"I know that I'm known to be cautious about making changes to our production facilities" says Michal, Production Director at a major auto component manufacturing company.
But we're measured on reliability, quality and efficiency, you know. Making changes to production processes rarely go well with those three.
That's why I was suspicious when Legal told me about having to install equipment as part of their brand protection programme.
Of course I understand the need to fight counterfeiters. I mean, they soil our reputation of producing top-notch quality products. They sell their cheap, sub-standard copies, pretending to be made by us and we get the blame when they fail after just a short while. Who knows, they might even cause an accident, cost a life!
And people out there think it's our fault!
So I was all for the legal guys chasing counterfeiters in court. But I didn't see the point of involving us in Production. Not at first, at least. Then I realised how long it could take to first detect counterfeits being sold, to find evidence and documentation, to get their fakes off the market and, finally, how hard it could be to win in the legal system.
Therefore, when they wanted to tell me about this isAuthentic product authentication system, I was prepared to listen. But I have to admit that I was still hesitant to mess with our carefully tuned production systems.
They had only made it through a few slides when I said, to their great surprise: Great. Let's get on with it!
You should have seen their faces!
They had been prepared to spend hours to convince me.
But it was so smooth, so smart, so unintrusive (I ended up learning a new word even!). Why object?
I was convinced already when I realised that these guys don't add anything to our products! They simply use what is already there! That removes a whole list of objections I had in mind when the meeting started.
As nothing is added to neither product, nor packaging:
We don't need to modify our production lines – They just put some scanners where they fit. That's all.
Minimal installation time for their stuff – They did it between batches, more or less.
We don't need to manage any supplies of identification whatsits – I've heard about other systems for authentication that add fancy labels, print with special ink or even add small transmitters to packages. One more thing to manage and that would create havoc if we ran out of. But no such thing with isAuthentic!
As no thing is added, there is no added reason for anything to go wrong during production either.
So by simply letting the Blue Cromos fellas and their scanners into my factories and just providing some power and internet connectivity, I help Legal to protect our brand and, as that means that we'll lose less sales to counterfeiters, we expect to be able to increase production and add some more people to our staff!
And, by the way, those Blue Cromos guys got me curious about another way to use their system! If I get sub suppliers to make a similar installation in their factories, and add scanners also at the beginning of my production lines, it could help me to improve quality consistency and detect assembly errors at the source, not at the end of the line, at final QA. I'll have a more in-depth discussion with them next month.
That'll be interesting.
Image by cyano66 on iStock
Comments