Part II

Advice Not Taken

Here is a link to Part I

The Goal

Besides setting my mind in a better place, this is my way of taking my brother’s advice, albeit retroactively; my goal is to share this experience with others.  I am a bit of a driven person who is mission-focused. My wife says I am either all in or not at all. My goal is always to be better than the day before. This includes finding my way through the hierarchy of the organization.  I have invested much in my career besides the work.  I have two master’s degree levels and seven US patents, global certifications, scores of magazine articles, and 20+ books representing a commitment to my craft and the thought of being advantageous to the company and, consequently, myself and my family.

The Projects

The following section is not some ego puffing. I want to make the case that I might have been a reasonable candidate for some available positions. To that end, I provide a few of the projects and contributions to the company, in terms a company might understand, $$$. This does not include intellectual property generation and many other things.

Besides ceding intellectual property to the company, I found ways to reuse and recycle products for other company applications. For example, working with the supplier to redesign a vehicle component to support the manufacturing line (extending hardware and software use). I have written about this in our cost management book.

I was kept from knowing what to do for each project below (or how) or who to work with to produce the desired results. I took the initiative; maybe that is a bad thing.  I found people who knew the things I did not know or did not know enough. For example, in one of the projects below, I found a product quality problem and had an idea for solving it; I worked with the supplier to estimate the cost impact of changes. I found a component that could work, but not sure about the cheapest cost – so I worked with procurement staff, showing them what I saw and what was needed from the system design perspective.  The point is that it was not a one-person show, but I initiated it, and I found the talent in the organization – or, in some cases, outside the organization.  I have tried new approaches, and I have made mistakes.   One of my mentors Gerald Obermeyer, who worked at the supplier I was working with on a product, told me if I were not making mistakes, I would not be trying to make things better.

The project identifications below the names below have been altered to provide a cover or anonymity.

##α

I had not been at the company for a few weeks at best when this long-time quality issue had come to my attention. The problem was so pervasive, with an elusive corrective solution, that the company considered adding additional material (interface box, interface PCB, connectors, and wire harnesses) to fix the problem. Every additional component is another opportunity for failure, as well as cost. I was not interested in a Band-Aid solution, but solving the $4-6 million annually (in 2000 dollars, which is 7 to 11 million in 2024 dollars) of failed parts under warranty would be better. Even the warrantied parts that replaced the original parts would fail.

The procurement and technical personnel working at the failed part-receiving facility had convinced the supplier representative to meet at the part-receiving facility. The procurement person had hammered the supplier representative; it was a bit like a bad cop, and good cop you see on television. As we walked through the facility, we had to walk sideways to keep the overhead boxes from falling on our heads.  Procurement lit a fire under the supplier, and I arranged a recurring call with the supplier’s engineer to resolve any issues. We found the source of the problem, the PCB was corrected, the product tested, and part numbers were updated (PPAP).

## (I lead)

This product was also launched before I came to work at the company. Product quality issues from our manufacturing facility were becoming known, often happening as total production started.  I assembled a team with representatives of the following areas and myself.

• Manufacturing (for example, parts receiving, installation-OEM, and supplier)
• Quality
• Engineering (me)
• Supplier manufacturing
• Supplier engineering
• Supplier package and shipping

The first action was to meet the supplier at our manufacturing facility, as it appeared that some of the issues were likely due to product handling from OEM receiving to installing it on the vehicle.

I built a spreadsheet of the defect types and occurrences every week, along with the production rate. I updated a weekly spreadsheet of the manufacturing-reported defects and distributed it to the team. We reviewed these defectives with the supplier and manufacturing personnel weekly, prioritizing the costliest and the part with the most frequent occurrence. The team implemented corrections to product handling and the manufacturing processes. Over the next year, the part per million failure rate was cut in half every quarter, with no growth in the volume of vehicles built- meaning that the failure rate was significantly reduced every quarter.  At the end of the year, the failed parts and rework were reduced to 1/8, not by 1/8.

There was another thing I learned during this activity. I discovered that critical mechanical components in the design, specifically the Bourdon tube air gages, had an unacceptable failure rate to the OEM. I was leading the development of the new US version of the product at the same time as this work, which was proposed to use these same devices, and the procurement contract indicated a 0km failure rate that was lower than what could be produced using these components.  I was the only one to notice this.

Hannah (I lead) Bourdon Tube Air Gages

The previous quality improvement pointed to the failure rate of the product’s regulatory mechanical components.  Depending upon the vehicle configuration, the product had two and sometimes three of these components: bourdon tube air gauges. The global procurement contract for the product specified a 0km failure rate of 500 ppm. Unfortunately, the development of the product included these mechanical components with a supplier-endorsed ppm of 500 per gauge. This means the failure rate for one version of the product will greatly exceed that of the contractual obligations, and we still must account for the other alternative of three of these gages.

