PLM Consulting, Inc. - Philip C. Winkler

Philip C. Winkler

[picture of Phil]

THE EARLY YEARS

I grew up in Galena on the eastern shore of Maryland surrounded by farms and lots of water. In high school I worked in a boat yard sanding boats and painting them as well as working a pile driver, doing engine tuneups and washing boats. In the fall I'd help out on a neighbors farm loading hay bales. At night I worked in two different restaurants bussing tables. With only 24 kids in my entire class we knew each other quite well and, looking back, I realize my high school class was more an extended family than just the people I went to school with. I graduated in 1964. Vietnam would soon be a major topic.

My parents had a dramatic effect on both my and my siblings approach to life. They taught us that we could do anything we wanted if we tried hard enough. As a family, something was always going on: a building project, a new stereo system, maintenance, visiting the library 20 miles away (in high school I read 5-10 books every week; our nearest neighbors were a 15 minute walk away and we were surrounded by woods), repairing something, basketball games, etc.

MY ARMY CAREER

Drafted into the Army in 1967 I soon found I could do pretty much anything I wanted to as long as I did my assigned duties first. It is not too difficult to succeed in the Army and only a little more difficult to excel. I had a ball and learned many things in my 20 year career. I didn't want to go to Vietnam in 1970 (who did?), but I went and I think nothing has had more of an effect on my life. It certainly opened my eyes and gave me a deep appreciation for what we enjoy in America.

My primary job in the Army was being a Clinical Laboratory Manager. In the early 80's our lab was faced with dwindling resources and an increasing workload. I discovered computers and spent 2 years learning how to apply their power to my management tasks of inventory and quality control. By computerizing, I was able to reduce our supply costs by 30% while our workload increased by 25%. No mean feat, but it wouldn't have been possible without computers.

When Medicare changed its lab fee reimbursement rules in 1983 I found my lab management skills in great demand. I was asked by several civilian physicians to set up their office laboratories. My first consulting company was born: Physicians Lab Management. There, that's where PLM came from.

My final assignment was in the Pentagon from 1985 to 1987. I worked with Col. Tony Polk in the Armed Services Blood Program Office, a DOD Field Operating Agency responsible for the strategic movement of blood in peacetime and war for all services. We reported to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs (Medical Readiness). Whew...I still remember all the acronyms.

I was on a committee developing load lists of medical sets, kits and outfits for the Deployable Medical Systems project (the field hospitals in ISO containers used in Panama and the Gulf War). This committee of 8 officers and me (an NCO, Sergeant First Class) was using dBase III (I was training them) to create their load lists from a master file of 8,000 different items. We estimated we had 16 man-months of work at the rate we going.

One day, Ltc. Gary Swallow, the Army Surgeon General's MIS director, placed a DataEase demo disk on my desk. I fired it up (this was 2.5), liked what I saw and called the Washington rep, Matt Einseln. Matt brought me an evaluation copy. DataEase actually had a large sales force back then and Washington was a major market.

I put it on all our computers and two weeks later our project was finished! 16 man-months reduced to 16 man-weeks! Need I say more? We bought quite a few copies of DataEase after that and I continued to develop apps using it. It was also during this time that I joined the Washington DataEase User Group where I first met Jerry Netherton and Hugh Barnes and many other luminaries in the DataEase community.

Approaching retirement in 1987 I was tasked with finding my replacement. There was no doubt that Graham Smith, whom I had known for over 10 years, was the person for the job, but he was in Germany on a 3 year assignment. By pulling a lot of strings we were able to get the rest of his tour canceled and returned him to Washington to take my place. I still think that was one of the best things I ever accomplished, since Graham joined me when he retired a couple years later.

THE BIRTH OF PLM CONSULTING, INC.

PLM Consulting was born again in 1988. All by myself then, my first clients were DuPont and a few hospitals in Philadelphia with hazardous and infectious waste management problems. DataEase applications were created to manage information to resolve the problems. Graham joined PLM in 1990 and Debe joined in 1991. We formed a 3 way partnership at that point and have never looked back.

At PLM everyone is either a Finder, Binder, Minder or Grinder. Our philosophy is to help people and have fun doing it. We have found that the bottom line will take care of itself.

I think our management experience and our desire to solve business problems have been the primary reasons for the growth of PLM. Our wide variety of clients with an even wider variety of businesses has given us great experience that we can apply to even more businesses. In all cases, we have never found a problem that DataEase couldn't handle quickly and cost effectively.

Is it any wonder that I consider myself a DataEase evangelist? It is a fantastic product that gets ever more powerful. Whether its a standalone Dog Licensing app or a major manufacturing app 2 gigabytes in size with 200 users, DataEase fills the bill very well.

HOBBIES

My hobby for almost 30 years has been caving. The last couple of years I've worked to more completely automate our caving organization, The National Speleological Society. The NSS has over 11,000 members with only 2 paid employees at its national office in Huntsville, Alabama.

Sitting in a pitch black cave, listening to the sounds of the earth from the inside, brings peace to me in very profound ways. I remain awed at the beauty found beneath the earth and the people that explore it. By being in the Army I've been able to explore caves in the USA, Germany, Switzerland, France, Belgium and even Vietnam. That's really the only reason I stayed in the Army for twenty years! :)

I also enjoy sailing. A friend and I own a Ranger 33 that we keep at Mears Point Marina in Kent Island on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. The Ranger is known as a very fast boat even though it is over 25 years old at this point. In 1997, a group of us chartered a 41 foot Gibay and sailed the Sir Francis Drake Channel in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) for 10 days. In 2000, 15 of us chartered two catamaran sloops (a 39 foot Privilege and a 42 foot something else) for 10 days, again in BVI. I skippered one and a professional Captain skippered the other. We outsailed the other boat every day, even though it is was larger.