Author Archives: george

1000 to Flight

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putting 1000 to flight


We live in a world where the investors want instant gratification. This translates into pressure upon company managers to achieve results quickly. The longer term managers quickly discover that this speed of results is only accomplished by players who can put 1000 to flight. As the investors want ever faster results, exhorting the team results in 1250 put to flight but it is the player who could put 1000 to flight that achieved the increase. This approach to increased results only works in the short term. Sooner or later the team no longer has a player who can put 1000 to flight. Even if they don’t jump ship to earn more per hour in fast food, the stress causes the most loyal to die of a heart attack. The current exodus at Tesla is a classic example.
Managers trying to run companies that became void of players who could put 1000 to flight looked off shore. Heck, places like India even speak English! At the turn of the century the economic climate in India was right to add this caliber of player to a remote team. At the same time, the completion of a undersea web of communication fiber optics made world wide teleworking possible

Nano set the standard for cost efficiency


In my vehicle design field. The team of Indian engineers that successfully created the TATA Nano at a profitable $7000 selling price, would put to flight any of the 1000 or so vehicle design engineers that I know. The first managers who used this off shore teleworking strategy must have been ecstatic. Their success set off a gold rush. By the time one of my client companies jumped on the band wagon the bonanza was over. We did not understand how an engineering company with over 100 engineers could be so inept. It was revealed later that diploma mills were granting worthless credentials by turning a blind eye to the wide spread practice of hiring surrogates to take the engineering exams
The challenge of finding exceptional team players still remains. Companies with deep pockets like Google can acquire promising talent before the player has demonstrated an ability to put 1000 to flight. This is like finding a diamond in the rough.

a diamond in the rough


Only a percentage of the promising “diamonds in the rough” that are obtained will turn into the shining gems that succeed in putting 1000 to flight. Most companies do not have the deep pockets needed to accomplish a sorting task like that. As the baby boomers retire, it is possible to add a proven seasoned player back onto the company team. Yes, they may only agree to work part time, but, if you have two such players on the task, the bible points out that 10,000 will be put to flight.

Me Too

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I must admit that I ingest, a cup of prepared breakfast cereal on my way to work every morning. I happen to like crisp rice. Just like Kellog discovered back when he invented precooked breakfast food back at the turn of the 19 century, breakfast is quick and easy to prepare. In my case I find that the solid food keeps the vitamins that I take from growling in my stomach. The generic Kroger and Walmart store brands of crisp rice look and taste identical to the national brand and I buy them at a much lower price. I even suspect, in this age of contract manufacturing, the box contents could be identical. Having seen a research study where a group of rats fed the cereal boxes were better nourished than the control group fed the cereal, I have begun to think that I might be eating the wrong item. The box contents may be bio-degradable packing peanuts. Still looking for a study to help me determine whether store brand cereal boxes are more nutritious than national brand boxes. The item I know for sure is that the profit margins in boxed prepared breakfast cereals have attracted a whole lot of “me too” competition.
If a century of competition has created a boatload of “me too” breakfast cereal offerings, all of recorded human history has spawned a tsunami in the wine category. We see most of these offerings in bottles even though wine skins began the parade at the dawn of time. Just looking at the bottle is not enough to determine whether it contains the fermented sugar water favored by the locals here in the south or more sophisticated beverages fit to drink. I really should not complain about local taste because it results in affordable table wine being available in the grocery store. This dizzying array of offerings has created a whole industry of “experts” who recommend which of the products to buy based on who is funding their effort. As consumers we mostly base our buying decision on our previous purchases. We expect that the repeat purchase will taste the same as before. Certain wine producers and consumers choose not to follow this strategy and usually are having a “bad” year. (The bad tasting product is targeted for export)

As we contemplate how the free enterprise system actually works, we realize that “me too” applies to just about every category of item that we purchase. The market needs are expressed as a profit that attracts “me too” producers. In most cases the alternate products are slightly different such that the purchasers must determine which of the offerings best suits their needs. An example is the electric industrial utility vehicle segment. Technology advances in power transistors, hall effect sensors and computer control change the pecking order in the segment. The buyers in every marketplace vote with their feet. As is normally the case, the lagging players in the marketplace will rush to claim “me too” as they scramble to implement the popular new Pack Mule features. We are not sure when this will happen because a couple of the major players in this segment are currently digesting new ownership.

Cooking the Books

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Cooking the Books


As an engineer, I have always wondered whether cooking a book would make it easier to digest. Technical books in general are pretty dry. Boiling in water is a sure way to add moisture. Not sure that it is worth trying, based on the sloppy mess that occurred when some of my books got wet.
Tongue in Cheek aside, the expense of creating and publishing a hard cover book insured that the information within the book was heavily vetted and edited. Yes they were expensive to buy at the bookstore, but everyone covered the cost of curating and compiling useful information. These days you can obtain information for free from the internet. It is worth every penny that you pay for it. I am not suggesting that there is not useful information available on the internet. What I am saying is that the insignificant cost of distributing information via the internet, has buried the useful information in terabytes of heavily biased opinion.

