Shipulski On Design

Archive for the ‘Fundementals’ Category

I used to think the work was most important.  Now I think it’s the people you work with.

Hard work is hard, but not when you share it with people you care about.

Struggle is tolerable when you’re elbow-to-elbow with people you trust.

Fear is manageable when you have faith in your crew.

You’re happy to carry an extra load when your friend needs the help.

And your friend is happy to do the same for you.

When you’ve been through the wringer a teammate, they grow into more than a teammate.

If you smile at work, it’s likely because of the people you work with.

And when you’re sad at work, it’s also likely because of to the people.

When you care about each other, things get easier, even when they’re not easy.

Stop what you’re doing and look at the people around you.

What do you see?

Who has helped you?  Who has asked for help?

Who has confided in you? To whom have you confided?

Who believes in you? In whom do you believe?

Who are you happy to see? Who are you not?

Who will you miss when they’re gone?

For the most important people, take a minute and write down your shared experiences and what they mean to you.

What would it mean to them if you shared your thoughts and feelings?

Why not take a minute and find out?

Wouldn’t work be more energizing and fun?

If you agree, why not do it? What’s in the way? What’s stopping you?

Why not push through the discomfort and take things to the next level?

Image credit — HLI-Photography

Why do factories have 50-ton cranes? Because the parts are heavy and the fully assembled product is heavier.  Why is the Boeing assembly facility so large?  Because 747s are large. Why does a refrigerator plant have a huge room to accumulate a massive number of refrigerators that fail final test?  Because refrigerators are big, because volumes are large, and a high fraction fail final test.  Why do factories look as they do?  Because the design demands it.

Why are parts machined? Because the materials, geometries, tolerances, volumes, and cost requirements demand it.  Why are parts injection molded? Because the materials, geometries, tolerances, volumes, and cost requirements demand it. Why are parts 3D printed? For prototypes, because the design can tolerate the class of materials that can be printed and can withstand the stresses and temperature of the application for a short time, the geometries are printable, and the parts are needed quickly.  For production parts, it’s because the functionality cannot be achieved with a lower-cost process, the geometries cannot be machined or molded, and the customer is willing to pay for the high cost of 3D printing.  Why are parts made as they are?  Because the design demands it.

Why are parts joined with fasteners? It’s because the engineering drawings define the holes in the parts where the fasteners will reside and the fasteners are called out on the Bills Of Material (BOM).  The parts cannot be welded or glued because they’re designed to use fasteners.  And the parts cannot be consolidated because they’re designed as separate parts.  Why are parts held together with fasteners?  Because the design demands it.

If you want to reduce the cost of the factory, change the design so it does not demand the use of 50-ton cranes. If you want to get by with a smaller factory, change the design so it can be built in a smaller factory. If you want to eliminate the need for a large space to store refrigerators that fail final test, change the design so they pass. Yes, these changes are significant. But so are the savings.  Yes, a smaller airplane carries fewer people, but it can also better serve a different set of customer needs.  And, yes, to radically reduce the weight of a product will require new materials and a new design approach.  If you want to reduce the cost of your factory, change the design.

If you want to reduce the cost of the machined parts, change the geometry to reduce cycle time and change to a lower-cost material.  Or, change the design to enable near-net forging with some finish machining.  If you want to reduce the cost of the injection molded parts, change the geometry to reduce cycle time and change the design to use a lower-cost material.  If you want to reduce the cost of the 3D printed parts, change the design to reduce the material content and change the design and use lower-cost material.  (But I think it’s better to improve function to support a higher price.)  If you want to reduce the cost of your parts, change the design to make possible the use of lower-cost processes and materials.

If you want to reduce the material cost of your product, change the design to eliminate parts with Design for Assembly (DFA).  What is the cost of a part that is designed out of the product?  Zero.  Is it possible to wrongly assemble a part that was designed out? No. Can a part that’s designed out be lost or arrive late?  No and no.  What’s the inventory cost of a part that’s been designed out?  Zero.  If you design out the parts is your supply chain more complicated?  No, it’s simpler.  And for those parts that remain use Design for Manufacturing (DFM) to work with your suppliers to reduce the cost of making the parts and preserve your suppliers’ profit margins.

