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It’s the company you keep.

May 7, 2013 in Uncategorized | No comments

It’s the company you keep. Applicable to people, and companies too.  “I played 18 yesterday with Tiger, but he beat me by five strokes” still sounds pretty ___ good.  Same goes for our customer, BarMaxx.  As I previously reported, BarMaxx’s RFID enabled liquor inventory control system was a finalist for the RFIS Journal Live 2013 “Best Use of RFID to Enhance a Product or Service.”  As their fractional VP Engineering (part of Zebulon Solutions services offering), I joined the BarMaxx team last week in Orlando both for the presentation and then for the awards ceremony.

BarMaxx didn’t win.

 

Boeing did.  Their pitch was very impressive; it will save their customer millions a day.  But their R&D budget is probably thousands of times bigger than BarMaxx’s. The other finalist was Parker Hannifin, a measly $13 billion dollar corporation, a tier 1 automotive ,aerospace and industrial supplier who counts Boeing as one of their larger customers. I actually liked their pitch the best, sorry Boeing.

But we will never know if little BarMaxx came in a close second or a distant third. because they did not announce anything more than the winners.  But you know, I think BarMaxx is still a winner.  Because we played a doubleheader with Boeing and didn’t get trounced. It’s the company you keep.

Way to go, BarMaxx. We’ll get ‘em next year.

Chuck

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Fail early, fail often. Fail quickly, fail smart. Repeat.

May 6, 2013 in Uncategorized | No comments

People learn from failures far more than success.  And if you are to fail, do it early. And do it quickly, for this gives you time to fail again.  The last word is the key: repeat  Valid for people, but also valid for products.  For products, we want to make them fail often and early, as if before the product gets to market.  And failing repeatedly in the design process is a great way to find the 2999 ways not to build a light bulb. So we fail, and fail and fail, and we correct our approach, and fail again.  Often times this approach yields far superior results to analyze, analyze, analyze.

That sad of course, some failures carry a higher price than others.  And the cost of failure can’t be ignored, even in the early stages.  Destroying a prototype can not only have financial considerations but also may set back the schedule.  So failing smart is also part of the equation.

A great new engineering tool for frequent failers is the 3D printer, a godsend for mechanical designers.  We’ve spent so much money on 3D printing the last few months that we’ve made a consderable downpayment on our favorite prototype shop’s new company Ferrari. Actually, this is an exageration, because 3D printing has become cheap enough that we can design, test, fail, redesign.  Often.  We try out new ideas, we develop test plans, we break things. We break necks.  And motors and PCBAs and hinges and latches and circuits. We learn from these failures and try again.  And sometimes again. And again. And again.

On the flip side of the coin, products that fail in manufacturing, in the field, in the end customer’s home, well, that’s bad.  The whole reason we want to test the ___ out of our products is to lower the odds of that happening.  Besides testing, we use predictive tools like Failure Mode Effects Analysis (FMEA) to get ahead of the potential failure modes, and to optimize our testing budget.  This comes back to the fail early part of the equation.

To failure!

Chuck

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RFID Journal LIVE 2013

April 29, 2013 in Uncategorized | 1 comment

I’m headed off to Orlando on Wednesday for RFID Journal LIVE 2013. On of our customers, BarMaxx, is a finalist in the Best Use of RFID to Enhance a Product or Service category. Will get to meet a number of interesting solutions providers as well, an dperhaps evensome. Should be very interesting.

http://www.rfidjournalevents.com/live/

Chuck

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Bridging the productization chasm

April 23, 2013 in Uncategorized | No comments

Hidden from view to most travellers on the Design Highway, the productization chasm looms into view just as the pinnacle of Mt. Volume Production seems obtainable.  Many a valiant design project has cracked on the rocks below like a gull dropping an oyster.

Bridging the productization chasm

To cross the productization chasm we need a bridge. And the best way to build a bridge is to start from both sides and work toward the middle.

For design folks, this means thinking about production early on, designing manufacturability in from the get-go, thinking about test and process and quality and yes, the dreaded S word, supply chain. It means being proactive, doing tolerance analysis before assembly problems are flagged, conducting DFMEAs (Design Failure Mode Effects Analysis) early on.  It means talking to manufacturing.

For manufacturing folks, it’s actually not just saying, hey design guys you have to follow our rules.  It’s about understanding the nature of the design process understanding that first prototypes are meant to be tested, broken, and redesigned (see We design, we test, we break things). It means taking he time to understand the product functionality and also its market positioning.  Productizing a million-piece-a-month consumer product is vastly different from productizing the transmission of a pickup truck. And it means talking to design.

