Retrieval

Posted on October 23, 2015 by george

A Victor V phonograph, circa 1907
Norman Bruderhofer – Collection of John Lampert-Hopkins

As a young boy, my family had a old phonograph. This machine came from the Rockefellers because one of my great aunts was a domestic servant. One of my uncles had worked at a radio station so we had a small case of the 78 records to match. As a budding engineer I was fascinated by the wind up mechanism that spun the turntable. Retrieval is what I liked best. I could play my favorite records any time that I wanted to hear them. The phonograph was one of the first data storage devices. It could capture and store music or speech. It was the retrieval as desired that made it popular. A whole orchestra could surround you within your own living room. The quality of that retrieval was inverse to the popularity. The records that were played the most often picked up the scratches. Some of our favorite records deteriorated to the point where we no longer enjoyed listening to them.
One of the more important aspects of retrieval is data integrity. Just like scratches spoil the usefulness of a record, a corrupted bit can spoil a CAD data file. Back when I was directing the designers at Lotus in Norwich England how to create my patented GM engine component, it was necessary to transfer CAD data on magnetic tapes.

We adopted 3D CAD design when we could finally retrieve un-corrupt data files

Even though the internet could transfer data from Canada to England at the time, the transfer usually had corrupt data. This made for a lot of trips by plane. England is a lot farther North and it is dark at 4:00 PM in November. Obviously the data communication protocols that we currently use today automatically correct static. (Skype saves a lot of plane trips) As an aside, we even have programs that can edit the scratches out of music recorded on old-fashioned phonograph records.
A phone call from the IRS strikes fear into most people. We know that this is a time that retrieval is going to be vital. Unfortunately, our accounting friend Darryl Engebregson, who could remember all of his clients data three years back has passed away. We still talk about his answer to an IRS query where he said “That number sounds familiar.”

New York City field office for the IRS by Matthew G Bisanz

This experience caused us to arrange our http://mileagetrakker.com business so that it is possible to retrieve mileage records from three years ago. This is a match to the IRS audit schedule. None of us want to face the penalties that the IRS charges when they disallow a few years of deductions when we cannot retrieve our records.

Batch Process

Posted on October 14, 2015 by george

A batch of fresh baked cookies brings out the kid in me

I was thinking about how to determine the ideal batch size. Cookies came to mind. The ideal batch size is one when you are eating them. As a lover of cookies, I have tried stuffing a bunch of them in my mouth. It doesn’t work as well as eating them one at a time. Further upstream in the manufacturing process, one no longer is the optimum batch size. In my college days the optimum batch size was six. That was the size of my toaster oven tray. Even though the efficiency gurus suggest that we should eliminate all inventory and make cookies one at a time, that is a good theory that does not work in practice. There is something about the smell of baking cookies that attracts and makes friends. Especially on a Sunday night in a guys dorm when there is no food service. Obviously it was necessary to do an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) raw material order earlier in the week to pick up a roll of cookie dough from the grocery story when the grocery store was open. Only one because that is all that would fit in the dorm micro fridge that I shared with my roommate. Again the batch size was no longer one and increased to a dozen. Going further upstream the cookie dough rolls arrived at the grocery store in case boxes. These were stocked on the shelf from the distribution center arriving in mixed skids. The food batching plant obviously wanted to send full refrigerated trailer loads to the distribution center but for the slower moving products like cookie dough this shipment usually includes a mix of all pre-made refrigerated dough products to reduce scrapping of stale product. Any batch size is theoretically possible. In reality when we chose a width and load limit for the roads, factors like the size of trailers start to govern the equation. Even further upstream in the supply chain, the concept of “pull” scheduling totally falls apart when we get back to the planting of the wheat to make the flour. Planting wheat in one cookie batches makes no sense at all.