I explored alternatives, moving to stepper motor gages and adding sensors, perhaps, while staying within the cost structures. I talked with the supplier about the cost implications of removing and replacing the Bourdon tube gauges with stepper motors. Besides a quality improvement, the material and labor cost for the product would be reduced. I then worked with the procurement team to research sensors in a quest to find a sensor with suitable cost and quality attributes.

In the end, removing the mechanical gages, reducing air hose content and noise, improving assembly times, and improving quality were sufficient to offset the cost of the added sensor. I went to the cab engineer, Eric the Red, on the passthrough port. He measured and said it would work, but a decision was required now to only do the tooling design once. We agreed to move forward with the design that removes the mechanical gages, and I accepted this update to the product. At the same time, the tooling was initiated.

Ultimately, the business case was proven, and the new design was accepted. Additionally, the European product variant was too far along to make the change. Still, the development engineers in the EU adopted our product design version, specifically the PCB and the back panel tooling. In this way, the global design was altered to the local North American design or from what we referred to as Hadrian’s Wall, the farthest outpost of the empire.

In doing this, the design my team spearheaded was used in all other vehicle platforms across the globe. A quality improvement impacting the entire product line. This design improvement would not have happened had I not taken the initiative to solve quality problems and discovered the gap between the contract with the supplier and the actual product performance.

Workflow in the Department

The Chief Engineer asked me to document the idealized workflow through the department. It is not a duplication of the global processes used in the EU. That part of the company had a significantly more significant number of employees divided into more groups, each with a different scope of work than the US. Adopting the EU way of working would be difficult since we were missing some departments.

I worked with the Electrical / Electronic Engineering constituent departments, managers, and department team members to build a maximum model Gantt chart that assigned department responsibility and task dependencies.  We built specific process descriptions as well.  We recognized that the typical or expected inputs to the process are often not perfect and sometimes the process is not needed. We began with an objective, the first heading for each process step documented. Why are we doing this process? If you know why the process is there, then you can determine if the process is needed, and in the event, the process is needed, but the inputs are not perfect, we can think our way through how to achieve this objective.

αα ##

My next solution opportunity came when the company purchased another commercial vehicle manufacturer. This project brought together the multiple electrical/electronic platforms, which would be four: two vehicle platforms in North America and two in Europe. The goal was to reduce material costs while maintaining brand uniqueness and the ability to adapt to regional customer demands.

How to Proceed?

I flew to Sweden for the concept development; I was there before the French contingent arrived. The development manager in Sweden took me off to the side and provided a quick summary of the French ideas for the next generation of the product, comparing that with the Swedish version as we talked. The development manager wanted to count on my support for their idea. I told them I needed to hear the French contingencies’ ideas.

After hearing the French team members’ ideas (Françoise), it was clear that theirs was the best. Their approach would make it easy to adapt the product quickly for local markets, especially from a software perspective.

We ended up voting to undertake the French contingent’s ideas. I was responsible for writing the specifications for both vehicle brands in North America and being the technical project manager. There was much to this project/product, but some of my standouts can be found in my contribution to The Project Manager Who Smiled: The value of fun in project management.

Documentation

My manager at the time of this project was Martin.  I have asked him on occasion to vouch for me.  In one instance, the person he provided the reference called me back, asking about a “funny” story.  Martin recounted that when he was a manager during this project, we went to the newly acquired vehicle OEM; he was driving, and the Chief Engineer was in the front passenger seat. I was in the back seat writing the various specifications for the new product system.  This, I think, demonstrates my level of commitment to the project and the company.  This was a 7-hour drive, and I had an inverter plugged into my laptop’s rear seat power point.  At the end of the project, we had generated more than 100 specifications for each vehicle brand – more than 250 total specifications – almost entirely written by me.

As Bily Mays would say, but wait; there is more!

I hate to keep bringing Martin into this. Who am I kidding? I enjoyed working with Martin. He is a smart guy, and as my manager and peer when I was a manager, I thought him intelligent and trustworthy. We could talk freely.  For the IC05 project, I was the project manager and engineer.  I contributed to global HW/SW specifications, wrote cross-functional specifications for components, and led the development and testing of the embedded parts of the product.

This included time with the supplier and the evaluation of the manufacturing line. One of these supplier meetings was where a review of the entirety of the project, from design and testing to manufacturing, was conducted.  I was there for the entire meeting, contributing and asking prudent questions.  When Martin and I walked out of the meeting, he told me he was impressed by my ability to talk not only about the embedded product development but also the manufacturing line development, including Process Validation Testing comments, specifically coaching the supplier as to why certain things were done in the development process. I coached the supplier through this, as some of their proposals lacked elements.  At this point in my career, I had been part of a manufacturing line set up for nearly a decade. Over that decade, I worked with Supplier Quality Assurance Engineers, assessing and guiding line qualification.

