Firefighting Hiding things is not a long term strategy We have recently written an article at our Assembly Mag column, Ps and Qs column on the metaphorical firefighter and things we do that encourages this behavior. There are many variants of this specific failure mode. To be clear, we are referring to valuing the heavy […]
Reviews of all kinds If you have been in product development for any time, you may have been involved in design reviews, walk-throughs, specification reviews, product reviews, audits and other forms. Recently I was a part of a customer presentation. The presentation was developed to introduce the customer to a new product design that the […]
Shared Covid and Asynchronous Communication Jon M Quigley Communication If you are an engineer or computer science person, you may know about asynchronous communication from the technical perspective, but we provide brief definition below. Technical definition Asynchronous communication is the transmission of data, generally without the use of an external clock signal, where data can […]
Mere Scrap of Information – The Route to the Product I am a guy, and grew up in the 70’s. My dad was a Vietnam Vet serving in the 7th Special Forces Group. I grew up watching action movies. My favorite actor of that era was Clint Eastwood, and one of my favorite movies Fist Full […]
The Olden Days by Jon M Quigley I recently had a phone call with a person I met on LinkedIn. Actually, I have been having calls with them over the weeks, to talk about product development, especially the way it was in the olden days. Over the course of few discussions we began chatting about […]
Wire harness development and testing Slow is painful by Jon M Quigley Vehicle Systems Vehicles have become increasingly electrical over the year, even vehicles that are not electric propulsion. There are more features, more embedded controllers and greater communication between the electronic controllers. The range of content is from power electronics, sensor data (analog signals), […]
This is a demonstration of the law of diminishing returns. In present day, in my experience, happens vary frequently in project management.
Go to the place where the work is performed, that is the Gemba walk. This does not apply just to manufacturing, but also line managers and their respective departments as well as to project management. You want to know what is going on, what could be better, go unto the work space and watch and […]
I recently saw a post on Twitter from the Great John Cutler on allow the team to pick the tools that they use to do the work. Generally, this is not a bad idea, but not necessarily a great idea either. It sort of depends. My experience in companies that also have hardware […]
Kanban and Visual Management Kanban is a lean method for identifying and managing the work and the flow, and it does so by creating a pull through environment. We will start by identifying the work we need to do. Each work item we need to do will end up on an individual card. The cards […]