Support The U.S.A and Your Troops
"Software By The Sea"
Dear
Customer,
Thank you in advance for reading this letter of introduction. The objective of this letter is to describe some of the details, history, development and deployments for those companies that are discovering, or have not discovered, that costs and revenue are the most important parts of a business. This surely is an understatement. How can I say "costs and revenue" are important? Well costs, more importantly the cost versus time ratio (CVTR) is extremely important and revenue, more importantly the revenue versus costs ratio (RVCR). Knowing CVTR, RVCR, ROI, IAV percentages, MTA's, Ao, and other acronyms that tell you where you are going and where you do not want to go are important to the ongoing strength of the operational unit. In today's time the ability to Govern, apply Risk, and be compliant is paramount.
Most
importantly though, please read about our product, the "Master Maintenance Money
Management" (M4Power) software program series is aimed at assets, personnel,
workflow and contracts. In the onset of development for this product in 1979,
the span of internalizing the need to manage all of the aspects of support
entities started in 1963. Thereafter in the late 1960's I was trained on the
U.S. Navy's ASD Program (Aircraft Statistical Data Program) in 1968 and used
this program to manage several squadrons of aircraft while enjoying the
non-commissioned officer rank of E-5 in the USMC at the Santa Ana Marine Corp
Air Base nick named LTA (Lighter Than Air Station). This base was named in WWII
because this is where the blimps were housed. Thereafter the USMC used this base
to manage, maintain, and make ready the USMC Air Wing for variable pitched wing
aircraft which included the last UH34 Helocopter Squadron (HMM561) in the USMC.
The HMM561 UH34 Squadron was deactivated there at LTA. At this time the business
of defining and managing the electronics, electrical, mechanical, hydralics, and
other aspects of the aircraft was accomplished with the ASD Program. This is and
was the basis for the "Master Maintenance Money Management" software program
series.
In
the early 1960's and 1970's my involvement with various other assets,
inspections, personnel, further justified in my mind that there was a real need
for a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) to manage and retain a
knowledgebase for all work performed and for all work planned. In fact in 1963 I
was originally involved with the calibration, inspection, certification of
electronic instrumentation using wheatstone bridges, differential amplifiers,
power supplies, differential voltmeters, and other devices that were designed
and used as secondary standards that complimented primary standards from the NBS
that certified whether or not instrumentation was accurate to perform other
measurements for equipment in laboratories, aircraft instrumentation, and other
areas where accuracy down to 0.0001 percentages where required. I knew that
beyond the immediate business of initial management also would require retention
of information for a knowledgebase. In the 1960's up to 1979 I knew just what my
mentors were saying that a knowledgebase was critical in all facits of support.
The mentors that helped me along the way of my career often indicated that
trying to remember every incident of equipment and instrumentation repair was
not going to be retained by any one person. Therefore the standard of
methodology of logs, notebooks, transactions for all work and
troubleshooting equipment and systems was documented and filed. Even though we
used a very fool proof method of retaining all the problems, issues and
solutions in mostly 5x8 cards and file cabinets, this grew to such a large
amount of information and was very difficult to manage. At times we had tubs or
roll around document cabinets to keep records of demand, corrective, and planned
maintenance items. My mentors always said that you needed to use your problem
solving analysis and methodology and not always depend on memory. This is where
a computer comes in as a memory and troubleshooting tool that allows you to
lookup and analyze problems from multiple views of
information.
As
you can see by reviewing this web site, this letter is the source for
information as well as the menu herein. As some will say, there sure is not any
"Eye Candy" here. But, there is plenty of content. Our newest product, GRC
Software, [Governance, Risk, and Compliance] is extremely UGLY. Giving top
management to information they need to make decisions. And, the backup for
middle management to report accurately. The power lurks in the architecture and
not in the "Eye Candy." The functionality of the M4Power is simple and powerful
menu where there is only one menu for the entire program that relates to the
power and use of the M4Power program. Then on any data file the "automatic
incremental search engine" allows any user to find anything on any field by just
typing in the data field what they think they are looking for. The only limit
regarding the responsiveness and magnitude of the data files is the speed
and size of the hard drive, locally or server based. The power of the
M4Power program is as simple as that. Remember, any field of data anytime
anywhere yields the information needed to help the decision making process
complete. Furthermore, the M4Power can be deployed as a single user, remote
user, client/server, or web enabled.
As
the M4Power program was deployed in 1979 under the name of "Equipment Management
Program" there were just a handful of competitors. As far as I can remember,
there were only five competitors of what was called a CMMS (Computerized
Maintenance Management System). As time progressed the M4Power program was
called "Master Maintenance Management" software program series in 1985, or the
M3Power program for
short or as our customers called it "M Cubed." It was not until early 2000 that
the name was recoined to the enhanced version called the M4Power program. At
this time there were as many customers using the M4Power program that were
not-for-profit as there were that were profit revenue generating entities.
Hence, the name "Master Maintenance Money Management" (M4Power) software program
series.
Is
it possible you want to know the productivity in your strategic business units?
What about the cracks where the operational funds fall into? Do you know what
they are? What about the types of work versus the category? Does your
accountants or comptrollers know the details of your support units regarding
more than just the material and labor costs and whether or not your operating in
the black or red? What about the operational availability (Ao) for any
particular unit, especially when it is revenue generating? At a high occupancy
percentage when there is not any revenue generating units available and those
that are available are NOT operational, something less than say 90% Ao,
(Operational Availability), then the revenue stops. This is true in apple
sorting machines, manufacturing machines of razor blades, rooms in a resort,
beds in a hospital, and other asset intensive operational
units.
