Recently you may have heard talk around the topic of agile engineering from PTC, Formlabs, and even us, here at EAC. We have many events throughout the year regarding lean product development; reviewing agile engineering, systems thinking methodologies, and more. Be sure to check if we’re hosting an event in your area here.

In the meantime, our friend Joris Peels over at Formlabs wrote an article discussing why agile engineering is the future of product design that reviews the benefits of agile engineering versus “the old way.”

In case you haven’t heard, in May EAC Product Development Solutions became a North American Channel Partner in the commercial, discrete manufacturing, and educational space. We now offer The Form 2 3D Printer to our customer’s to insert high-quality stereolithography (SLA) prototyping into their engineering and design workflows, for a fraction of the cost of competing technologies. Learn more about The Form 2 here.

Why Agile Engineering is the Future of Product Design

Agile Engineering is a popular process in software development, but few hardware teams apply these practices to develop physical products. For many hardware teams, implementing Agile Engineering practices saves time and money and improves the end product.

In Agile Engineering, teams quickly iterate, test, and gather feedback on product design. It divides big challenges into measurable chunks of work and promises more accurate and rapid product development cycles. Teams are self-managed and work in short two-week sprints driven by user feedback. This feedback guides teams to build a product that meets user needs.

Rather than start with a lengthy requirements phase that covers the entire span of the project, requirements are created as the team works. Requirements are specific and tied to user value. By testing features and new builds, teams verify if they are solving user problems and developing the right product.

The Benefits of Agile Engineering

With digital manufacturing tools such as mills, laser cutters, and 3D printers, hardware engineers can now develop ideas while concurrently testing them with users. Key benefits of this method include:

• Continuous collection of feedback from customers means that designs are tracking with customer needs.
• The interplay between design, engineering, manufacturing, and marketing allows teams to understand each other’s needs and challenges better.
• Each iteration gives you a physical prototype to hold and discuss. Kinesthetic learners, experiential learners, non-technical people in a technical meeting, people new to the subject matter–they will all learn from holding and discussing an actual prototype.
• Testing the physical prototype helps you identify and solve problems.
• More, quicker, and cheaper iterations mean that a higher number of possible solution paths can be explored.
• Continuous testing means that engineering risks are exposed throughout the process.

Agile Engineering unites teams across the organization and creates a better end product. By responding to user feedback with prototypes, teams develop products that users want.

The Old Way vs. Agile Engineering

In the “Old Way,” teams predicted demand months in advance. They turned a single prototype into mass manufactured goods. This method was risky: teams had a hard time predicting future demand. As a result, companies often had either product shortage or unsold inventory. Instead, Agile Engineering tests prototypes. It improves them with consumer feedback. This method develops products quicker and reduces risk.

*After week 7, an Agile team receives feedback on sales numbers. If the product is successful, and if it can be produced more cheaply using mass manufacturing, then they may decide to design the case for injection molding.

In the Old Way, the company has to predict market demand and consumer tastes months in advance. If Company A makes a decision once a season, and Company B makes informed decisions every day, then Company B will get ahead. Agile Engineering saves companies not only time, but also money in the long run. The Agile method has a higher startup time and initial cost, but the cost per final product is low. Plus, the end product is shaped by market demands, ultimately yielding greater profit.

Cost Comparison

Another benefit of Agile Engineering is that it encourages teams to fail quickly. By failing faster, teams learn and improve at a faster pace than those that do not. Learning from failure through prototypes helps companies quickly build better products. By validating assumptions and collecting data, these products are made in a more accurate, evidential way.

With traditional methods, teams painstakingly make world maps and then spend months planning a possible route through this imagined world. Only then do they have a product and really know where they stand. With Agile Engineering, products emerge in the first week of product development. Teams set off and check their compass often.

The Internet of Things (IoT) sits atop a 3-legged stool. Each leg is as important as the next. If any are missing it all falls down. What are these all-important legs you ask? Strategy, Connected Things, and Platform.

