IPC Global: Mark Meersman

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Mark Meersman joins us to share his story about what IPC is doing for supply chain, and how he got started on his career with them.

 

 

Danny:

Alright, so let’s jump into today’s Executive Series. I am joined by Mark Meersman, who is the managing partner at IPC Global. Mark, thank you so much for joining me today on the Executive Series.

Mark:

For sure, thanks for having me.

Danny:

Alright, so for those who aren’t familiar about IPC global, can you tell us a little bit about who you guys are and what you do?

Mark:

For sure. So we’re an enterprise systems integrator, so that we bring multiple systems together, make them talk, integrate, communicate. In particular, our specialty is getting the data back out of those systems so that we can use it to inform the stakeholders of that. In particular, in manufacturing, where we’ve been proud to do, whether it’s the human resources systems, the manufacturing, they call them MRP systems, or ERP systems, we pull data out of all of those systems and make new sense out of it for leadership, as well as, ultimately, people on the ground.

Danny:

Well, data’s definitely a big deal, and it’s increasingly to be, continuing to be an even bigger deal as we go, and we’ll kind of jump into that a little bit later here. But before we get into all that, I want to know a little bit more about you. Tell me, how did you get into, how did you get into data?

Mark:

So, I was classically trained at Price Waterhouse, in their consulting division, and we were putting in big, large enterprise systems around the globe. Fortunately, I got to live in a number of countries along the way, and learned the interoperability of those systems, and what they were ultimately doing for the enterprise. And then, to get, when I started this business, IPC Global, 20 years ago, we had to specialize even further down. So the data is the new gold, and so we’re able then to say, “Listen, let’s just focus on the data that’s being created from these organizations, and making it much more valuable to them.”

Danny:

Exactly. You know, that’s exciting. So, alright. So you said you started IPC Global about 20 years ago. What was that journey that made you say, “Hey, you know, I’m going to jump from PWC, and I’m going to start my own thing,” what was that?

Mark:

So I had a brief stint with a product company. So I was with a software company called Markham, and they make enterprise software, and I was responsible for one of the product lines. And they were closing the Atlanta office, so my options at the time were: move to Boston or move to Tokyo, where they had a joint venture with NEC. And those two options were put on the table. And my wife and I had some roots here in Atlanta, and I said, we talked about it at the time, and I said, “Why don’t I step out and do some consulting?” My wife and I had roots here, and she says, “Well, why don’t you go back and do consulting?” And so I stepped out and started doing consulting. But what honestly was the kicker– because I was fearful, I’ve always had work, and firms to work for– is, my father asked me, “What are you afraid of?” I said, “Well, I’ve got kids. “I’ve got to provide for my family.” He says, “You’ll do great, I’ve got your back.” And so I said, “Alright.” And so I stepped out, reached out to a few prospective customers, and got those going. And then now, 20 years later, we’re nearly 50 colleagues strong. We’ve honed our expertise, in particular into data and analytics. We picked some industries that we’re great at, that being healthcare, education, and manufacturing. And thus, provide that value in a unique way, now.

Danny:

Yeah, so, alright. What was that? I’m always curious, with individuals and these entrepreneurs who go out and make that step. And you mentioned you had that conversation with your dad, and he said, “What are you afraid about?” And you were like, “Oh, well, you know.” Go out there, go do it. I’ve got your back.” What was the, is there a specific moment that you remember, when you made it up in your mind, and said, “Okay, you know what? I’m going to do this. I’m just going to do it.” What was that moment, and what did that feel like?

Mark:

I think the moment was with my wife, who– she at that time had already stopped working and was raising our boys, at the time. We had two at home, and… Her confidence in me to do that. There was enough other data points in the speaking with prospective customers that they would want my help in certain ways. And so it’s probably primarily her confidence that I could pull it off.

Danny:

That’s awesome. Well, I, being from a data, a data guy, you had things lined up. It wasn’t just like, “Hey, we’re just going to do this!”