Whether
or not you are a revenue generating unit or a non-profit unit, knowledge of
these facts are imperative to the longevity and strength of your operational
unit. And in todays economy, profitability means staying in business, again
whether or not you are not-for-profit or revenue generating. Does this make
sense so far? If not, then you probably should not continue reading the
remainder of this letter. It would be a waste of time for you. But if there are
any questions in your mind as to how you can strengthen your operational unit,
reduce your costs, improve your productivity, improve your bottom line, find out
exactly what cracks the operational or capital funds fall into, define
justification for employees or outsourcing, etc. then read on and click on the
underlined items for further information regarding details of our products and
services that deal with assets, personnel, workflow and
contracts.
There
are two main parts to our product, the "Master Maintenance Money Management"
software program series (M4Power). Part one deals with the application
and how it is implemented. Part two deals with the development and
continued support that may be contracted with Business By The Sea or via a
department within the customers operation.
Application
management deals with a multitude of factors. Justification of a data entry
person for the entire support entities comes with the volume of work performed.
An example would be eight FTE's (full time equivalents) in a not-for-profit
setting, whereby each of these FTE works on various assets, systems, and
provides support to a range of departments or a range of equipment. And, each of
the FTE's can enter and close all required work flow processes. But if these
same FTE's offer services to a different range of clients as well and they bill
for their services and produce profit, then even a small number of FTE's could
justify a clerk, accountant, or data entry person that controls all the
documents that are produced.
From
a different perspective, if an operating unit such as is described above can be
outsourced for data management for as little as a few hundred dollars a
month which keeps the operating unit current with all the details of the
workflow and allows invoicing as well for those that have revenue generating
customers, then this becomes a viable option to maintain and reschedule all
workflow. Issues such as corrective maintenance, demand maintenance, planned
maintenance, project maintenance, and other demands defined in the operational
unit that need attention and documentation. Click here for an example of
off-site data management (outsourced), called "Betternomics."
The
second part deals with development and support which
is contracted via American Services Resources, a division of VQMG, Inc. or
within the customers own development department. Development includes an array
of programs, files, and types of fields of data. Development
of the M4Power product is complete, but in most cases all customers have
another 10% specialty designs that can modify the M4Power to work exactly as
their operation does on paper. The remainder of 10% is based on the needs of
individual customers. The main program and all the utilities include over 20,000
programs, over 200 files, and over 500 fields of data. This is what the
development tool called M4Power
is comprised of.
Development of the software for "Software By The Sea" software program series is entirely CODE FREE. What you ask does this mean? Well this means that number one, in practice you will need to fantasize, theorize, mesmerize, and magicianize those elements of what you believe you need to manage. This consists of the types of fields of data and what kind of types of fields of data are these. It does not matter in what order you enter these into the program. The program manages these elements called "Types of Fields" of data. As you have probably learned, in order to provide the plans, system, direction, infa-structure, methodologies, development, deployment, implementation, support and service that are necessary to build a software program you will also need the tools, experience, knowledge, platform and wisdom to help you achieve the goals and objectives mapped out for the operational unit.
Next you create the files that will be used to store the data. These files will link automatically to the types of fields of data. The data files will be linked to one another via the selection you make to join them either as one to one, one to many, many to one relationships. This is like having 50 file clerks at you ever beckoning direction and each clerk handles one file. As time progresses you know you will have more than fifty files.
Now
comes the magic part. Just select the file, select the view, select the type of
program, and bingo - magic the program is completed and performs immediately at
this point processing data and writing reports. Of course, you can go back and
add and subtract any other criteria you desire. You can create as much "Eye
Candy" as you need and so on. But for the most part the program is done in
seconds. This process is a paradigm shift from the conventional programming with
most other software
development tools. For a complete review on our white paper for software
development and deployment, click
here.
What
are these acronyms called CVTR anyway? Well the Cost Versus Time Ratio is
critical in that as a support entity that has primarily personnel, material,
assets, and contracts to manage, it is important to know that if you spent
$20,000 for a contract on some equipment that includes all costs whatsoever to
keep the unit with a high Ao (Operational Availability at say 97%) then it would
important to know as well how many occurrences does the contractor come on site
to check, inspect, or perform any kind of maintenance. If the contractor comes
once a year and spends one hour on site for this unit, then the CVTR is
20,000:1. Therefore the cost per hour is $20,000. This may require some review
and adjustments. This is just one of those automatic reports that yield the
byproducts of all work performed and documented.
In
fact, the CVTR can go down to the lowest common denominator in the M4Power
program called the Category Code. This tells you exactly where the real problems
are and gives management the opportunity to fix the operational unit before the
cracks become to deeply embedded with cash.
CVTR
also yields other issues related to the knowledgebase. As an example when you
perform a task that lets say for numeric examples a task that takes 4 hours all
inclusively. Two hours to determine what the real problem is; one hour to fix
the problem; and one hour to do a final inspection and reassembly of the
components and connect back to the system. If this same problem is repeated over
time by different support persons, and there are four occurrences in one year,
then the total time if replicated in the same manner would then be 16 hours. Now
if the knowledgebase is used on the first occurrence, and each different person
can utilize the knowledgebase on each and every occurrence thereafter saving at
a minimum two hours every time because we utilize the knowledgebase on each of
the following identical problems we have created a much lower CVTR. To be exact
then, then CVTR in one year could be reduced from 16 hours to 8 hours. If the
cost per hour was $100 per hour, then the CVTR before using the knowledgebase
would be 1600:1 and after the CVTR would be 800:1. This is a 50% reduction in
costs by using the knowledgebase.
Please
visit our site more often, we add new content to everything on a regular basis.
Thank you very much for reading this. Please return to our main menu to go
further in this web site.
Sincerely,
Patrick Tarzian
Technology & Marketing Development
Business By The Sea
24331 Muirlands Blvd
Unit 4.125
Lake Forest, CA 92630
800.477.2334
949.328.0126
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