All of the buzz and hype, all of the conversations I’ve had with manufacturing and product development clients, can be grouped into one of those categories. I can’t stress enough how important it is to have those three ‘legs’ supporting any IoT initiative. The hard part is keeping a balanced approach so each leg of the stool is supporting its fair share of the load. This is especially hard when you consider the ‘non-traditional’ product development players the IoT brings to the table. It’s shifting the value of products and transforming companies altogether.

Sometimes this transformation causes such a stir that people and companies tend to ignore the groundwork and adopt a more ad-hoc approach. That’s unfortunate because now, more than ever, business strategists, engineers, and IT need to come together to support a new breed of products.

Let’s build a (theoretical) stool. In the next few paragraphs I’ll explain EAC Connect Services’ 3-Legged Stool analogy.

First, consider Strategy — the ‘why’ leg of the stool. There needs to be a clear connection between any IoT efforts and the value they bring to core business strategy. Since the IoT is clearly shifting product value by adding more information about status, usage, location, efficiency, etc, there can be pretty clear connections made between corporate initiatives and enhanced products with sensors, connectivity and analytics. What’s challenging is bridging the gap created by the language used in different groups. We often see people rattle off business initiatives such as Grow Revenue, Improve Service, Increase Customer Engagement, and Reduce Scrap. Rarely does anyone jump up and say ‘IoT is the Answer.’ Interestingly, the IoT can directly impact each of those goals. The IoT can create new revenue streams based on data acquisition or alternatives to existing service models. It could even change the way products are sold — think ‘Product As A Service’ versus high capital expenditures. How could you be more engaged with customers than through an on-going subscription and monitoring program? And as for scrap, things like machine learning, predictive failure and real-time operational efficiency are just the tip of the iceberg.

Second, let’s consider Connected Things — the ‘what’ leg of the stool. Take a moment and look around the room…seriously, look around the room in which you currently reside. How many connected devices do you see? Now think about the connected devices and systems that you don’t see. I call this ‘pervasive connectivity.’ It’s the notion that connected things are rapidly outnumbering us. Analysts expect there will be about 7 connected and addressable things per person by 2020. These things may connect via bluetooth, WiFi, ethernet, long-range radio, cellular, and satellite signals amongst others. Couple this with ever-shrinking energy-efficient sensors piggybacking on existing products or embedded directly within new ones and we’re ready to analyze streams of data. This could happen real-time, locally or post-facto in the cloud. These connected and enabled things provide data junkies with more data than they know what to do with. And one cool twist is that the back-end systems are learning to mine and manage data on their own. In short, the ‘how’ of smart and connected products comes in layers — base product infrastructure, sensor systems and connectivity form the foundation. Then depending on the objective, analytics may occur real-time, be short-term local or happen ‘in the cloud.’

Third is Platform — the ‘how’ leg of the stool. Consider for a moment the possibilities of a truly scalable cloud IoT purpose-built platform. One where security, connectivity and flexibility are a part of the DNA and easy connection to other enterprise systems like PLM, CRM, MES and the like are not just a notion, but a reality. Picture a platform where these converging streams of data can be analyzed by a learning system that determines what ‘normal’ looks like and autonomously notifies other systems with the right information based on the audience or system. At this point, integrating service information through augmented reality seems like a natural extension and provides the next step in connected product development and the over-the-top service we’re all pursuing. And for some icing on our proverbial cake, how about the ability for ‘non-developers’ to quickly build role-specific dashboards and mashups without needing to write piles of code? While new platforms are springing up, ThingWorx is already in place and providing a central hub for the connected enterprise to meet and even exceed its business objectives.

While all three elements — Strategy, Connected Things, and true IoT platforms — seem somewhat elemental, balancing these will be central to the success of any IoT enabled business initiative. This is the approach we take at EAC through our Connect Services. Whether you’d like help in one, two or all three of these areas, we’d love to partner with you and see your next IoT project flourish.