Mark:

Yeah, no, no.

Danny:

That’s good. So moving forward a little bit, let’s talk about some of the challenges in the manufacturing industry space. Obviously, right now, COVID is kind of a big deal. It’s caused some, well, we don’t need to go into what it’s caused, because I think everyone’s familiar, and if they’re not, well then, yeah, whatever. But you guys have an interesting sort of view at it, and you also have a very interesting tool that you’re helping companies to be able to kind of navigate some of these waters. Can you maybe explain a little bit about what you guys have, and what you guys are doing?

Mark:

So maybe just a concept that maybe your audience would be interested in is, our data is never in the same place. I’ve got some here, some there, some in the other place, right? And one of the unique things that we are able to do rapidly is to integrate data from multiple data sources and then produce it in a logical way. And so just a story leading up to this question is, there was a customer of ours that makes MREs for our military. In their multiple plants, all of a sudden there was a suspected Al-Qaeda member in one of their plants. What did we need to do? Well, wait a minute, we just distributed N number of pallets to N number of locations based on N number of production lines, and those three systems did not talk together. However, with rapid near real-time integration, we could identify what, where, and when that was there, we put holds and recalls on that. Fortunately, there was proven not to be an issue, but the fact that we were able to rapidly respond to it.

Danny:

That’s awesome.

Mark:

Yeah. And so we’ve taken that, that knowledge and capability to rapidly integrate, and find, and then publish, into a number of places. If you remember, the first Ebola case that came here to the US was in Dallas, and the nieces of that man were in the school district. Well, the school districts are overwhelmingly Hispanic, and Hispanics overwhelmingly have this incredible fear of the fever. It’s just, when you talk to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, or other ones that we work with, they’re like, “Oh man, our phone rings off the hook in flu seasons, over-weighted to that particular community.” Well, these schools cleared out. Well, that was a problem.

And so the superintendent of the time, Mike Miles, needed to get on the phone and communicate, in the news, near real-time, what was happening. And we had already, was able to pull data out of their time and attendance system to say, “The number of custodians that clocked in and clocked out in those locations were this, the number of Clorox bottles and wipes that we used on campus was this, the number of lockers and desks that we cleaned were this.” That’s all data that was pulled together, made available so that he could use it and present, and respond rapidly, and thus give confidence to the community that they can come back to school. So that was another experience. Now we’re in the COVID crisis. And what we’re doing in a similar way is enabling our school campuses, or now even our manufacturing plants to identify, A, where it shows up, and then B, who is in that area to isolate it and then communicate and take action. There’s several protocols that the different sites can take. But we learned from that experience. We enable them with data analytics in order to make really rapid decisions.

Danny:

Yeah, absolutely. That sounds, those were some great stories, and some great stuff there. On your first point talking about really just consolidation of data, and having that visibility into all these different disparate systems, that’s obviously a huge challenge. Even if companies do have some sort of ERP, there’s a lot of, there’s a million different systems going on, and it’s very hard to have an understanding of what’s going on from place to place. That can obviously be very challenging. We’re seeing a big shift into, a big digital transformation happening right now. How are… maybe you can tell me a little bit about how, kind of expanding on a little bit more with the school use case on what you’re doing, or how you’re able to help manufacturers be able to get some more visibility into really how to navigate this whole situation with their workforce.

Mark:

Yeah, for sure. Well, there are a finite number of systems, fortunately, that are in play here, and those would be the time systems, the time tracking systems that they have. Whether it be FTEs or temporary labor, we’re still getting that information in overwhelmingly electronically. We’re able to then look at the production schedule. Often, it’ll be in a different system where they have now decided to run this, that, and whatnot. And then, whether it’s electronic or paper, those folks are put out on the production floor. So we’re bringing in that data, albeit electronic, or having people pull that, quickly pull that paper data for it and make it electronic, at the point of need, so that we can then identify, track, and then communicate out to anybody that would be involved in that– what we’re calling little fires. If we can identify the little fires, contain it, and then let everybody else do their thing, we believe that we can manage that. And we expect all medium, large locations, certainly, to have cases. And thus, we know it’s going to happen, so could we define the three or five protocols that we’re going to do when that happens? And that’s what we’re assisting with.