Economy of Scale

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The same bottle holds many variations

In this era of mass customization, it is still possible to take picture of an army of similar product marching to market. In the selected picture you cannot see the label. You do not realize that many variations have proliferated, until you try to find your favorite formulation by searching among the ranks of less popular flavors remaining on the store shelves. Mass customization still has its economic limitations. You can have a wider variety of bottle contents but an economical packaging line needs a common bottle shape.
Old ways of looking at manufacturing still cling on. I know of many vehicle part suppliers who are still looking for a 300,000 part per year job with a 5 year lifespan to bid on. On the other side of the table is the OEM manufacturers who cannot find suppliers to build the multi- flavored parts for their 30,000 per year models at the high volume price they expect. The challenge is still capital investment. The historic production equipment concepts that were optimized to produce identical parts at rapid rate. just don’t match the current market demand. This viewpoint puts all of the foot dragging on the part supplier side. The OEM manufactures who wish to purchase competitively price parts, must also tune their designs to minimize the cost of tooling the new generation. This is especially true in an era where the marketplace is demanding a radially different product. Massive amounts of capital investment are needed to create radically different product.
Tesla is the #1 value US car company using market capitalization as the measure. This investor assessment has occurred even though the model S sells at an estimated $4000 per vehicle loss even at its high price. I am not surprised. In my small world, they asked if I knew of a supplier who could sell them a sand cast gear case at a cost that would apply to a high volume case. Could not help them. A high volume low cost gear case has a different design that requires retesting. The real test is whether they can pull off a high volume model at mass market pricing.
No, the correct solution to this problem does not involve moving production to Asia. A subsidized selling price, as a ruse to steal your manufacturing technology, is a very short sighted solution. The savvy planners take advantage of the programmed flexibility within the new generation of manufacturing equipment. Segeo Shingo asserted when he explained his SMED (Single Miniute Exchange of Die) concept. “You will not be tempted to build inventory if you can change from manufacturing one flavor to the next in less than a minute” As I began this post talking about our historical bias, we all picture swapping massive stamping dies in and out of a press. The reality as it exist in the new vehicle parts that I am launching, involves program swaps in the computer controlled 3D printers and welding robots. Yes, SMED applies. The production equipment switches from one part flavor to the next in less than a minute. It is now a software swap instead of a 30 ton die swap. The vehicle design and business plan must evolve to match. It is only possible to invest in the new generation of production equipment if multiple part volume is bundled into packages that represent enough sales volume to fund the purchase of equipment that flexibly makes them all.

Maps

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Military Bases have intimidating guard houses


Every form of new map technology has the funny stories to go with it. Map Blast comes to mind. Armed with a printed set of directions, I set out to visit one of my client tool shops in Oak Ridge Tennessee. The town of Oak Ridge is surrounded by the government atomic energy reservation that figured heavily in the development of the Atomic bomb. Just because roads are visible in the satellite images does not mean that they are available for public use. When the fences with barbed wire tops became 10 ft tall and a suburban with blacked out windows pulled in front and behind me, it became apparent that I chose the wrong route. Fortunately the guards thought it was funny when I showed them the Map Blast directions. Human editing of the embedded Map Blast maps saves current travelers this embarrassment.
When we say the word map, many people think of the folded street route maps that inhabit the glove boxes of our cars. Even though most people now use mobile based route directions, the old fashioned printed map can guide us home when the other technology fails.

Smart Loader

Autonomous vehicles also need to use maps. In their case the maps takes an electronic form. In the buildings that these vehicles inhabit there are pitfalls. Having designed many pit covers I make this assertion literally. Pit covers that look the same on the top can be designed to carry pedestrian traffic. lift truck traffic and even train traffic. An accurate map is needed to keep the autonomous vehicle from falling into pits, running over cords, creating traffic jams, endangering pedestrians and damaging the vehicle itself. This does not discount the sensors onboard that can detect a “bridge” that is out Human intervention is usually needed to create a revised map showing alternate routes. This is currently painfully obvious in Atlanta where we need to bypass a damaged main interstate bridge. Similar disruption occurs when we need to map alternate routes for autonomous vehicles. An efficiency penalty is expected.