Drones will emerge as a means for avoiding traffic jams as the population concentrates into big cites

It will be interesting to see how new delivery methods such as drones affect batch sizes. In this emerging mass customization era, batch size planning also applies to building heavy equipment like excavators. In this market every purchaser wants a machine that is customized for their use. Theoretically the batch size of a sold excavator is one but in the actual market the end users like to buy units is groups of three or five so that they have some opportunity to reduce the number of spare parts that they need to stock. Many of the large components like diesel engines, hydraulic pumps, cylinders are ordered in one year batches of 1000. This is inconsistent with the customers who would like their machines a week or two after they place an order. The solution is to complete the manufacturing until the point that the parts begin to acquire customer unique features. The historical customer behavior influences the upstream batch size planning. Many of the components arrive in “kits.” Building heavy equipment is the sum of organizing and collecting heavy components onto skids that fit into trailers or sea land containers. In the past we saw more 1 TEU containers in ocean shipping. In the US most sea land containers in use are 2 TEU because they are similar in capacity to truck trailers. Lift trucks and pallets sizes also evolve toward the same dimension constraints. In most cases the workers require lifting assists at every step

Gathering heavy items takes a lifting device

I also market a connected car device http://www.mileagetrakker.com that helps people who drive for business save about $1000 to $2000 per year on their tax bill. We give the user the option of recording trip purpose in batch sizes of one using their cell phone or in weekly bunches using the internet. One size does not fit all. Users choose a batch size which fits their work pattern. People that have an unpredictable travel pattern like recording in smaller batches. People with a more stable work pattern tend to like recording trip purpose in weekly batches using the internet because is saves time.

Ed Kocsis

Posted on October 13, 2015 by george

In a die casting era before we had lean gurus, Ed Kocsis lived lean die casting with every ounce of his engineering thought. Part of his legacy is the NADCA die material cleanliness standards for premium H13. This is just one tool that enables the 500,000 shot life he achieved on dies like torque converter stators where heat check is a issue. A really high bar when 100,000 shot life is declared good even now.

Molten Aluminum causes major tip and sleeve wear

He bought shot tips at 4.5 inch OD and threw them out at 2.75 inches using them 20 times at .060 inches smaller in OD per renewal. The single design common shot sleeve for the plant (20 machines from 800T to 1200T) was the reverse it started at 2.75 inch ID and went out of service at 4.5 inch ID.

Prince Die Casting machine cartridge
closing manifold

He invented the cartridge valve manifold that became embedded within the Prince closing circuit, not for simplicity, but because it allowed the use of a 25% smaller electric motor and we stayed within available plant main transformer amps. Most of the dies he designed were loaded into the casting machine and were run continuously (even breaks were relieved) for a month. The 81% of theoretical yield (fastest that you can make a part divided into good parts sold) that was achieved during the 5 years I work with him (only shut down Christmas days) has not been approached at any other good casting house that I have been associated with since.

Inversion

Posted on October 7, 2015 by george

Classic illusion flips from faces to vase by Brocken Inaglory

As we focus in on our immediate objectives, the lesson we learn from classic illusions is that occasionally we need to step back and see the bigger picture. The most famous example of a figure–ground illusion is probably the faces–vase drawing that Danish psychologist Edgar Rubin described. Your mind can’t decide whether to focus on the white vase or the black faces.
Shigeo Shingo invented the concept of SMED (Single Minute Exchange of Die) He correctly asserted that if a die change occurred fast enough, the manufacturing planners would not be tempted to build extra production to put into inventory to save die changes. People who only saw the black faces simply tried to increase the die change speed. Shingo correctly guided his followers to focus on the white vase. In most cases much of the die change can be done while the equipment is in production.
Demand charges for electricity work the same way. The size of the wires in the power grid and within the plant are related to the peak draw on the system. Significant savings occurs when the high power draw actions do not occur simultaneously. This is especially true in situations where the usage is approaching the maximum that the existing infrastructure can deliver. I happen to like coloring Excel spread sheets so that a quick glance confirms that all high power users are not active at the same time.

Colored charts add understanding to simple
tables of numbers

Attention to detail made it possible to divert 100 of 450 amps to added hot oil heating units.
The same focus on only the black faces applies to my mileage trakker business. In start up mode our effort was aimed at tabulating the trips in IRS format so that our trakkers could qualify for the deduction which puts about $2000 in their pockets. It took a request by one of our users to help us see the white in addition to the black. Some business owners need to tabulate how long they are at the customer on a service call. Surprise – Surprise! This matches how long their car is in the customer parking lot. We are now beta testing a feature that logs the time at the customer.