EAC Product Development Solutions (EAC), a leading provider of product development technology and services, is pleased to announce a partnership with Formlabs. This partnership allows EAC to bring professional quality SLA 3D printers and materials to commercial product development and education customers.

Burnsville, MN – May 5, 2016 — EAC Product Development Solutions (EAC) brings desktop SLA 3D printing to commercial customers through strategic partnership with Formlabs.

EAC has signed a partnership agreement to become a North American Channel Reseller for Formlabs. They will offer commercial, discrete manufacturing, and education customers the full line of Formlabs products. This partnership addresses increasing market demand for accessible additive manufacturing and rapid prototyping solutions. The Form 2 3D Printer will allow EAC’s customers to insert high-quality stereolithography (SLA) prototyping into their engineering and design workflows, for a fraction of the cost of competing technologies. The ability to minimize turnaround times by keeping prototyping in house is critical. Especially today, when development costs are scrutinized and time-to-market is more important than ever.

“We use the Form 2 to bring additional value to our engineering services engagements. I’m excited to bring the technology directly to our customers and look forward to sharing the knowledge we’ve acquired. These printers should be on the desk of every engineer. They have the potential to dramatically shorten design cycles and increase innovation. It’s amazing what happens when you enable an engineer to get their hands on a design idea.” — Allen Caldwell, senior mechanical engineer at EAC Product Development Solutions

Thane Hathaway, President and CEO of EAC said: “I built this company with a mission; to transform the way companies design, manufacture, connect to, and service their products. Additive Manufacturing, or 3D Printing, is a transformative technology that’s changing the way organizations approach product development. The Formlabs printers and materials offer professional quality 3D printing at an incredible price point. I look forward to this partnership and helping our education and commercial customers embrace this technology.”

“With decades of experience, EAC pairs deep product development expertise with a strong background in technical design. This distinct expertise will accelerate Formlabs’ efforts in bringing accessible, powerful desktop 3D printing to the millions of professional engineers and designers worldwide.” – Luke Winston, head of sales and customer success at Formlabs.

About EAC:
EAC Product Development Solutions transforms the way companies design, manufacture, connect to, and service their products. For more than 20 years they have provided the services and technologies needed to innovate, optimize, and win in the complex and competitive world of product development.

About Formlabs:
Formlabs designs and manufactures powerful and accessible 3D printing systems for engineers, designers, and artists. Their flagship product, the Form 2 3D Printer, uses stereolithography (SLA) to create high-resolution physical objects from digital designs. The company was founded in 2012 by a team of engineers and designers from the MIT Media Lab and Center for Bits and Atoms. With its powerful, intuitive, and affordable machines, Formlabs is establishing a new benchmark in professional desktop 3D printing. Formlabs also develops its own suite of high-performance materials for 3D printing, as well as best-in-class 3D-printing software.

Product development can be time consuming, difficult to manage, and slow to get up and running. Luckily, EAC Engineering Services is here to help transform the way you design your products. We offer a number of services to help you reduce time-to-market and improve project management to complete more projects. We can help with everything from customized mentoring to acting as your entire engineering team.

Milestone AV Technologies was in a position in which engineering resources were being fully utilized on active projects but they needed to make progress on a project that had been prototyped but stalled for nearly a year. Their solution? Find a trusted partner to deliver a thorough and mature design.

Milestone AV Technologies selected EAC as their trusted partner to deliver engineering and design services as well as manage the project.

Mike Ardito, Director of Product Development at Milestone AV Technologies said that in the little amount of time EAC Design Engineers worked on the project, they advanced it significantly. The level of maturity in the design exceeded his expectations.

“The first thing that was really evident when we started [working together] was that [EAC’s Design Engineer] was being very diligent from an engineering standpoint. We set up weekly meetings to check in, to give guidance, see what he was doing, and answer questions. It was clear that he was doing a lot of upfront work that would inform the design later. The engineering rigor and the quality of engineering work and the technical work, I got the impression was very good and the diligence was very high.”