Hall Effect

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Aurora lights show the magnetism that surrounds us

Magnetism remained mostly a mystery until the modern centuries. Unlike lightning that can’t be missed, especially if the strike is close by, Magnetism in nature only shows in the aurora and magnetic compasses. Edwin Hall experimented at the end of the 18th century and discovered that a magnetic field could change the path of charged particles. The aurora is a vivid example of the earth’s magnetic field changing the path of charged particles streaming from the sun. This discovery remained a scientific curiosity until the advent of semiconductor electronics made it possible to put the discovery into use.
The gasoline powered automobile was an out-growth of the steam engines of the time. It was not surprising that the earliest automobiles had very primitive electrical devices. The model T used a spark coil with a buzzer to sent ignition pulses to the spark plugs. The driver was tasked with also operating a lever on the steering wheel to select the required spark advance. Certainly not the user invisible electronic spark advance built into just about every car in use today. Replacing the electric “points” in this design of ignition was part of the regular tune up that all cars prior to 1978 required. A magnetically coupled hall effect sensor was the answer. The magnetic field within the sensor can penetrate through a water and air-tight barrier around the electronics. This tight barrier separated the electronics from the corrosive outside environment. Cars no longer required regular replacement of “points” and the corner gas station garage became a convenience store.
A reliable sensor was only one part of the total solution. Smarter computer programs were also invented to work with the sensor and used to insure that the spark plugs only fired under the correct conditions. The computer programs that run the ignition from the hall effect sensors input have become very smart. The programs accomplish everything from backfire prevention, emission reduction, fuel economy improvement, and smooth gear shifting.
Electric vehicles have been around for a long time. In the early days of the automobile
Electric cars like the Detroit brand shown vied with gasoline powered vehicles. Their problem with battery life and weight is only being solved currently. Other reliability spoilers such as rheostat and potentiometer controls were also a part of the design. They were not noticed because of the major unreliability of gasoline powered cars at the time. Now that electric vehicles have caught the public fancy, one of my current engineering tasks is replacing wear-prone potentiometers with hall effect sensors. The buying public has come to expect components that last the life of the vehicle. Again a reliable sensor by itself is not enough. Computer intelligence is married with the hall effect sensors to insure safe and predictable vehicle operation

A Dual Hall Effect Pedal replaces wear prone switches and potentiometers with
magnetically coupled precise control

Liquidation

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Ice melts all by itself

Ice melts all by itself


“The members will kindly refrain from picking up “lost” golf balls until they stop rolling.” This sign was spotted at a golf club. In the industrial arena, a similar sign could be erected – “The cost saving teams will kindly refrain from throwing out “unused” tools and equipment until the production workers quit using them.” We all realize that the cost saving pendulum has swung too far. What started out as a targeted focus on JIT snowballed into hoards of hastily trained teams introducing havoc throughout the enterprise. This got combined with a stock market appetite for instant cash returns.
PLC (programmable logic controller)

PLC (programmable logic controller)


One of my close business associates was relating an illustrative story. He had just completed replacing the brand new PLC (Programmable Logic Control) in the piece of equipment he was commissioning with another brand. It turns out that this historic leader in the European PLC manufacturing industry had succumbed to the chain of cost cutting measures that they had implemented. After they had outsourced manufacturing, outsourcing product design and programming followed. A few rounds of supplier price claw backs convinced their contract manufacturer to release a competitive product of their own. Switching to a cheaper contract manufacturer nailed the coffin. A PLC control product designed in the last century is no longer capable of controlling the latest generation of equipment.
liqcandle“The electric light did not come from the continuous improvement of candles.” Oren Harari
The survivors will emerge following the methodology of the start-up community. Start-up founders realize that you cannot foment a disruption by implementing a tiny improvement on the status quo. They discovered that cost is still every bit as important to business success. More importantly, a lack of accumulated resources taught them that it is more lean to begin by determining the minimum amount of resources needed to satisfy the customer. If you start at the lowest cost process, there is no need to risk liquidating the company by implementing the latest cost saving fad.

Test Drive

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Car on test track

Car on test track

As a mechanical engineer my focus is usually on mechanical devices. It is necessary
to remind myself that a test drive is usually needed to discover how the rest of the population reacts to those same devices. Surprise! Surprise! most people are not naturally mechanically inclined. This becomes obvious when the general public participates in test drives. The software industry discovered the same truth. Beta testing with real users is the way they arrange test drives. High powered artificial intelligence built into programs is of little use if you cannot get the friggin! computer to turn on.

The simple Human Machine Interface action of pressing a button becomes a nightmare if there are too many of them

The simple Human Machine Interface action of pressing a button becomes a nightmare if there are too many of them

As Moore’s law increases the number of transistors within the computers that we use, the engineers, business owners and, investors who invent the devices and programs that use this horsepower are very tempted to overwhelm the buying users with a multitude of blinking and flashing lights to herald the latest and greatest. I admit that when I was inventing the Chrysler Mini Van, it was very frustrating that the general public did not recognize how great it was while I was designing it. That public recognition became even more important when we first tried to sell some. I understand why the designer of my electric kettle wants to highlight his addition of a digital temperature display into the device. Rubbing it in my face by incorporating a seemingly random sequence of four button pushes to turn the device on, spoiled my perception of the benefit.