Feedback

Posted on September 27, 2015 by george

It is easier to hit the target when you employ feedback

When I first embarked on a campaign to knock seconds out of my CNC cycle times, a few eyebrows were raised. The doubters lacked the experience to realize that just about every quality deficiency or design change would add task steps and cutting time to the CNC cycle. Multi million dollar CNC machining centers usually do not have spare capacity. The direct feed back made this a good starting Kaizen project to tackle with my machining team. Our successful effort was just in time to support the next generation of models which included additional machined features. Next on the Kaizen plate was an attack on cutting tool usage. Even though we utilized the excellent feedback loop of a run chart, the actual life of the cutting edge was poor. Fortunately introduction of TiALN coating of the carbide inserts eliminated the size drift of the bored hole.

Surface technology advances dramatically increase cutter life

We were happy about the resultant $250,000 annual reduction in cutting tool purchases and the saving in down time related to cutting edge replacement, but we lost our run chart feedback loop. The cutter held bore size until it chipped. We needed a new feed back loop. In the short term we switched to 100% guaging of every part. When an edge chipped we replaced, reset and rebored before removal of the part from the fixture. This proved cumbersome. Our team wanted to automate measurement using the CNC and the probe. Combo cutters were designed and purchased to knock more seconds out of the cycles. We had switched to through spindle oil mist lubricant to save part washing and smell. More feedback required. An artifact was added to the fixture with a reference bore size so that the probe could be calibrated to measure the part at the current ambient temperature. We had lost the temperature stability that comes with flood coolant. We discovered that it was not enough to detect the wear of the finishing cutter. A chipped roughing cutter also spoiled the bore roundness. This is especially true when it is also necessary to cut through weld. Using good visual management feedback practice the roughing cutter was helix orbitted to replace the lead in chamfer with a counterbore.

Counterbores made using the rougher enable visual management of cutter chipping

Finally we closed the loop. The probed rough and finish diameter measurement presented the correct tool for cutting edge swap immediately upon encountering a worn insert. Modern machined accuracy is always the result of properly planned feedback

User Invisible

Posted on September 25, 2015 by george

We all appreciate the tasks that are completed for us invisibly

The best companies know their customer so well that they are able to provide their offering almost invisibly. This is refreshing in an era where we are bombarded at every turn by another ad message seeking our attention. There are a couple of so called recruiting firms that spam my e-mail daily, to the point where I will have nothing to do with them — ever. If they show that level of insensitivity to the candidates whom they believe should buy their service, I can imagine how they appear to the companies who are hiring.
Texting is a good example of user invisible. The using public is very comfortable with text messaging because it has been around for a long time. In 1933 RCA Communications, introduced the first “telex” service between New York and Europe. My dad’s best friend, a NASA electrical engineer HAM radio enthusiast, carried on a radio telex conversation with a friend in South Africa long into the night when the fickle strength of the nighttime ionosphere permitted it. The rest of us had to wait for texting to become a feature of our cell phones. In 1995 Telecom Finland and Radiolinja in Finland offered cross-network SMS (Short Message Service) functionality which began the modern back bone for cell phone texting. Today, in countries such as Finland, Sweden and Norway, over 85% of the population use SMS. The European average is about 80%, and North America is rapidly catching up with over 60% active users of SMS as of the end of 2008.
The brevity of the text message is appreciated by the users and the carriers alike. The 160 character size (invented in 1985 by Friedhelm Hillebrand while he was working for Deutsche Telekom) of a text message enables transmission of 350 text messages in the bandwidth required to send a single phone call. The users experience this simplicity as an affordable price. Text messaging services can feel particularly intimate because they talk like humans. Digital users who type “thank you” after the software executes a command instantly get a “you’re welcome.” The barriers to using a new service are also lower, because there’s nothing to download. In a February blog post, Jonathan Libov, an analyst at venture capital firm Union Square Ventures, recounts standing at a New York City bus stop and having another passenger tell him about Bus Time, which lets people text the Metropolitan Transit Authority to find out how long they’ll have to wait for the next bus. His first thought: “Thank God I don’t need to download another f—ing app for this.”
When we were inventing http://mileagetrakker.com we chose a hybrid approach. Our beta testing proved that the users wanted to choose an interface that matched their lifestyle. The nice part of a connected car service is that we know when the vehicle is actually driving. Our cloud based interface does not get the users into trouble by having them text and drive. Selected users find it easiest to record the business purpose of the trip as they walk away from their vehicles.