Milestone needed to maintain critical client relationships by completing the project on-time and within budget. Leveraging the partnership with EAC allowed them to do exactly that. The project was completed on-time and within 10% of budget.

Like many companies, Milestone prefers to keep project work internal. However, if the opportunity presented itself, Ardito said he would have no issues coming back to EAC to based on his first experience with EAC.

Ardito explained that they look to outside design firms because they don’t have the internal resources available to manage the project but still want to move forward with it. He said “the worst possible case would be to go to somebody to do the external work and then have to spend a lot on internal resources managing that work.” He also explained that working with EAC, he was comfortable because he knew the project was in good hands and he would receive a quality output.

It was the first time Milestone AV Technologies reached out to another design firm in over a year. Ardito said, “The most valuable part of partnering with EAC goes back to having faith very early on that the technical rigor and detail was being addressed. I was assured that the EAC team was going to do the diligence necessary to create a good design.”

Milestone AV Technologies was able to complete a critical project 40% (8 months) faster by leveraging EAC’s Engineering Services group. Ardito explained that realistically, due to their workload they wouldn’t have been able to work on this project until the first quarter of 2016; EAC was able to deliver this project to them in October of 2015.

Ardito’s final comment was, “The level of service [EAC] provided, in terms of being available, the amount of attention EAC gave to the project before, during, and after was very good. It wasn’t the kind of thing where ‘we won this contract so we’re going to slap it out and not really follow up and make sure the customer is happy.’ It was just the right way to do business.”

Today we continue our discussion about System Archetypes with an archetype known as “Accidental Adversaries.” This system starts with two partners working to cooperate, but it leads to a negative outcome. The cooperation comes from each partner filling a need of the other. But, once the cooperation or system is put in place, each of them looks to individually optimize their part of the operation — a local optimization. This local optimization has unintended negative consequences for the partner. As each partner feels the negative consequence of what the other is doing, feelings erode, the partnership dissolves, and both sides feel the other side is inconsiderate and taking advantage of them.

The classic example used to highlight Accidental Adversaries is that of Walmart and Proctor & Gamble. Walmart needed product for their shelves and P&G needed distribution for their products. So the two companies cooperated. Once the cooperation was in place P&G tried to improve their position by running a lot of specials and sales. This created extra work and costs for Walmart. Walmart tried to recover those costs by buying extra quantities of the discounted product, stockpiling, and then burning through their inventory after the prices went up — selling them at full price to make extra profit and recover the burden put on them by the sales themselves. Proctor & Gamble then started running more sales to move more product and make up for the loss, and this turned into a cycle. Both sides felt the other side was operating against their interest and this cooperative venture became an adversarial relationship.

We see something similar happening in our organizations. Let’s use the relationship between marketing and engineering as an example. Marketing needs some organization to realize their vision and design. Engineering needs someone to come up with a vision and awareness of what the market needs in order to execute and do their work. As marketing learns, deep into a development project, some new information, they will try feeding it into a project. This is often called scope creep. Engineering will try their best to fulfill the new requirement. However, it may cause a problem for engineering. It may cause a project to be late. So, engineering puts in place some rigid rule like a spec freeze. Marketing, losing the flexibility of the process, will amp up its early requirements and put in stretch goals instead real goals. The idea being that if engineering can meet the stretch goals, then the product will still be strongly competitive in the market place. This cycle repeats itself and marketing and engineering find them selves in an adversarial relationship.

The antidote for this archetype is dialogue — continuing dialogue about the cooperation throughout the entire life of the system. Dialogue can’t end once the initial system in place. There needs to be ongoing dialogue between marketing and engineering. This is part of the design of the interface between the two groups. To come full circle, design of the interface is one of the key elements of systems and systems thinking…the topic that we’re heavily focused on in this series.

