Me Too

Posted on October 10, 2017 by george

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.

Maps

Posted on April 1, 2017 by george

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

Posted on March 19, 2017 by george

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

Test Drive

Posted on December 28, 2016 by george

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

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 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

Piece Count

Posted on August 14, 2016 by george

Adult puzzles have a much higher piece count than the simple puzzles of our youth.

We all played with puzzles when we were kids. These children’s puzzles had a limited number of brightly colored pieces. Training for the puzzles we face as adults starts in our youth. Many times the adult puzzle pieces themselves are not more complicated, it is just the piece count that goes up. I would not buy the blue puzzle shown in this picture. I would find it too time consuming and frustrating. However even with the deliberate camouflaging, this puzzle would be easy if it had the same piece count as a children’s puzzle.
I saw a great example of value of the piece count reduction technique in action back when Delco Remy of America was split off from General Motors. This flegling company had to launch a new generation of gear reduced starter motors to compete against Valeo.

Automotive starter motor picture by Wildre

In today’s lean fashion time and money were not in abundance. Their design team used the piece count of the Valeo starter as the design benchmark. My contribution as a supplier was to eliminate a $.01 washer. The piece cost reduction for the washer itself was not large, however the elimination of the machining to make a home for the washer was significant. Further compounding the gain was this machining cut away exactly the material needed to make the starter withstand harsh Quebec winters. Most engineers can count to 20, even if some need to take off their shoes to tackle the higher numbers. Since Delco Remy of America sells the majority of their starter motors offshore the piece count reduction technique also works in other languages. Only the historic Polynesian tongues lack the words to count to 100. (An historic Polynesian language switches to many for counts higher than 3)
A counter example is equally instructive. A bulldozer manufacturer elected to design a new generation vehicle in Europe.

Bulldozers are a workhorse of the
construction industry

The European design team continued its historic design procedure which did not include tracking piece count. A 30% higher piece count in the new design increased the amount of time and money needed to create detail drawings and prototype parts. The 30% extra detail engineering time forced a drawing change freeze. The drawing change freeze did not correct the higher tooling bill related to the higher piece count. Hiring an US cost analyst after the real components part price quote started arriving did not correct the resultant 30% higher manufacturing cost. The cost analyst could not coerce the buyers to choose a 30% higher cost product. It is unfortunate that a number of long term employees who were my friends lost their jobs when the US bulldozer assembly plant closed.
Currently I am designing an accelerator pedal assembly for an electric vehicle manufacturer. A pair of redundant return springs are used on this pedal to insure that it does not self activate and injure people. Toyota paid a high bill for a similar unintended acceleration issue. I have elected to replace a bolt, two washers and a nut, used to anchor one end of the return springs with a welded in rod. This piece count reduction solves a potential bolt loosening issue which is the primary reason for the change. The fact that a saw cut rod is cheaper than a bolt is just a secondary benefit.
Designing products with fewer pieces usually requires more engineering skill. In many cases, a product designed with a lower piece count has a higher end customer value. Certain other popular measurables such as SKU reduction, supplier reduction, inbound freight cost reduction, inventory cost reduction, assembly cost reduction, quality improvement and profit margin become other ways of expressing the benefit of making a product using fewer pieces. Our tasks becomes less of a puzzle if we are fighting with a reduced number of pieces.

AC Induction

Posted on July 24, 2016 by george

AC motor cut away by SJ De Waard

I was a part of a discussion after a cost improvement session with one of my clients in 2000. This OEM supplier designed and made starter motors and alternators primarily for General motors. Due to the fact that I had invented a few actionable cost improvements, during the session I was asked what would be a long term cost improvement game plan. I suggested that they eliminate the starter motor to save cost. This suggestion was received with surprise, in that starter motors generated half of their sales. At that time the Prius had just come out. In this hybrid, an additional motor / generator was added to the starter motor and alternator that were already a part of the vehicle drive train. An average US passenger vehicle only uses 500 gallons of fuel per year. Even at $3.00 per gallon this only adds up to $1500 per year. Most people cannot justify a doubled vehicle purchase price, because it is both an electric vehicle and a gasoline vehicle, just to save fuel use.

Prius by JBleeker

Here we are in 2016, what has changed? The big item is power electronics. Back in 2000, some of my best friends made a good living simply replacing the power transistors in the Variable Frequency Drives (VFD) used to run AC induction motors. The best we had simply could not handle summer heat. The Prius had three separate motors simply to avoid using the unreliable transistors. Advancements in power transistors changed that equation starting about 2006. Certain visionaries like Elon Musk translated this technology advancement into a new generation of electric vehicle. Fundamental technology improvements are not just limited to high dollar luxury cars. Delphi has just introduced a 48 volt combo starter motor, alternator and hybrid drive motor / generator which is a single AC induction motor as I had suggested back in 2000. In today’s lean fashion, an affordable vehicle is the result of using fewer components instead of adding more.
AC induction motors are also coming to industrial vehicles. In the new generation warehouse electric vehicles that I am designing, an AC induction motor will be standard. The new generation of power electronics and control strategies and AC induction motors are giving us 60% more run time.