Capture your full mileage deduction

Product Hunt introduces 10-20 new smart phone applications every day. This is a lot more than will ever fit into my smart phone. Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney said in a statement: “Our analysis shows that most mobile applications are not generating profits and that many mobile apps are not designed to generate revenue, but rather are used to build brand recognition and product awareness or are just for fun. Product Hunt now lists over forty offerings that use text instead of an application as a user interface. Text is a trend that is growing.

Iteration

Posted on September 18, 2015 by george

Advancing technology is a series of iterative steps

It no longer becomes possible to define completely the details of a project when you are pushing the technology envelope. With the Mercury space project, the leap was aggressive with massive public attention. The planners who arranged that successful effort, formalized the iterative approach to new product development. They found it necessary to move beyond trying to define the desired result at the beginning and progressing in “waterfall” fashion to completion. Using the iterative method that they formalized, the Mercury project was organized into a series of experimental steps. The results of each step’s planned test provided the information needed to progress further. Obviously some of the tests ended in failure as we have seen in the news. The latest SpaceX, Blue Orion, Challenger disasters that literally explode into the public consciousness come to mind. Neil Armstong was asked to indicate what he thought was the dangerous part of space flight. He indicated it was the time between entering and leaving the space capsule
The Chrysler Minivan actually has the same cargo capacity as was offered in the smallest full size van at the time. Achieving this feat is a good example of iteration in action. One of my car designers described the task as stuffing 10 lbs into a 5 lb box. We did not wish to give up the ability to stow a full size spare. Since changing a flat is such a pain in the butt, it is unlikely that a traveler with a flat in the wilds of Laos will appreciate our efforts until he is writing his memoirs.

Having a full size spare tire saves spending the
night out in the wilds of Laos

The basic challenge is that a full size tire did not fit between the rear axle and the rear bumper. Tough development tasks require superb executive planning. The advanced design team got the first kick at the can. They picked adding a kink into the axle. Fortunately planning a hand off to a second design team solves the issue of becoming attached to a mediocre solution simply because of pride in authorship. Offsetting the axle both down and forward proved to be the elegant solution. Having an overlap between the production design team and advance design team efforts mitigated the time lost by changing concept midstream. (We also got lucky because the kinked axel was the item that failed when the advance design was tested)
Iterative product development (in manufacturing we call this Kaizen) has emerged as the dominant strategy for launching software products. Following the tenants of lean startup, we launched http://mileagetrakker.com. A/B testing was used to tune our product so that the UX (user experience) is positive. Subsequent improvements are evaluated using the SCRUM approach where potential improvements are exposed to subsets of the user base. The first improvements that we implemented made more of an impact because diminishing returns sets in.

Iterative development illustration by Dutchguilder

Warm and Fuzzy

Posted on September 13, 2015 by george

Automation has replaced armies of clerical workers
(the new pink collar workers)

