Lean Code – Part One

Software applications exist to perform a wide variety of tasks and for any given task there are many applications to choose from.  As anyone who has visited an “App Store” knows, the number of available applications can range from a select few to thousands.  Your performance criteria provide a means of selecting the best application for you or your company. […]

SQL Performance Explained — Averlytics.com

“Use the Index Luke” is the free to read on-line version of the book “SQL Performance Explained“. If the book is free, why even mention the official “SQL Performance Explained” title for the hard copy? There are two primary reasons for purchasing a copy for my library. One is having a version of my own […] via SQL Performance Explained — […]

Camtasia 9 – Screen Recording and Video Editing

I upgraded to TechSmith’s Camtasia version 9 today and note some very nice improvements that make producing videos with Camtasia so much faster and easier.  Recording, editing, and creating your video is a simple process, even for novice users.  You can save or share your videos by uploading them to Screencast.com, Vimeo, YouTube, Facebook, and more. It is so much easier […]

OEE in Isolation

OEE or Overall Equipment Effectiveness continues to pervade the world of manufacturing as evidenced by the number of OEE templates that are downloaded each and every day from our downloads page.  In this regard, it is interesting to note the number of OEE solutions that operate in complete isolation. A medium to large sized company typically deploys some form of […]

The Problem with Solutions

The value of a solution is a problem not worth repeating. ~Versalytics.org The 5 Why process is one of the many tools that serve to help us to state a given problem, identify a root cause, and ultimately derive a solution to resolve the concern. One of the caveats that potentially undermines the effectiveness of the 5 Why process is repeatability. […]

SQL Queries For Mere Mortals

Databases are capable of storing incredible volumes of data.  However, their true value is found when we learn to mine and manipulate that data.  Structured Query Language or SQL is the language of databases and is common – with some exceptions – to all of the major databases on the market today. A custom front end is typical of most […]

SQL and Excel

Microsoft’s SQL Server is the database solution of choice for our company.  However, like many of the database solutions available, additional data mining tools are required to provide the top level reports needed to manage the business itself. Not surprisingly, one of those tools is Excel 2016.  The correlation between a database table and a spreadsheet is intuitively clear.  While […]