If you want to sell more, change the design so it works better and solves more problems for your customers.  And if you want to make more money, change the design so it costs less to make.

Product simplification can radically improve profits and radically improve product robustness.  Here’s a graph of profit per square foot ($/ft^2) which improved by a factor of seven and warranty cost per unit ($/unit), a measure of product robustness), which improved by a factor of four.  The improvements are measured against the baseline data of the legacy product which was replaced by the simplified product.  Design for Assembly (DFA) was used to simplify the product and Robust Design methods were used to reduce warranty cost per unit.

I will go on record that everyone will notice when profit per square foot increases by a factor of seven.

And I will also go on record that no one will believe you when you predict product simplification will radically improve profit per square foot.

And I will go on record that when warranty cost per unit is radically reduced, customers will notice.  Simply put, the product doesn’t break and your customers love it.

But here’s the rub.  The graph shows data over five years, which is a long time.  And if the product development takes two years, that makes seven long years.  And in today’s world, seven years is at least four too many.  But take another look at the graph.  Profit per square foot doubled in the first two years after launch.  Two years isn’t too long to double profit per square foot.  I don’t know of a faster way,  More strongly, I don’t know of another way to get it done, regardless of the timeline.

I think your company would love to double the profit per square foot of its assembly area.  And I’ve shown you the data that proves it’s possible.  So, what’s in the way of giving it a try?

For the details about the work, here’s a link – Systematic DFMA Deployment, It Could Resurrect US Manufacturing.

Efficient – How do we do more projects with fewer people?

Effective – Let’s choose the right project.

Would you rather do more projects that miss the mark or fewer that excite the customer?

Efficient – How do we finish the project faster?

Effective – Let’s fully staff the project.

Would you rather burn out the project team or deliver on what the customer wants?

Efficient – How do we reduce product cost by 5%?

Effective – Let’s make customers’ lives easier.

Would you rather reduce the cost or delight the customer?

Efficient – How can we go faster?

Effective – Let’s get it right.

Would you rather go fast and break things or get it right for the customer?

Efficient – How many projects can we run in parallel?

Effective – Let’s fully staff the most important projects.

Would you rather get halfway through four projects or complete two?

Efficient – How do we make progress on as many tasks as possible?

Effective – Let’s work on the critical path.

Would you rather work on things that don’t matter or nail the things that do?

Efficient – How can we complete the most tasks?

Effective – Let’s work on the hardest thing first.

Would you rather learn the whole thing won’t work before or after you waste time on the irrelevant?

If there’s a choice between efficiency and effectiveness, I choose effectiveness.

Image credit — Antarctica Bound

At the start, it’s impossible to know the right thing to do, other than the right thing is to start.

If you think you should have started, but have not, the only thing in the way is you.

If you want to start, get out of your own way, and start.

And even if you’re not in the way, there’s no harm in declaring you ARE in the way and starting.

If you’re afraid, be afraid. And start.

If you’re not afraid, don’t be afraid.  And start.

If you can’t choose among the options, all options are equally good.  Choose one, and start.

If you’re worried the first thing won’t work, stop worrying, start starting, and find out.

Before starting, you don’t have to know the second thing to do.  You only have to choose the first thing to do.

The first thing you do will not be perfect, but that’s the only path to the second thing that’s a little less not perfect.

The second thing is defined by the outcome of the first. Start the first to inform the second.

If you don’t have the bandwidth to start a good project, stop a bad one.  Then, start.

If you stop more you can start more.

Starting small is a great way to start.  And if you can’t do that, start smaller.

If you don’t start, you can never finish. That’s why starting is so important.

In the end, starting starts with starting.  This is The Way.