For both sides understanding and often times compromise are needed.

As for us, well, all too often we get called in after the bridge fails or when no one even considers the need for a bridge.  Good for business maybe but we’d far prefer to be involved early on, helping both sides bridge the chasm.

Chuck

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We design, we test, we break things–but why does that matter?

April 16, 2013 in Uncategorized | 1 comment

Steph, our new marketing maven, likes the pithy blog post title I did a while back, “We design, we test, we break things.” She thinks maybe that should be a new mantra for our prductization services.  I like it too (after all I did think it up), but I also worry that it’s missing one key element: why this matters to our customers?

Design is the easy part: before our customers can sell a product, it has to be designed.  Ergo value.  Ergo this is why there are thousands of design firms out there ready, and for the most part, able to perform that value add service.

Test is a bit tougher to quantify the value.  We test to verify the product meets requirements (aka Engineering Verification Testing, or EVT). We test to validate that the product meets specs (aka Design Validation Testing, or DVT.  We test each individual unit to make sure it’s a good one (aka Production Test).  This adds value indirectly, in avoidance of field returns, in avoidance of damage to brand.  It’s a necessary evil, or at least a necessary cost, to selling a product. Because failing in the lab is a whole lo cheaper than failing at the customer’s site.

Breaking things, well that sounds like fun but how does it add value? Because if we do this early enough in the product development process, we can learn how products might fail.  We can learn what tests a product might not pass.  And most importantly we can feed back that information into the design process and modify the design so that our customers’ customers don’t get the same pleasure of breaking things that we do (are we greedy?).  We learn by breaking necks, by running products so hot they stop working, by testing hinges so many times they fracture, by testing electronics until the solder joints fatigue. And this, very very indirectly, makes a big,very very tangible,  difference to our customers’ long term profitability. For the better.

Still looking for a revised pithy saying: “We design, we test, we break thing so ________________”

Chuck

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A solution to a problem, not the other way around

April 8, 2013 in Uncategorized | 1 comment

A lot of  start-ups out there offering technology solutions  in search of problems.  We’ve worked with our share.  Some make it, many don’t. So it’s refreshing to work with companies that have problems to which they are applying technology solutions.

One such company is a customer of ours in Florida, BarMaxx.  They’re in the supply chain management business for liquor serving establishments. It turns out that such establishments–bars and restaurants–have a very real problem: shrinkage.  Which is industry-speak for booze that is poured but does not get paid for.  It’s a multi-billion dollar problem in search of a technology. BarMaxx has a solution  combining RFID technology with high precision load cells to identify the bottle being poured, calculating the quantity that was poured, and associated that with the POS system already in use.  Sounds tricky and it is, but the technology is sound, the benefits are large and the potential savings mind-numbing.

RFID-Radio Frequency Identification-technology has been around for a long time but breakthrough applications like this have been rare. Rare enough that BarMaxx has been nominated for Best Use of RFID to Enhance a Product or Service by the Seventh Annual RFID Journal Awards.  Better yet, BarMaxx is now a finalist in that category, along with Boeing and Parker-Hannifin.  Like people, companies are judged by the company (no pun intended, mostly) they keep, and that’s a pretty impressive crowd.

I wish we could take some credit for their success, but in truth we just started our engagement with them, helping them productize this great technology and take it to the next level. Hopefully including winning First Place at the big RFID show in May.  I’ll be there, rooting them on, and checking out potential vendors for the next generation, highly productized, implementation.  Which will hopefully win a few more awards, but more importantly, will solve real problems for real customers.

Cheers. Salut. Skål. Bottom’s up.

Chuck

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Never not saved a customer money

April 1, 2013 in Uncategorized | No comments

Our new marketing maven, Steph (meet Steph, our new marketing maven), asked me that if it’s truly the case that every design assessment we’ve ever done for a customer has saved that customer more money than we charged, why the ___ don’t we tell people that?

So here it is: “We’ve never not saved a customer money on an independent design assessment.”  You can quote me on that, Steph. Yes, I know that Mrs. Gant, my 12th grade English teacher, would have been appalled by the double negative, but this is Engineering not English Lit.  Yet it is a  true statement, and she did like honest writing.  Every time we have done an Independent Design Assessment, ever, during our four plus years of existence, we have indeed identified immediate costs savings in excess of what we charge (typically a few thousand bucks).  Usually a lot more.

Honestly, and please don’t tell anyone, but it’s actually not that tough.  We’re not superhumans and we don’t have crystal balls, but we do have the outsiders advantage of being able to see the forest for the trees (or bark).  So the first few hours we look at something we can’t help but find things that world-class engineering teams have stared at for months.  It’s human nature.