There just might be gold at the end of the rainbow

The range anxiety that is a part of using a personal electric vehicle also applies to warehouse vehicles. Many of our users are pleased that the extra range made possible by using AC induction motors lets them use the vehicle for a shift or two before recharging.

Bonus

Posted on July 4, 2016 by george

A U-Haul trailer is larger enough to carry furniture home from the store

I admit that the occasional need to move furniture is not a consideration when I buy a personal vehicle. This is probably why I am not driving a pickup truck like many of the commuters on the road. These days it usually takes a more substantial vehicle to even tow a U-Haul trailer. In actual practice we all push the limits to solve our difficult transport tasks. You will see me strapping a 4×8 sheet of plywood to the roof of my car. The trick is not to damage the vehicle by pushing the transport limits.
As a vehicle designer, my task would be a lot easier if the customer would go for buying a full size van. No such luck. The buying public wants a V6 engine stuffed into a minivan.

photo by CZmarlin-Christopher Zeimnowicz
Chrysler Mini-van V6 Engine

This marriage pushed the limits into the bonus category. Even though the minivan purchasers wanted V6 horsepower, the transmission case size was not a match. The drive gears were just not big enough to always handle the input torque. This is where bonus thinking fits in. Just because there are some situations where the engine is just too powerful, does not mean that it is not possible to take advantage of the extra power most of the time. Bonus. On the engineering side it causes some real scrambling. When we launched the Chrysler Minivan V6, the EPA tested engine set up, generated more torque than our transmission could handle. This was discovered at the 11th hour after it was too late to redo the EPA emission testing. Implementing the fix resulted in the only time that I have launched a part into full 1,000,000 per year production before receiving any drawings what so ever. Negative lead time. The stator for the torque converter, which connects the V-6 engine to the transmission, was reshaped to eliminate most of the torque multiplication. The trick is that the torque converter still needs to get the vehicle rolling again after it comes to a full stop. 25 years later the mini-van still uses this transmission set-up even though all of the other front wheel drive transmissions are now computerized.
It would be very convenient for the vehicle design engineers to not take the users tendency to overload the vehicle into account.

Loaded beyond maximum Haitien cart picture by Remi Kaupp

Since it is unlikely that it is possible to prevent this type of vehicle abuse, the best we can do is to reduce the likelyhood of damaging the vehicle. Control of the vehicle speed is one of the effective methods that we use. As a staring point the industrial vehicles that I design have a maximum speed governor. Since we know that the force levels increase with speed, this is most important when the vehicle is heavily loaded. The trailers that are towed are similarly affected. It is very easy to knock the wheels off by pulling the trailer at more than a fast running speed.

The new generation of industrial vehicles that I am designing have the next level of computerized vehicle damage protection. This will enable utilizing the vehicle closer to the limit.
In this lean era, success is based on learning to squeeze more performance out of the same resources. Embedding strategies that let us use a less expensive vehicle in a wider range of tasks will always be the goal. This is even more true as the manufacturing community copes with mass customization which generates a wider variety of transport tasks.

Carts

Aside

Carts carry much more than sledges

The wheel is always touted as a revolutionary invention. However the wheel without the cart is just a lawn ornament. Combining the wheel with a cart creates the advantage that makes it possible to transport additional material. The Indian travois is an example of a transport device that predates the wheel. As you can see from the comparison picture it only carries a fraction of the weight that a cart can handle.
When I began my career in automotive parts manufacturing, it was possible to accurately predict both the design of the manufactured part and the volume required five years into the future. It is not surprising that we created some plants where both the layout and the equipment were locked in place. My modular process equipment designs that could be moved with a lift truck were considered radical. This is not true today. In this era of mass customization the entire manufacturing floor is set up like roller derby. It is not just the “in process” material that is delivered on carts. Most of the equipment, racks and tables are also on carts.

Heavy equipment manufacturing floor

. The locations of these carts is regularly rearranged to match both the volume and the option mix of the customer orders. In this lean era we cannot afford any loss of time related to an inefficient or unbalanced assembly line. The other benefit was unplanned. It is very easy to achieve a through floor cleaning by pushing the equipment out of the way.
The use of carts has spread to the grocery store. Successful grocery stores have discovered that you can increase sales by rearranging the stock on a regular basis. They always seem to do it when you are in hurry. A quick trip turns into a scavenger hunt. Innovation is all about finding a new way to sort the stuff. Not only to they use carts to deliver the merchandise, but the shelves themselves are now on wheels.

In our fast changing world, you cannot get used to the locations of merchandise

Carts are affordable mobility on demand. Yes, it is possible to move the items that surround us with modern equipment like cranes. In most cases a crane is not available when you need one. Going back to the wheel and cart that began our engineering revolution, we can arrange our world around us. You never know a cart may save your life.