Image credit — Claudio Marinangeli

It’s fine if you’re asked to do too much occasionally.  Things come up and must be addressed.  Sometimes it’s your turn and sometimes it’s others’ turn.  No one can argue with that.  And sometimes the work demands your special skills and you go the extra because the work is important and urgent.  You know how to do it and there’s no time to bring someone else up to speed.  That makes sense to everyone.  We all know sometimes is our turn to take on too much.  That’s just how it is.  But it’s not sustainable (or fair) when doing too much once in a while becomes insufficient and you’re expected to do too much all the time.  But this creates a problem.

You want to grow in your career and you want to get ahead.  That’s good.  But when “too much every day” becomes the norm, your desire to climb the ladder makes it difficult to say no to “too much every day.”  Say yes to too much and you’ll earn your stripes.  Say no and your career plateaus. What to do?

I think the only way to beat this double bind is to be happy with your current role, be satisfied with your strong efforts to make meaningful (and reasonable) contributions, and continually grow and develop. I think this recipe will lead to great work and I think doing great work is the best way to battle the double bind.

And when it comes to great work, you are responsible for doing great work and your company is responsible for how they respond.  If you hold onto that, your next steps will be clear.

When you do great work and your company doesn’t notice, their response sends a strong message.  And your next step – do more great work.  Their response will change or you will change companies.

When you do great work, your work gets noticed, and all your company gives you is more work, their response sends a strong message.  And your next step – do more great work but constrain your output to a reasonable level.  Their response will change or you will change companies.

If you do great work, your work gets noticed, and you get a raise, a promotion, a bigger team, responsibility for the most important projects, and the authority to get it all done, your company’s response makes it easy for you to do more great work for them.  And that’s just what you should do.

Keep it simple – when in doubt, do great work.

Image credit — _Veit_

Software may be eating the world, but the hardware elements of a startup’s work define when lunch is served.

Hardware takes longer than software.  With hardware, after the product and its parts are designed, companies are vetted/selected to make the parts; contracts are signed to make the parts; the parts are made; the parts are shipped; the parts are received; the parts are inspected; and the parts are put in their locators.  Then, the manufacturing process is defined, the manufacturing tooling is designed and purchased; the manufacturing documentation is created; the final test system is designed and built; and the parts are assembled into the product. Then, the product is run through final test and tested for robustness.  After it’s learned the manufacturing process created too much variation and the insufficient robustness manifests, the manufacturing process and its documentation are changed to reduce variation; the parts that failed are redesigned, purchased, made, shipped, and received; and the next iteration of the product is built and tested.  This process is repeated until the product is robust and the manufacturing process is repeatable.  This is why hardware takes longer than software.

If the software is done but the hardware isn’t, the software must wait for the hardware and the customer must wait for the finished product. To get the hardware done faster, recognize that redesign loops are part of the game and invest in the capability to iterate quickly.  Line up the suppliers to make parts quickly; keep utilization low on the support resources so they can jump on the work when it arises (think fire stations who can respond quickly when there’s a fire); and avoid part-time resources on the critical path.  There may be other things to focus on, but only after taking care of these three.

Software may be eating the world, but the hardware elements of a startup’s work govern the cost of getting to the dinner table.

Hardware costs more to make than software.  Hardware is made of steel, aluminum, injection molded plastics, and rare earth elements, all of which cost money.  And because startups do things that have not been done before, the materials can be special (costly).  And unlike software, the marginal cost of an incremental unit is non-zero.  With hardware, if you want to make another one you’ve got to buy more of the materials; you have to pay people to make it; you have to buy/build the manufacturing system; you have to buy the measurement systems and engineering infrastructure; and you have to pay people to break-test-fix the product until it’s ready.

What’s a startup to do?

To do hardware faster, focus on learning.  And to do hardware more cost-effectively, focus on learning.

For both time and money, learning efficiency is a good starting point.  The most efficient learning is the learning you don’t have to do, so be ruthless in how you decide what you DON’T learn. Where possible, declare all but the most vital problems as annoyances and save them for later. (Annoyances don’t require learning.)  This will concentrate your precious resources on fewer problems, improve your learning rate, and keep costs to a minimum.