Scrum

We introduced a Scrum (agile) approach to the work on this project. I will do this in two large projects; this was the first. Some of it is told in the note above to the Project Manager Who Smiled.  This was not a straight adoption of Scrum; the company was at the stage gate. At the time of this project, I was not fully aware of Scrum, but due to circumstances, I had to work in a way that fit within constraints that I could not alter and capitalize on the strengths. The result is what turned out to be a variant of Agile (before I knew about Scrum or Agile applications).

Leaky

What is better than fixing a product with quality issues? Not to launch a product with any quality issues. At least, that is what I thought. This company had customer adaptations (CA). These were unique vehicle adaptations, including electrical, mechanical, and embedded components. CA demand may become significant at this company, and this offering may become standard for any customer.  It is important to note that these CA designs do not go through the development organization’s processes but are introduced to the vehicle at the manufacturing facilities.

One of these CA designs is considered for moving to the standard offering.  Executives want to move this design over to the standard offering.  I thought it prudent to ask questions about this design, for example:

1.       How many of these systems are in the field as CA’s?

2.       What is the failure rate of those field systems?

3.       What is the nature of the failures?  How severe? How Frequent?

4.       What are the costs of these failures to the company?

I asked these questions because it prudent to know what the company signed up for regarding product support. Those at the manufacturing facility currently support those CAs. If the company is signing up to offer this design as part of the standard order book option (much larger volume sold), they should know what we will support. These questions were asked to help correct any problems or, at the very least, account for the system’s quality costs in the business case or sale price.

One of the executives took me to the side and quietly accused me of being an obstructionist. The person said my actions were construed as impeding the delivery of an offering to the customer. I was a test and verification group manager and a product development engineer for decades. Rather than being slandered, I would have thought more of the people involved would be asking these similar questions and even more.

Eventually, the answers to those questions found that this design on vehicles in the field allowed water to leak into the cabin, specifically into the dash. This is not a good design to offer all customers. This design cost the company that created and launched the CA. This is a quality cost avoidance due to my questions or, as some would have it, “obstructionism.”

The Port

A marketing executive contacted me regarding the new telemetry system introduced to one of the brands in the organization’s portfolio.  This marketing executive wanted to introduce this system to another platform. I told them it would not be that simple; some design work and testing would be required. They assured me both vehicles had the same electrical, electronic, and embedded systems architecture. I told him that was incorrect. He needed to introduce a small project to make the necessary changes to allow this system to fit into the system and provide the features the customer wanted. My input fell on deaf ears; he added the product to the Databook for a huge West Coast port to order the product on this platform. The product was added and shipped to California. The system did not work, the customer was angry – and the company paid for this hubris.

I did all I could to convince this marketing executive to submit a product modification request to ensure the product would be integrated into this vehicle’s architecture. I pointed him to the place to begin, I described the process for adapting the product all in vain.

2017

This project was to meet the emission control system set down by the federal regulations.  The systems engineering group devised a control system that introduced an embedded component to initiate. We had been going through cost rationalization activities for years, and I thought adding this component only increased the costs (see a short list of cost increases below). This component, at the volume of vehicles sold, would add 2 million dollars annually in vehicle costs. It seemed to me this addition was not the best solution.

• Material
• Packaging
• Installation
• Opportunities for failure

I chatted with Mike and Wes, other engineers, with an idea. Together, we devised a solution using existing vehicle components. This involved two brands. One of the brands wanted to continue with the additional component. The other brand accepted this approach and avoided the cost implications. It is worth noting that a few years later, the second brand adopted the same solution, removed the additional embedded component, and reduced the cost of that vehicle brand and associated platforms.

Made From Scratch – more or less

Upon the purchase of another vehicle company, the engineering departments were merged. In doing so, the system and verification group was divided into two separate groups: Systems Engineering and Verification and Test. This was a brilliant move by the company. I wanted to be the systems engineering manager, but I was deemed an appropriate fit for the test group. One of the chiefs convinced me this was the best place to ply my skills.

The most significant benefit to the company was this test and verification group, which started with 2 people but grew to more than 15. This was a position I did not want, but I am open to duty and challenges.  I know this would be a difficult road in this company culture.  Every launch of a new product comes with a post-launch list of quality issues. It is impossible to inspect, review, and test everything entirely to the point where no defects escape.  However, this department was adept at reviewing and testing the product from the small to the large (systems integration).  Many more defects were found earlier for many reasons, beginning with finding the right people for the individual positions (one of my responsibilities as manager).  I asked the quality manager (Jeff Z) to show me the post-launch defects for a large project, and we found that the number of defects that made it to the customer was a fraction of previously launched vehicles. One of my friends/ co-workers at the company (we had many heated and constructive arguments about product development and the work) told me that this was my significant contribution to the company.

