design and construct a complete factory system — consider it a virtual factory — using elements available from a hundred or more companies. The smallest components were shown, right down to little plastic wiring tabs to keep those thousands of PLC leads organized. This was a perfect place to investigate the concept of "systems think."

One company that has taken to the idea is Loctite Corporation, the chemical and "glue guys" in Rocky Hill, Conn. Loctite's booth featured so many products for the plant that the real (to us) excitement was almost lost in the glare. Recalling IBM's famous slogan, we saw Loctite's sign: THiNK. Of course, the first thing we thought was they forgot to capitalize the "I." When thinking of Loctite, I recall their automotive gasket cement and glue product, although they have gone way beyond that. In fact, the sign refers to Loctite's new program called THiNK: Technology Beyond the Bottle.

This is a systems approach to handling maintenance as an ongoing task. Using a combination of training in continuous improvement and finding ways to reduce unnecessary operational costs — with its advanced products — Loctite is showing that the value of its chemicals "isn't in the bottle, but in teaching maintenance personnel how, when and where to use our products to ensure maximum equipment reliability," said Jase Doane, marketing manager for Loctite. The training techniques are application-driven, product-specific and easy to understand. The intention is to have maintenance people be proactive instead of reactive. As Doane says, "Preventing the loosening of a fastener or a bearing spinning in a housing can only be accomplished by a proactive approach — preventing the unpredictable." By emphasizing training in use as well as product usage, Loctite is making the system of maintenance more holistic. That's an important concept behind systems think. Once we can get beyond the bottle — I mean beyond the point solution — we are on the way to real systems.

Wandering around looking for other new and exciting systems, we were surprised to find progress being made at a level where we had thought all progress had ceased. While software companies are pushing ease-of-use as a differentiator, some of the already easiest-to-use products are still being improved. OK, maybe coating them blue isn't what you would call an improvement but read on.

I'm no Tool Guy like Tim the "Tool Man" Taylor, but I am a buyer, user and, according to my wife, a collector of "a lot of metal things in that big red box." A universal open-end wrench is my ultimate tool. To be universal, however, it needs to adapt to all sizes of bolts and nuts, without using moving parts that break, jam or gall. Just a nice flat piece of steel that does the job, all jobs.

We didn't find any universal wrenches at NMW. What we did find was a company, Metric Blue (http://www.metricblue.com) of Taylor, Mich., that has applied the systems think concept to a flat wrench — and to a lot of wrenches, sockets and other basic tools. Brent David Ray, Metric Blue's V.P., explained that the automotive industry, certainly a major user of tools, decreed several years ago that fasteners for internal production equipment would be metric. Because the long transition time as older "inch standard" equipment was phased out and metric phased in would create a confusion of mixed fasteners, all metric bolts, nuts, capscrews and such were to be coated blue for easy ID. This is a version of the "fool-proofing" approach the Japanese call poke-a-yoke — assuming workers are not color blind. Metric Blue has taken this idea a few steps further by issuing a complete line of aftermarket tools, bolts and nuts in blue so their metric-ness can be visually determined. No more trying to spin a 10mm nut with a half-inch wrench.

This blue line should be an adjunct to the tools from Snap-On, MAC and other automotive repair shop suppliers, particularly for those garages that handle both U.S. and metric-oriented foreign cars. Of course, those other companies may catch on and catch up with their own lines of blue wrenches — perhaps we'll see a battle of the blues as each comes out with a proprietary color. Other non-U.S. standard fasteners may then require their own color coding. Can you imagine orange wrenches for the few remaining Whitworth fasteners — you remember Whitworth, don't you? How about bright red sockets for use exclusively on Ferraris?

So here we have a company that responded to a system problem that wasn't even recognized as a problem. And as boxes of blue wrenches become common, metrification will take another leap forward. It may not make a lot of people happy, but it is a good example of systems think in action. I wonder if I'll have to get a "big blue box" for the metric stuff now.

Tom Inglesby has been observing manufacturing technology for 20 years, interpreting it for magazine readers and acting as a conduit for ideas. He welcomes feedback, rumors and facts at
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