We all know the drill ” Thank you for calling Modern Company. If you know your party’s extension please dial it now. For sales dial 101, for service dial 102, for HR dial 103, for accounts receivable dial 104, for shipping dial 105, for scheduling dial 106 —- if you wish to hear the options again press 1″ Usually none of the listed extensions match our needs, so we pick one in desperation only to hear a recorded message “Your call is important to us, please call back when our operators are not busy.”
In today’s lean world, nobody has time to sit at their desk waiting for the phone to ring. If you look at the sea of desks they are mostly unoccupied. Many of the players are simultaneously sitting in teleconferences while answering the daily bombardment of 2 to 300 internal e-mails. This overload is unsustainable and the pendulum will swing back to add new controls. Back in era of large companies, the chain of command was expected to correctly filter the information flow. Sending communication to higher than your boss’s boss was not permitted.
It would be nice to think that an instruction manual would be sufficient to accomplish a simple installation like a computer display screen. In the industrial automation arena, equipment is expected to live 7 years with first rebuild giving another 7 years. When you are matching a new display screen to equipment and controls that are more than 10 years old, a generation miss match occurs. Usually a live local technician with many years experience is needed to resolve the problems, especially if the set-up is complicated by having a defective replacement display screen to start with. This is why we pay a premium to buy industrial display screens because warm and fuzzy help is usually needed to get the repair done. Even good live help, last week we lost three days of production sorting out the replacement of a dead computer display screen.
This is an opportunity that start-up companies can use to grow. Most customers want a warm and fussy feeling and react favorably when they are serviced by knowledgeable people who are not remotely located in a call center. The UX (User Experience) movement is all about having your development staff interact with a representative group of users. As we performed the www.mileagetrakker.com beta test we personally got to know all of the beta testers. Since most people learn by interacting with other people, it was natural for the www.mileagetrakker.com beta testers to acquire the knowledge that they needed. As we scale beyond the beta phase, we continue to test which of the introductory activities can be automated on the website and which training and set-up actions require personal involvement by the sales staff. Even though is is possible to accomplish all of the actions needed to acquire a Mileage Trakker device by interacting with the website, the vast majority will join us due to the activity of the sales staff.

Capture your full mileage deduction

The new battle ground in the marketplace will be establishing the correct balance between efficient computerized automation and warm and fuzzy human support. Monopoly power can force customers to fight with faceless computerized non service, but this jeopardizes the continuation of the company. The pendulum will swing back to creating new employment roles for people.

Ad Infinitum

Posted on September 6, 2015 by george

The human ability to invent acronyms is endless

Ad Infinitum
[ad in-fuh-nahy-tuh m]
adverb
1) to infinity, endlessly: without limit
Dictionary.com

The owners of companies invented the concept of auditors to insure that the management was caring for the capital entrusted to their keeping. The inventors of ISO-9000 correctly realized that elevating their cause to the same level as making a profit would accomplish the quantum leap needed to catch the Japanese. They invented metrics that were given acronyms so they looked the same as financial metrics. The war for corporate resources and attention is on. Now that most western companies have quality that is on par with Japanese (We are now chasing the Koreans), the other functional company groups have joined the bandwagon by using metrics and auditors to vie for attention. This battle has resulted in an explosion of acronyms which is expanding ad infinitum. www.acronymfinder.com is now listing over 4 million acronyms and the number is growing daily.
It would be nice to think that a talented individual leading a company could find the complete set of metrics needed to eliminate waste. This is like suggesting that it is possible to enforce perfect compliance to the speed limit by using speed traps. We all know that the more severe penalties applied to reckless drivers make a bigger dent in improving public safety. In this era of proliferating acronyms, data gathering can look like an overwhelming task. It is easy to despair, if you fail to understand the principles behind Pareto analysis.

Most of the profit comes from concentrating on the main chance

Even though all of the metrics that have been assigned acronyms have the potential for spurring an improvement, most of the benefit will occur by focusing on the top three. In a lean operation the front line worker is most aware that simply gathering metrics does not result in an improvement. As diminishing returns set in, many tabulated metrics remain static. Yes even metrics with acronyms have a “best before date”. This is not to infer that I am against gathering data. It is necessary to gather data to know whether the actions that you are contemplating actually generate an improvement. The first law of data gathering applies. [Only the person who gathers the data believes it] Every player on the team is responsible for knowing their numbers. Even the highest paid professional athletes continue to personally track their conditioning plan, in the same fashion that they employed to achieve superstar status. Making an improvement is the intersection of opportunity and the accumulated skills of each player. In a growing organization all players can quantify the improvements that they are making. This occurs because they do not waste time living in the past because they don’t track obsolete metrics ad infinitum.