The Mustang became a sports car for the masses

The Mustang became a sports car for the masses

The throttle pedal is one of the key interfaces between the driver and the vehicle. The Mustang succeeded because of an invisible triumph in this area by the Mustang design engineers. Their throttle linkage made the Ford Comet compact car chassis feel like a sports car. As I launch a new generation electric vehicles, similar attention is being applied to the throttle. The latest generation dual hall effect encoders are being used to create a tight linkage between the vehicle and the operator commands. Embedded computer intelligence is being programmed to achieve the “feel” of expensive mechanical links. User invisibility is still the key. We still need to wait until the vehicle users test drive our improvements before we can expect recognition. I have seen this before with the Minivan

Compartments

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Walfer X Working drawing for elfa component shelving

Walfer X Working drawing for elfa
component shelving


I would use the word “Chaos” to describe the current business environment. We are in a period where emerging innovations are changing many of the ways that we do things. As humans we need to operate in defined compartments. There is a big business in selling the things that you need to organize your closet. Stuff that you keep is only useful if you can find it when you need it. Our employment and business lives also only work if they are sufficiently organized into compartments.Monopoly
Board games like monopoly can be a lot of fun. Having all of the pieces makes them even more fun. This is why they are sold in a box which serves as a compartment for holding the wide variety of pieces. Many compartments like that exist within my game cupboard so that I can easily gather everything in one go.
Quoting is one of the important tasks in making a profit in business. In a period of stability the customer already has a fairly detailed idea of what he can afford to purchase and what it will cost. This knowledge is based on accumulated experience of the buyer and the people he knows. In a period of rapid innovation it become hard for the customer to determine what belongs in the compartment of goods and services he wishes to buy. “Future Shock” applies when the supplier suggests that the buyer should know the cost of the stack of goods and services he wishes to buy.
Most kits of components contain a wide variety of items.

Most kits of components contain a wide variety of items.

As companies embarque on the difficult task of evolving. They find themselves in unfamiliar waters. Most new ventures involve requests for quotes for new products and services. It would be nice to find suppliers who are already familiar with providing those items. In a time of rapid innovation that is less likely. Most customers want a fixed price quote. This is impossible for the estimator to accomplish if the customer cannot determine a fixed amount of items to include within the compartment. Wishful thinking sets in. “I want you to quote whatever it takes to get the job done” I can assure you if the estimator knew how to quote a “turnkey” profit he would no longer be working as an estimator.
We are all creatures of habit. Business owners are dismayed that they can no longer find buyers for the unchanged products and services that formed the backbone of their companies. Employees drop out of the work force because they cannot find anyone who wants to hire someone to do the job that they have always done. These are only symptoms of the marketplace chaos that is out there. This chaos will continue until the emerging startup businesses invent the new compartments that will restore stability.

Take Off

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plane -waiting for take off

plane -waiting for take off


Every time I visit an airport I marvel that it is possible to lift 100 tons of metal into the air. As an engineer I also know that in most cases the engines are operated during take off at 110% of the power output that they can deliver on a continuous basis. This extra power is needed to accelerate the plane to flying speed in a reasonable runway length. When I fly it is comforting to know that this is not the first time that the plane successfully managed a take off. I am also not surprised that flegling aircraft are tested on much longer runways so that the pilot can choose to abort and try again if the indicators are not favorable.
The same approach is used to get a business to take off. Yes, it is going to take much more effort to get it started than will be expended keeping it going. As “The Lean Start-up” teaches us, we will need to abort some take off attempts and pivot to new strategies. This is why venture capitalist describe the cash flow of a start-up business using a J Curve. Most successful start-up companies will require input capital to fund these aborted take off attempts
Private Equity Start-up J-Curve graph by URBANRENEWAL

Private Equity Start-up J-Curve graph
by URBANRENEWAL


Even though the concepts taught in “The Lean Start-up” were honed in the software community they have relevance within the manufacturing community. In manufacturing it is less possible to obtain the same rapid customer input and testing that is enjoyed by software creators. Just because it might not be possible to evolve as fast, improving time to market has major benefits. The advent of tools like 3D printing and computerized finite element testing have made it possible to substantially shorten the time to pivot to more acceptable customer offerings. Historically the 3D CAD designers could work at a leisurely pace because they were faster than the down stream tooling builders. In the emerging new economy the leaders have discovered that they can get a jump on their competition by putting the systems in place to accelerate the creation of 3D CAD definition.