RAD

I would walk around the small pond at the back of the campus to think things through.  Sometimes, I would walk with my friend Rick, excluding his last name, and discuss some of the challenges. I recognize that some things have a range of options, but if you hold some principles, there are boundaries, meaning some things are out of bounds. We are not dogmatic, but pragmatic but that should not mean half a$$ed.

Rick would tell me that I am RAD, it is not what you think.  He says I am right and dead (as in career dead). It turns out he may have been correct.

My Foundation

I played football in my youth. I bring this up to make a point: my effort has always been to make myself better and, consequently, the team better and more successful. I want to do my best because I am part of that team. I would not want to count the number of hours of overtime for any one of those projects and many more.

I am the son of a 7th Special Forces Group Vietnam Veteran in the 70s.  That generation, and probably mine to a lesser degree, have (had) specific ideas, valid and invalid, about work. For example, I recall my dad telling me to do the best I could in the company’s service, and that would be noticed, and advancement would soon follow.  This rule may sometimes apply, but only sometimes.  I have accomplished considerably at some places where I have worked, and the only time anybody noticed was when another company was courting me.

My Manager

Before I go further, I want to restate that I hold no animosity toward anybody. I rather like both Chief Engineers. I know that I am responsible for this undesired outcome. But those of you who play video games have undoubtedly heard or said the phrase, “Mistakes were made.” There indeed were and by me.

One of the first mistakes, well, I had not made my desire to be more than a lead engineer or manager at the company, was a very valid point. When I went to my manager, I told him I had another job offer, but I enjoyed doing this work and saw no career. He told me that he did not know that I never made him aware of my aspirations. That is true.  I assumed multiple master’s degrees in the domain, and the above results would inform him of these aspirations.  Yep, my mistake, and a big one, too.

His response included a comment on delayed gratification and my generation. At this time, I had been at the company for 7 years or more and in the domain for 20 years.  The second mistake was entertaining the thought that my generation, youth – lol, had a problem with delayed gratification.  I sat back in my seat and told him I thought that was invalid. Those who have issues with delayed or deferred gratification do not usually undertake two master-level degrees and two global certifications that go with our work.  I waited, but nothing happened despite my continued efforts.  At some point, accepting delayed gratification becomes watching any chance for a career to whither away.

A theme was noted when hiring people for emerging and opening positions at this company. The theme is that they know who they will hire for critical positions. So, unless you have been asked to apply, you only go through the motions when a job opens up. It is difficult to say if this is true, but that does not matter.  If the people in your organization believe this to be true, there is a problem.  There is a balance between grooming the pipeline and ensuring your team members who are less connected in the hierarchy are considered. We have asked this question a few times but received no thoughts, so I will ask again here:

What happens when an employee who wants a career realizes what they have is a job?

One possible response is that the employee sees the position as a dead-end. This reduces the level of engagement and commitment to the organization’s mission. Knowing it is one-sided, our team members are less likely to apply extra time and effort. For me, I started writing books.

The first book I wrote was to help a project manager at a supplier for a product development project.  The books after that were a combination of opportunistic; the publisher wanted somebody to write a book on a topic.  However, more often, it was something I wanted to know and do.  I wanted to demonstrate my capability and knowledge to the company where I worked.  It was my way of saying, yes, you folks think I need more time to make my way through the hierarchy.  My career will not be limited by what you happen to think about my skill set and ability to learn and build.

What have I learned?

Below is a short list of things – I think I might have learned, albeit late.

1. Make your aspirations clear—often. Remind them why you are there. Constantly hone your craft and demonstrate your abilities.
2. Work to see things as they are, and avoid falling for the illusion of a career if that is what you seek.
3. Consider limits to delayed gratification.  Unlimited patience is not necessarily a good thing.
4. I wonder if hard, focused work and individual/team success is the road to corporate success.  Worse still, I’m unsure what does (perhaps it is a Dilbert thing, and good hair is the path to success).  Expect those less competent (demonstrably) to excel.
5. Spend as much time finding your next job in your company (or outside the company) as doing the work inside and outside the company.
6. If you like a particular industry (e.g., Automotive) or domain (e.g., product development), find organizations in those areas and develop relationships to advance your career.
7. Connect with those in the company’s hierarchy, get a mentor, and constantly clarify your aspirations to those people.  Be tenacious; if nobody wants to discuss a career, and that is what you desire, it is to reassess or to move on.
8. There are other places and ways to use your skills and aspirations; be open to what others believe possible. That is not to suggest that the feedback from these people is not valuable; it is quite useful.

I hope those of you earlier in your career either already know this or this article will help you to huge growth.

More articles on careers:

My First 5 Jobs

Careers are for Exploration

For more information, contact us

Follow us on social media at:

Amazon Author Central https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B002A56N5E

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmquigley/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/value-transformation-llc