US Navy photograph showing EMT moving a person on a wheeled streacher

US Navy photograph showing EMT personnel moving a person on a wheeled streacher

24 Hour Cities

Posted on May 2, 2016 by george

24 hour cites like New York never sleep

It was not too many years ago that pretty much only the North American auto plants and a skeleton crew at the hospital worked the graveyard shift. As an engineer in a three shift auto plant you would expect to end working the graveyard shift on a regular basis. You do not expect to run into rush hour traffic on your way into work at that time. The first time I ran into Toronto traffic on the way to work on the graveyard shift, I dismissed it as an accident. When you consistently run into rush hour traffic after midnight you realize that the city has become a 24 hour city.
In the current economy the largest cites are where the new employment is being generated. Cities like New York, Hong Kong, Beijing, New Delhi, Jakarta, Tokyo are all 24 hour cities. As the worker becomes a smaller part of the business cost, the shift premium that you need to pay to get workers on shifts other than day shift is insignificant compared to the increased utilization of the capital invested in automation. Even in engineering the advent of high annual cost CAD seats has converted a day shift occupation into a multi-shift occupation.
This is not a new phenomenon. New York City, when it was the transit point for immigrants arriving in America, became a 24 hour city. It was not uncommon in the tenements for night shift workers to share a bed with day shift workers.

24 hour cities have a very high population density. This NYC tenement picture is from the 1800’s

Severe shortages of housing units in Asian cities like Beijing, have generated an echo of the tenements that we saw in New York City. I hope that our race to bottom wage levels does not bring that type of thing back here. It always comes back with a twist. I was reading about a successful entrepreneur who was renting camper vans to Silicon Valley residents who ended up living in their employers parking lots.
Explosive growth comes with its own problems. Ever increasing numbers of goods must be transported into 24 hour cities. The traffic snarl causes trucks to be outlawed during daylight hours. Everyone who is a truck driver is pushed onto the grave
yard shift. Even this drastic step may not be enough. We hear stories of week long traffic jams on the routes into Beijing. Yes increasing the number of TEU (transport equivalent units) that a container ship may carry to over 10,000, is necessary to deliver enough goods to support a city like New York. I can imagine 10,000 trucks backed up all the way to Pennsylvania the day that one of the cranes in the Port of New York craps out.

The capacity of a road drops quickly during a traffic jam

Local

Posted on April 24, 2016 by george

We all like the taste of locally grown produce

A con artist was telling the story about a Texas millionaire that he called from a boiler room from which he operated. The millionaire liked the sound of the investment opportunity but declined to participate. When the con artist pressed him for a reason he replied “Well son, I make it a rule not to do business with people that I am not seeing face to face” A further question got the reply “I cannot wring the neck of people that are out of reach when the investment deal goes sour” Local is coming back into fashion. We are becoming tired of deals that have gone sour that benefit people who are beyond our reach. Many companies thought they could obtain a better price by sourcing off shore. There are lots of want ads for quality professionals as a result these days. Unfortunately, quality cannot be inspected into a product after the fact. The people who deliberately omitted the gum strip in the tires that they made, knew that their loved ones were not in any danger.

Serious levels of technology are needed to create reliable tires

The tires were being shipped to the other side of the world. The danger was not visually apparent to the army of receiving inspectors. After the incident only the US distributors who were unaware of the deception got punished. Anyone who has experienced controlling a car after a tire blows out, will shy away from buying that same tire again. No, the answer is not in hiring more inspectors. In an interconnected society each participant is accountable. This is much more effective if they are local. We are seeing the pendulum swing back. The reshoring and locally grown produce movement are just examples of the consumer backlash.
This type of deception is not limited to manufactured products. Food products like milk are easy to adulterate. “Flavoring” agents like melamine can hide the fact that the milk has been diluted. We use melamine to make useful products such as marine plywood. Including these “flavoring” agents in products such as baby formula and dog food might be a match to Asian thinking. Local food suppliers are not likely include controversial ingredients in the foods that their own kids and pets might eat.
Transporting goods around the world is incredibly expensive. The US taxpayer foots a multi trillion dollar bill to support the naval presence needed to protect the container transport ships from pirates. This system was set up to subsidize the creation of unemployment in the US. I suspect that some recent innovations such as the creation of gasoline from natural gas, hydroponics, US cultivation of agricultural product like tea will make it possible for the US to adopt locally made on a much grander scale. It is interesting that peppers locally grown year round in hydroponic green houses are cheaper than those imported from offshore third world countries. I also suspect that they contain more of the nutrients when they are consumed by the purchaser.

Hydroponics make it possible to buy just picked peppers year round

The lean movement will flush out the senseless inefficiencies like trying to inspect in quality. I happen to be in favor of re-educating convicts to become contributing members of society. At the same time I also believe that the local users are in a better position to insure that they are assigned production tasks that match their trustworthiness. A low selling price for goods made at a distance could be just a disguise for dumping of substandard convict manufactured goods on unsuspecting buyers.
A new stability is emerging. In the post industrial age we will employ global know how on a local stage. Knowing the other players in your circle will increase the satisfaction that has been lost in a currently faceless society.

The Lean Innovator

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

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