FAQ

Time Cheaters are rapidly deployed software applications that automate repetitive actions required by operators, technicians, engineers, managers, office workers, secretaries, etc. They are designed to control laboratory equipment, other software packages (such as found in the Microsoft Office Suite), and to automatically search the internet for data and automatically download information for later analysis.

Most applications take a long time to be written. Time Cheaters are rapidly deployed software applications that can be deployed within a day or two, allowing users to immediately enjoy the benefit of their purchase.

Yes: Time Cheaters employ software techniques and hardware that were found to be the most reliable in the industry in the past thirty years. To be sure, the ‘latest’ software is not necessarily the ‘greatest’ software. The same goes for hardware. Your factory should not be used as an experimental trial ground for “cutting edge” software and hardware. If you want reliability, use technology that has had years to have the bugs worked out and is proven to be effective and reliable.

Not necessarily! One need only to be reminded of Windows 8 for evidence of this fact. The same goes for hardware. The platforms that are presently being released appear to be optimized for high schoolers playing games on the web and with social media such as Facebook and Twitter, and for watching video streams. These features detract from the features needed for automation. Most of the time, factory automation requires only the ability to make simple computations, record data, and communicate over a bus that is very slow compared to video stream feeds. This technology was available to us in the 1980’s, so certainly platforms such as the Pentium with Windows XP in concert with inexpensive text-based languages are sufficient for the task. These established technologies are readily available for purchase on the web and through most local computer resellers.

There is no need for system updates if the system is already working. In fact, the LAST thing you want to a perfectly functioning system is to have some sort of update occur in the middle of the night, and then have to have your line idle for a half a day while your engineers try to figure out which updated driver is incompatible with the application and then have to find the needed driver and replace it… possibly on several computers! We see this all the time, and we see the regret on the faces of Operational Managers who approved technology based on false promises of “latest and greatest.”

Yes… We are very serious about it. Many tasks on the factory floor and in offices have not changed in decades. So-called ‘old’ technology is often superior to newer technology due to the older technology having had all the bugs worked out. Also, it is a commonly held belief that ‘newer is better,’ so you may capitalize on that notion by acquiring the older technology at a fraction of the cost of the ‘latest and greatest.’

We are living in an interesting time. Information is being stored on the web, and can be retrieved at a moment’s notice. This includes information that was generated many decades ago. Older user manuals and service manuals are readily available for industrial equipment on the web. Additionally, it is easy to find people who are familiar with the older technology. Tiger Tooth Technologies is proud of coining the term “Unplanned Longevity” to describe this phenomenon.

There is a term called “Planned Obsolescence.” You can Goggle it or look it up in Wikipedia, where it is defined as: “…in industrial design is a policy of planning or designing a product with an artificially limited useful life, so it will become obsolete, that is, unfashionable or no longer functional after a certain period of time.” Manufacturers have subjected their customers to planned obsolescence for many years, requiring users to upgrade their equipment or to completely scrap instruments that still have useful life in them. Most recently, even if the instrument is still mechanically useful, the vendor refuses to support and service the equipment. This strategy was effective until the internet came along, which now allows users to service their own equipment and allows them to collaborate regarding the usage of the equipment. This collaboration has kept alive many instruments that would otherwise have been made completely useless without the web. Technology consumers who are aware of this ability to prolong the useful life beyond that of the vendor’s control have a significant strategic and tactical advantage over their competitors. At Tiger Tooth, we call this consumer collaborative effort “Unplanned Longevity.” It offers consumers and businesses the ability to squeeze out every drop of utility possible for their investment before they need to go shopping for something new.

This is a very good question. Tiger Tooth would never dream of releasing a system that did not have a full Gauge Repeatability and Reproducibility (GR&R) performed on it, and whether you have Tiger Tooth or some other automation house create your system, you must ALWAYS insist on a GR&R for all your measuring stations. At Tiger Tooth, we use GR&R methods that are accepted by the American Society of Quality (ASQ). We take our GR&Rs very seriously, and have them designed, monitored, and analyzed only by ASQ-Certified Six Sigma Black Belts. If you have an already existing system in place, Tiger Tooth can establish a third-party GR&R for that system, as well. We are constantly amazed how the “latest and greatest” technology often has no statistical advantage over established technology from decades past.

There are a bizillion youtubes, websites, books, and articles about Lean/Six Sigma that you can wade through to learn more, but Tiger Tooth can help you cut down your reading time by directing you to a handful of sites and articles that will get you on your way. Really, the tools of Lean/Six Sigma are simple to use. There is no great mystery to them. Tiger Tooth can help you on your path to using these wonderful techniques that consistently double and triple production output rates.

The certification thing is mostly a racket, in our opinion, to take people’s money. For that reason, we do not certify. We do, however, offer training that will allow your employees to sit for exams at meaningful agencies, such as the American Society of Quality (ASQ).