Danny:

Well that’s awesome because, to your point, stuff is going to happen, especially as we continue to open. And we need to be able to do that, especially, you’re hearing a lot of stories of these manufacturers that were deemed essential and critical, and so they needed to continue to operate. However, you’d have issues where, maybe, to your one point, where you’d have a workforce who was scared to be able to, so having to access data, but be able to say, “Hey, this is what’s going on, this is what we’re doing. This is how we’re mitigating. This is how we’re, this is our response to,” actually having a response plan and data to be able to back up on that, I think, is critical, because you were hearing all these stories before where facilities would come in, somebody would get it, and then it would spread, and then you’d have to shut down a line, or multiple lines, or a facility And then, 14 days, from an operational standpoint, it’s an absolute nightmare. Oh, not to mention, if this is critical, they’re manufacturing some critical resources, like Clorox wipes, or paper towels, or gloves, or what have you, and you were hearing these stories. And so… In a finite way, what, is this like a dashboarding type tool, with things you can pull in, you can see all these different reports? Walk me through, what does that look like?

Mark:

Yeah, for sure. So in part, it’s a dashboard, certainly, that would be able to communicate some summary level information, but it also shows the network of the number of rings. One degree, two degrees, three degrees of separation from folks such that we can implement one, two, and three different protocols, depending on how close or involved you are with that situation. But I would take it, one other thing that’s really key is to simplify the communication, and have a finite number of protocols on there. I think it’s very relevant to your audience that on a lot of our plant sites, we’ll see, “Number of days to last injury.” Okay? So great.

Danny:

Yeah, absolutely. Safety’s huge.

Mark:

Safety’s huge. So this is a different type of safety concern, right? A number, communicating very clearly, “We have this many of suspected cases and this many of active, confirmed cases right now in our facility.” Be open about that. And the fact that it’s a number allows people to respond. And as you have seen with our kids, maybe on the soccer field or whatever they do, they respond to numbers.

Danny:

Gamify it a little bit.

Mark:

And everybody was like, “How many days can I go until the next whatever?” And, “Gosh, we’ve gone up to 20 days.” I don’t know, the county I live in up here in Forsyth County, you know, we got up to 21 days, and then we finally had another death. And so the longest number of days we’ve had in a window was 21. And I was counting it every day, and like, “Ah, 21! Alright, we’re starting over.” And now we’re up to 16 again. So I’d love to think that numbers drive behavior, but local numbers, not these big national drama numbers that everybody gets wrapped up in, but rather, on our campuses, on our industrial campuses, we should know.

Danny:

That sounds super fascinating and very helpful. You know, a lot of… Earlier on, we were talking with a lot of different manufacturers, and kind of saying, “What are your procedures? What are your policies, what are you guys doing?” A lot of them were initially saying, “Hey, we’re going to have different break times.” So instead of having, “We’re going to shut this line down, or whatever, 15 minutes on,” they would do it in stages, and lunches would be staggered, and all that stuff. So I’d imagine by doing some things like this, you’re able to kind of recapture some efficiency, because certainly, that wasn’t very efficient, and so your production capacities were dramatically reduced. By doing something like this, you might be able to actually, with a lot more confidence, be able to go in and actually implement some more efficient production operations, but then also have the tools to be able to, to your point, to be able to identify, and to be able to implement those protocols when and if needed.

Mark:

And I think people need to ask, “Mark, will this really work?” And I actually have, right here in Atlanta, a whole county is the largest poultry manufacturing–

Danny:

Huge.