Here’s a good test to decide if the learning is worth learning.  Ask yourself “If we accomplish this learning objective, how will the customer benefit?”  If there is low or no customer benefit, say no to the learning objective.  If there is medium customer benefit, say no to the learning objective.  If there is significant customer benefit, do the learning.

For those learning objectives that make it through the gauntlet, learn what you need to learn, but no more.  To do this, create a formal learning objective: “We want to learn [enter learning objective here].”  With learning objectives, the tighter the better. And define the criteria for decision making: “If the result of the test is [define objective measurement here], we will decide [enter decision here].” With decision criteria, the clearer the better.

Learn effectively, not elegantly.  Be bold, rough, and crude with how you learn.  Design tests that take advantage of the resources you have on hand so you can learn quickly.  If you can run a crude test in one hour and the perfect test will take a week, run three crude tests and be done by the end of the day.

Learn with less confidence and more judgment.  If a wrong decision can be overcome quickly and with low cost, be less confident and use more judgment.

Whether driven by hardware, software, or the integration of both, project completion is governed by the critical path.  And with longer time constants, it’s more likely that the hardware defines the critical path.  The total cost of the project is the sum of the three costs: software, hardware, and integration.  And because hardware requires expensive materials, factories, engineering labs, people to run the tests, and people to make the products, hardware is likely a large percentage of the project costs.

Image credit — Günter Hentschel

Do the project right or do the right project – which would you choose?

If you improve time to market, the only thing that improves is time to market.  How do you feel about that?

Customers pay for things that make their lives easier.  Time to market doesn’t do that.

There’s no partial credit with new product development projects.  If the product isn’t 100% ready for sale, it’s 0% ready.

If you made 1/8^th progress on 8 projects, you made zero progress. But you did consume valuable resources.

If you made 100% progress on one project, you made progress.

When you have too many projects, you get too few done.

If you don’t know how many projects your company has, you have too many.

Would you rather choose the right project and run it inefficiently or choose the wrong project and run it efficiently?

When you choose the wrong project but run it efficiently, that’s called efficient ineffectiveness.

You can save several weeks making sure you choose the right project by starting the project too soon and running the wrong one for two years.

If your projects are slow, it’s likely the support functions are too highly utilized.  Add capacity to keep their peak utilization below 85%.

When shared resources are sized appropriately, they’re underutilized most of the time.  Think fire station and firefighters – when there’s a fire they respond quickly, and when there’s no fire they improve their skills so they can fight the next one better than the last.

If your projects are slow, check to see if you have resources on the critical path that work part-time.  Part-time resources support multiple projects and don’t work full-time on your project.  And you can’t control when they work on your project.  There’s no place for that on the critical path.

If you’re thinking about using part-time resources on the critical path, don’t.

Know where the novelty is and work that first.  And before you can work on the novelty you’ve got to know where it is.

You can have too little novelty, meaning the new product is so much like the old one there’s no need to launch it.  Mostly, though, projects have too much novelty.

If you are working on a clean-sheet design, there is no such thing.  There are no green-field projects.  All projects are brown-field projects. It’s just that some are browner than others.

Novelty generates problems and problems take three times longer to solve than anyone thinks.  To reduce the number of problems, declare as many as possible as annoyances.  Unlike problems, annoyances don’t have to be solved by the project.  Remember, it’s okay to save some work for the next project.

Even though you have a product development process, that process is powered by people.  People make it work and people make it not work.  If you get one thing right, get the people part right.

Image credit – claudia gabriela marques

When you catch someone doing good work, do you praise them?  If not, why not?

Praise is best when it’s specific – “I think it was great when you [insert specific action here].”

If praise isn’t authentic, it’s not praise.

When you praise specific behavior, you get more of that great behavior.  Is there a downside here?

As soon as you see praise-worthy behavior, call it by name. Praise best served warm.

Praise the big stuff in a big way.

Praise is especially powerful when delivered in public.

If praise feels good when you get it, why not help someone else feel good and give it?