Contact us to learn more about how Systems Thinking and the application of our Product Development Operating System can help your organization become more efficient, productive, innovative, and competitive. Follow Bill at http://www.twitter.com/systhinking

No, I do not mean the game. I mean those engineers “back in the day” that would make sure every drawing released from engineering was as correct and accurate as humanly possible.

Longer ago than I care to mention, I started out in the engineering field as a draftsman. I started out using lead pencils and electric erasers, if that gives you a clue as to how long ago this was. In a very large room with many drafting desks I was the low man of the group. At the top there were Checkers. These were the top of the engineering group at the time. They had the most experience and were some of the highest paid people in Engineering. A drawing of any type could not be released for production or customer consumption without one of the checkers first reviewing it. What stands out the most for me is that there were very few, if any, drawings that did not get some sort of red markup on them. I know, because when I started out I was the guy stuck fixing all the mistakes the checkers found. Keep in mind that they were not only checking the aesthetics of the drawings, but they were also checking all the geometry, equations, mass properties, interferences, and many other aspects of the design. They would even check if it was accomplishing the design intent for the overall project. At the end of the day I rarely heard of manufacturing having to come back to engineering for missed dimensions, or interference issues or anything else for that matter. It did happen of course, but not as much as I see in today’s engineering / manufacturing companies.

Now let’s jump ahead to the current day in most small to mid-size engineering / manufacturing companies, and even some large companies. I can’t tell you the last time I have seen anyone in a Checker role. Yes, I have seen companies do peer reviews, design review meetings and things like that. But there is no one dedicated to insure that nothing leaves engineering until it is thoroughly reviewed for mistakes or issues. Over the last few decades have engineers become perfect? I know of some that may think so, but no…that is not the case. What I see happening is manufacturing is now the group that is indirectly checking the work of the engineers. How many times have you seen manufacturing coming back to engineering to request a dimension change, or with other issues with the drawing or design? Sometimes it is minor issues, but other times it is a major design flaw. By the time manufacturing finds one of these major issues you could have significant money already spent on tooling, raw materials, man hours, etc. Think about how many recalls we have seen from major companies over the last few years? How many mistakes are not caught by manufacturing at all? In many cases it is not until the product is built and shipped before the issue is found. Think about the cost to the company in those cases.

The fact remains that in the overall corporate view, you are now relying on manufacturing to make sure you are not releasing flawed products to the world. As far as the so called time savings…what do you think takes more time? Having the checker verifying all engineering work, and then making a requested drawing or model change before it is released…or…Releasing designs to manufacturing, then manufacturing finds an issue. Now a formal change request is sent to the engineer. A change process is started. Dispositions must be made for any raw materials already acquired and so on and so on until the change has been properly addressed. If someone took the time to analyze the real cost behind all minor and major changes, taking into account man hours, material and time cost, I think you would be surprised at what you would find. Assuming a checker would catch 75% of these issues before they were released, I am betting the amount you would come up with would cover the cost of the checker role.

Some of this checking can now be done with today’s modern CAD software, or add-ons to them. Such as Creo and Model Check. So some of the more basic things checkers used to check can be done with software if configured correctly. This would save what would be the modern checker significant time. Plus there are even more tools available that require human interaction that could help them check and review designs more efficiently. Like Creo View Design Check. So the time it did take checkers could be drastically reduced, further justifying the need for this role again for all sizes of engineering companies.

I am not naïve enough to say a checker would catch all mistakes. Even a checker is human, mistakes will still happen. I am saying the number of engineering mistakes released would be dramatically less.

I would love to hear comments or feedback on this. What does your company do to ensure engineering releases are as accurate as possible? How much is caught doing peer reviews? How thorough are your design reviews? How many minor undocumented changes are brought to engineering by manufacturing to be corrected? How many major issues does your manufacturing department find? Do you feel there is still a need for checkers in today engineering companies of any size?