Blog

Insights, updates, and expertise on AI and digital transformation in manufacturing.

·Tim Stuart

What's New Across the Use Case Platform This Week (May 31, 2026)

A third platform site launched this week. valuemaps.com takes a curated portfolio of use cases (yours, picked on mfgusecases) and scores it against your company's real financial baseline, with every dollar of impact traceable back through a specific measure and a specific finance line. Audit-walk first, CFO-facing waterfall second. Plus the **Action Plan V2** that was the headline of last week's Coming Soon list, and a new shared concept called **Initiatives** that carries a buyer's selection from one site to the next.

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·Tim Stuart

What's New Across Visual Decisions This Week (May 24, 2026)

The last update's "Coming Soon" list was solution mapping + auto-generated URDs. Both shipped this week, plus a new public demo on mfgusecases.com that walks the entire chain end-to-end — from an ExampleCo plant's survey gaps all the way to a downloadable User Requirements Document. The two halves of the platform now talk to each other in a way they didn't before.

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·Tim Stuart

What's New Across Visual Decisions This Week (May 10, 2026)

Last week's note covered the big foundation work on both sides — multi-plant hierarchy and the anonymity-by-default heatmap on mfg-surveys, Use Case Families and a big KPI catalog expansion on mfgusecases. This week's additions sit on top of that foundation: lighter, more refined, mostly about getting more insight out of the same underlying data.

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·Tim Stuart

Most Plants Have One CI Program. The Reach Is What Varies.

Walk a well-run plant during shift change. The production cells have visual management boards refreshed every hour. Operators run a five-minute tier-1 meeting against takt time. Standard work is posted at every station. Andon cords get pulled on a clear set of triggers. The CI team is genuinely good at what they do. Now walk to the planning department. The CI team's posters are on the wall. The improvement charter is signed. There's no daily management routine. The standard work for the master scheduler exists in someone's head. The visual control for backlog status is a spreadsheet that nobody pulls up in a meeting. Same plant. Same CI program. Two different worlds.

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·Tim Stuart

Free Pro Access This Week + Knowledge Graphs & Maturity Assessments

Free Pro access this week — plus interactive knowledge graphs and maturity assessments. Email info@mfgusecases.com for a 7-day trial. New this week: explore how any cause, enabler, or KPI connects across the entire use case network, and assess your team's maturity across 15 manufacturing functions.

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·Tim Stuart

Welcome!

Introducing the Smart Manufacturing Use Case Platform — a structured library of 200+ manufacturing use cases built for the people closest to operations.

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