Mark:

In the US, for sure, maybe the world. It’s incredibly big. And it was on the news such that, “Well, we’ve got a breakout in our poultry manufacturing plants,” which is true. Fortunately, one of our customers is Northeast Georgia Health System, and they managed that in collaboration with those plants to get them back online. But guess what? They came back online in a short amount of time. They dealt with it, they snuffed it out, they put new protocols in place, or continued to enhance the protocols that they had, and they’re back online, and doing well. And that tells me that, A, with a methodical process, with information, and with the natural business will to do that, it’s very possible. These are intimate situations that these folks are working in when, if you’ve ever been in a plant, it’s fascinating, a poultry plant. And so, but they got it to work, and they’re up and running, and we’re enjoying chicken today.

Danny:

Awesome! So if I were to, in layman’s terms, I’ll break it down, for our audience too, it’s just looking at, the ability of having, got to have the access to the data. So you’re taking temperatures, you’re doing, you have, “Okay, here’s, who’s coming in, when they’re coming in, here’s the line that they’re working on.” So to be able to have that, then, if something happens, be able to identify those, that individual or individuals, implement that protocol. And then instead of saying, “Okay, wait, we’ve got to do this on a whole company-wide thing,” we can isolate and say, “Hey, we know that this person was just on this, line A,” or something, “around this area.” So the impact will be a lot smaller to operations, but yet you feel like you’ll be able to still mitigate that.

Mark:

For sure. And I know our industrial engineers have been rethinking that pod-like or group-like setting to keep the shifts, the teams, and all that stuff. I think it’s important, the ability to, a lot of times, “Oh, the line’s down. Move people over there,” that may be done, or they may say, “You know what? We’re going to go ahead and hold off until that line comes back up.” So I think a people concern as it relates to this, I think, obviously, is the biggest. But interesting enough, we also are shipping our product out. Some of our product’s being shipped in real time, coming off the line, and going out. And some of that product may in fact carry the disease for a day or two. And thus, understanding inventory control, going ahead and maybe even leaving it on the truck, or leaving it in the warehouse, and shipping a day later, understanding those that are delivering near real time product have an additional maybe concern to this disease, because it is moving.

Danny:

Absolutely. Well, it sounds like that’s a fantastic solution you have there. For those who might want to learn more, what’s the best way to kind of go check this out?

Mark:

Yeah, so IPC global, the website’s ipc-global.com. And all my information is there, happy to speak and engage. Whilst we have a lot of standardized stuff, ultimately, each business would get adapted. It’s quite unique in what they’re trying to solve for, maybe what they’ve already solved for, that we can leverage that and leverage their expertise. Ours certainly is in data and analytics.

Danny:

Excellent. Well, Mark, I really appreciate the time, and just kind of walking us through what you guys have, and these great solutions. I think it’s, I think a lot of our audience will really enjoy this episode, and you may be getting some phone calls, we’ll see.

Mark:

Maybe so. Thank you for the time.

Danny:

Hey, thanks so much for coming.

Mark:

Alright, very good. Thank you.

Danny:

Alright, well that wraps up today’s IndustrialSage Executive Series interview with Mark Meersman from IPC Global. Hey, they’ve got a really interesting tool. Go check it out if it’s something that you think that your organization might need. We’ll put the web address under the show notes. If you are listening on any podcast, we’ll have that in there as well. So that’s all I’ve got for you today. Thank you so much for listening or watching. Hey, listen, if you’re not subscribed on our email list, you need to do it, and you do it today, because you’re missing out on a lot of other great episodes, just like this that you heard with Mark. We’re talking to other executives, leaders, talking about what’s going on in the industry, what they’re doing, decisions they’re making, challenges they’re facing, opportunities that are out there. So go ahead and subscribe, industrialsage.com, and you’ll get this great content sent to you every week. I’m Danny Gonzales. Thanks for watching or listening. I’ll be back next week with another episode of IndustrialSage.

 

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