Give us a design to look over.  We’ll quote you a modest price to do an assessment, and we’ll find you those savings.

Chuck

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Done is better than perfect sometimes even applies to productization

March 18, 2013 in Uncategorized | 2 comments

Buried in all the articles about Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, a mention about a sign on her wall at Facebook that reads “Done is better than perfect” or some such caught my eye.  In the software universe this is the hacker creed in a nutshell, and obviously for Facebook and Facebook wannabees around the globe this mantra works.

But does it work for physical products, where changes are not as easy as just releasing V1.3.5.7 of the software? For a physical product, any changes post design release must be covered by Engineering Change Notices, or ECNs.  ECNs in turn can lead to scrapping of inventory, mandate changes to processes and tests, cause production delays due to lead time of any newly designed in parts and can trigger the need for additional validation testing or even regulatory approvals. A heck of lot more difficult than just releasing a software patch.

As such, we have often been a little loathe to adopt such hackers creeds fo productization.  But.. sometimes Done is better than Perfect, even for productization. Done but slightly imperfect products can get into beta customers’ hands, can garner marketing feedback, can start to build brands.  Can start to build revenues.  Of course too imperfect and the customer complaint hot line starts ringing, returns roll in, and the ECNs stack up on the production manager’s desk. So moderation is required, much more so than in the software industry.  But we can also pick our battles: firmware, for example, can be revved much like software in some cases.  Steel-safe tooling changes are another great example. And testing prototypes till the cows come home, while satisfying (we do love to break things), can lead to paralysis.

Like much in productization (and in life),my favorite word in the whole world, Lagom, the Swedish Goldilocks word–not too much, not too little, just right-applies. We can accept almost done and close to perfect sometimes, even for productization.  Stamp it Done and move on.

Chuck

PS–I blogged on the same topic today, how Done is better than Perfect can apply to creative writing, my side gig.

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Broken necks

March 12, 2013 in Uncategorized | 1 comment

We’ve been breaking a lot of necks lately.  And bases and circuits and hinges.  No bodily damage to humans, or animals for that matter, just prototypes.  Prototypes that we breed just to be broken, stunted things missing non-essential body parts.  Plastic necks and metal rods, printed circuit boards and printed latches. Gears and latches and power transistors too.

Bang. Snap. Crash. Click.

Click is the worst, because you hear something give but no pieces are flying across the lab.  Sometimes we need a microscope to find click. Crash can be fun. “Duck,” well that’s scary for different reason.  And crash followed by “&%^$!” followed by “Todd, are you all right?” well that’s downright terrifying.

Don’t worry, Todd is all right. He’s very careful actually.

We design, we test, we break things. Almost our motto these days (maybe it should be).  The last piece is the most fun.  And sometimes even the most useful, because by breaking prototypes we learn how to optimize the design and manufacture so that the end product does not break. And of course we aren’t just breaking stuff willy-nilly and no sledge hammers are employed.  Instead we use force gauges, 50-lb kettle balls and the occasional deep sea fishing scale to pull and prod, poke and pry.  Then we build more prototypes and break them too.  Buy stock in all those companies that build plastic printers, ’cause they are great for all this.

Gotta go–just heard an odd clink from the lab.

Chuck

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It’s not a Brain-breeze

March 7, 2013 in Uncategorized | No comments

Brainstorming. I’ve tried to explain this term to non-English speakers in other countries where I have worked and it’s a puzzler.

It’s a word that conjures up wild thoughts and chaotic thinking. But that’s exactly right.  It’s not a Brain-breeze or a Brain-calm or a Brain-partly-cloudy or even a Brain-blustery-day. It’s a storm in the brain.  Better yet, in brains, plural.  For brainstorming is not a solo activity, rather a collaborative venture amongst folks preferably with different viewpoints, but all dedicated to thinking about things differently. Whether this is inventing a new widget or devising a way to manufacture said widget at a lower cost, it means tossing ideas up into the maelstrom, embracing the gale, grabbing at the lightning.  Works best in less sterile environments (works best with a bottle of 12-year-old Colorado whiskey).

When the brainstorming is done, you do need to sweep up the broken glass, nail down the loose shingles, organize the outcomes and prioritize the action items.  Business, especially a productization business like ours (shameless plug: Zebulon Solutions turns R&D projects into manufacturing ready products), needs rigor too. But every now and again we retrieve that bottle of whiskey from behind the coffee pot and let our brains storm away.

Chuck

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