ASQ offers Lean/Six Sigma certification evaluations that are of the highest standards in the country, and are held in the highest esteem in the country. You can prove this to yourself: go to any employment website (Monster.com, Indeed.com, or any other of your favorites), and search the country for “ASQ Six Sigma.” Count the number of jobs available. Then run another search for “XXX Six Sigma.” (“XXX” stands for the certifying agency). If you can find an agency that will bring more employment opportunities than ASQ, please let us know! Regarding the qualifications of certifying agencies, we let the employment engines speak for themselves. You might be interested to know that the ASQ certification costs only a few hundred dollars, whereas other certifications are much more expensive! The ASQ cert will, though, require that you actually study for several months. After ASQ certifies you, you KNOW that you KNOW your stuff, and so does everybody else!

Our founder was trained in Six Sigma by Motorola, Inc. in the early 1990’s, when Motorola won their first Malcolm Baldridge award. This was long before Six Sigma became commercialized with belts and certificates. Since then, he picked up an ASQ Lean Six Sigma Black Belt simply because it was a popular thing to do. He asserts that meaningful application of Lean Six Sigma has everything to do with learning it through individual study and very little to do with wasting money on certificates and belts. You can start using Lean/Six-Sigma in your factory immediately (proviso: you will want to have fundamental ISO groundwork set in your place of business for maximal effect of Lean/Six Sigma. Tiger Tooth can help you with that, as well).

Lean is the elimination of waste in a business process. Six Sigma is the elimination of variation in a business process… It’s as simple as that!

No. There is a lot that you can do to begin using LSS tools in your business that require no math at all! In order to measure the before-and-after effects, though, you will want to apply some simple mathematical analyses of a few key performance indices… These analyses are not much harder than balancing your checkbook. If you have a math person in your company (often and engineer or finance person), you have all the math expertise you need for most Six-Sigma analyses.

Twenty Seven failures out of a million is impossible for most business operations. We suggest you stop at three or four sigmas, but it depends on your business. Most small businesses appear to operate at about 1.5 sigmas, which Tiger Tooth can almost always improve to an economically sensible level. WE don’t believe in going overboard with this LSS stuff.

Contrary to popular fables, there is nothing bad about using a spreadsheet to store most data – especially if you are going to be manipulating the data extensively. Spreadsheet providers have some a long way in recent years to provide platforms for crunching large amounts of data that was not possible only ten years ago. To be sure, databases have their place, and we can work with those, as well, but for most managers, supervisors, and financial professionals, there is nothing that parallels the versatility of a spreadsheet. By the way, Tiger Tooth also writes automation software for spreadsheets!

Let an automated process perform your factory operations and testing to speed up your throughput. Tiger Tooth will visit your business at no cost to analyze whether our automation is a sensible business decision for you. Automation is not for everyone, but in many situations, a significant business case exists.

Small companies go without the technology available to larger companies, and cannot compete due to operational expenses and overhead. This drives us crazy, since we have experience, and know how simple it is to automate things if you have done it before. Give us a call and tell us about your automation idea… We can probably find the right solution that is within your budget. Tiger Tooth will create the process you need with no uneccessary bells or whistles… The best bargain for your money!

Tiger Tooth believes that software applications should be simple. It should flow left to right and up to down. There should be no pop-ups or mouse-overs. Only buttons should be clickable, and labels should be read – not clicked. All labels should be readable even by people with vision problems, and all commonly used buttons should be as large as possible so that users aren’t hunting down and pecking at small buttons. Everything should be available on one or two sheets in any application, and the software should guide the user through operations without the need for a user manual. If foreigners are using the apps, they need to be multilingual. Botton line: OUR APPS ARE EASY FOR EVERYBODY TO USE!

Our people have worked in Texas Instruments, Nokia, Siemens, Rohde & Schwarz, Keithley Electronics, Parker College, Colorado Medtec, Anritsu, McDonald Technologies, Celerity, SVTronics, Litton, as well as several medium, small and startup firms. Our experience spans consumer, military, industrial, and medical applications. We have been involved in engineering design, manufacturing, sales, marketing, and management. Many of our people are enjoying semi-retirement after having spent 30+ years in technical and business fields, and look forward to applying their experience at sensible prices to a plethora of improvement projects you may have.

Contrary to popular fables, there is nothing bad about using a spreadsheet to store most data – especially if you are going to be manipulating the data extensively. Spreadsheet providers have some a long way in recent years to provide platforms for crunching large amounts of data that was not possible only ten years ago. To be sure, databases have their place, and we can work with those, as well, but for most managers, supervisors, and financial professionals, there is nothing that parallels the versatility of a spreadsheet. By the way, Tiger Tooth also writes automation software for spreadsheets!