Jump Frog Jump

Posted on September 4, 2015 by george

Frogs use jumps to escape danger

A researcher wanted to investigate how frogs jump. He invented an experiment to determine the contribution of each leg. He needed a baseline, so he put the frog down and said “Jump frog jump!” Measuring the distance, he wrote in his journal “Frogs with 4 legs jump 3 feet.” Cutting off the right front leg, he put the frog down and said “Jump frog jump.” Measuring the distance he wrote in his journal “Right front leg contributes .5 feet to jump.” Cutting of the left front leg, he put the frog down and said “Jump frog jump!” Measuring the distance, he wrote. ” Left leg contributes .8 feet to jump.” Cutting of the right rear leg, he put the frog down and said “Jump frog jump.” Measuring the distance he wrote in his journal “Right rear leg contributes 1.7 feet to jump.” Cutting off the left rear leg, he put the frog down and said “Jump frog jump!” —- “Jump frog jump!” —- “Jump frog jump!” He wrote in his journal “Frogs with no legs are deaf”
We are all aware that it is easier to make good decisions when you have good data to back them up. Designing the affordable experiments to generate good data is where the difficulty starts to appear. This is especially true in a start up, where a lack of accumulated cash limits the number of pivots that can be done to recover from bad decisions. Even if you invent a timely affordable A/B test to guage your customer’s UX [User Experience], as this joke illustrates, many times convenient conclusions are applied to avoid the work that is actually required to provide what the customer is willing to buy.
A good example is a CAD (computer aided drafting) program. Back in the 90’s we still used drafting boards. By the 90’s this was a money issue related to the user experience of the CAD draftsman. The time, effort and cost of creating CAD drawings could not be recovered by the benefits. Since the downstream benefits of CAD drawings are fairly static, it all boiled down to adjusting the program so that making a drawing on the computer was quicker than using a drawing board. As is true during disruptive time, there were many players who saw the future benefits and wished to own the market. AutoCAD succeeded and displaced most other early players by incorporating effective feedback from thousands of CAD users. A/B testing established the CAD 2D drawing interface that has become dominate.
Ah, but the season changes. AutoCAD 2000 finally had all of the features that a large pool of their users ever wanted. This is not good news for a company with a business model based on selling a new version of their software every three years. Yes, there is other market segments that can take advantage of CAD drafting. Unfortunately cluttering the desktop with additional command icons alienated the existing user base. The A/B testing that enabled AutoCAD to achieve dominance, could not uncover a new look that would entice existing users to buy a new version… A good example of trying to extrapolate a convenient conclusion onto real test data. The actual conclusion is that it is necessary to allow the user to customize his desktop, so that it is possible to retain the look and function and minimized keystrokes of the earlier versions. Only then is the added functionality of new software versions interesting to current users. A/B testing will not invent a desktop look that is acceptable to everyone.
The same process applies to my www.mileagetrakker.com device. Our benchmarking against the competition indicated that UX is the battleground. Most business travelers put 12,000 business miles on a vehicle in a year. This deduction puts $2000 in their pocket provided that they have the correct tax records in the required format. Having spent a large part of Christmas vacation inputting the required mileage logs for many years in a row, my wife and I set out to find a better way. In start-up fashion we did A/B testing during the beta phase to discover whether the user wished to interface using a cell phone, texting, e-mail or a web site.

A/B testing is only one of many testing tools to hear the voice of the customer

I suspect that Mileage Trakker would have died if we simply taken the results to infer that it was possible to only offer the most popular method. In this mass customization era, the customers expect that they can choose the option that is best for them. Yes it does take more work on our part.
Mass customization is a paradigm shift. The reduction in computing cost has made it possible to offer your customer base some degree of choice. This reality on the ground will filter back into all of the activity and decision making methods within a business. As this example shows, it is important not to limit your chance for success with myopic vision

The Lean Innovator

Lean Engineering Solutions to Improve Profitability in the Areas of Manufacturing, Material Handling and 3D

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