If you make a special phone call to deliver praise, that’s a big deal.

If you deliver praise that’s inauthentic, don’t.

Praise the small stuff in a small way.

Outsized praise doesn’t hit the mark like the real deal.

There can be too much praise, but why not take that risk?

If praise was free to give, would you give it?  Oh, wait.  Praise is free to give.  So why don’t you give it?

Praise is powerful, but only if you give it.

Image credit — Llima Orosa

In business, we have vision statements, mission statements, strategic plans, strategic initiatives, and operating plans. And every day there are there are countless decisions to make. But, in the end, it all comes down to one thing – how we allocate our resources.  Whether it’s hiring people, training them, buying capital, or funding projects, all strategic decisions come back to resource allocation.  Said more strongly, resource allocation is strategy.

Take a look back at last year.  Where did you allocate your capital dollars?  Which teams got it and which did not?  Your capital allocation defined your priorities.  The most important businesses got more capital.  More to the point – the allocated capital defined their importance. Which projects were fully staffed and fully budgeted? Those that were resourced more heavily were more important to your strategy, which is why they were resourced that way. Which businesses hired people and which did not?  The hiring occurred where it fulfilled the strategy. Which teams received most of the training budget?  Those teams were strategically important.  Prioritization in the form of resource allocation.

Repeat the process for this year’s operating plan.  Where is the capital allocated?  Where is the hiring allocated?  Where are the projects fully staffed and budgeted?  Regardless of the mission statements, this year’s strategy is defined by where the resources are allocated.  Full stop.

Repeat the process for your forward-looking strategic plans.  Where are the resources allocated?  Which teams get more?  Which get fewer?  Answer these questions and you’ll have an operational definition of your company’s forward-looking strategy.

To know if the new strategy is different from the old one, look at the budgets.  Do they show a change in resource allocation?  Will old projects stop so new ones can start? Do the new projects serve new customers and new value propositions?  Same old projects, same old customers, same old value propositions, same old strategy.

To determine if there’s a new strategy, look for changes in capital allocation.  If the same teams are allocated more of the same capital, it’s likely the strategy is also the same. Will one team get more capital while the others get less?  Well, it’s likely a new strategy is starting to take shape.

Look for a change in hiring.  Fewer hires like last year and more of a new flavor probably indicate a change in strategy.  And if people flow from one team to another, that’s the same as one team getting new hires and the other team losing them.  That type of change in resource allocation is an indicator of a strategic change.

If the resource allocation differs from the strategic plan, believe the resource allocation. And if the resource allocation is the same as last year, so is the strategy.  And if there is talk of changing resource allocation but no actual change, then there is no change in strategy.

Image credit – Scouse Smurf

If you didn’t get what you wanted, why not try wanting what you got?

If the timing isn’t right, what can you change so it is right?

If it could get you in trouble, might you be on to something?

If it’s impossible, don’t bother.

If it’s easy, let someone else do it.

If there’s no possibility of bad things, there’s no possibility of magic.

If you need trust but have not yet secured it, declare failure and do something else.

If there is no progress, don’t push.  Move the blocking agent out of the way.

If you don’t know where the cost is, you can’t design it out.

If the timing isn’t right, why didn’t you do it sooner?

If the project went flawlessly, you didn’t try to do anything meaningful.

If you know some people won’t like it, isn’t that reason enough to do it?

If it’s almost impossible, give it a go.

If it’s easy, teach someone else to do it.

If you don’t know where the waste is, you can’t get rid of it.

If you don’t need trust, it’s the perfect time to build it.

If you try the hardest thing first and it doesn’t work, at least you avoid wasting time on the easy stuff.

If you don’t know the number of parts in your product, you have too many.

If the product came out perfectly, you took too long.

If you don’t give it a go, how can you know it’s impossible?

If trust is in short supply, supply it.

If it’s easy, do something else.

If forgiveness is so much better than permission, why do we like to do things under the radar?

If bad things didn’t happen, try harder next time.

Image credit — Gabriel Caparó