Follow Up - Process Review

Thanks for yet another great blog entry Milo.

It sometimes seems that you may be peeking in the window at my place of employment, and you know just what to offer as advice for the week.

Thanks Doorman.

I was travelling over the weekend, but from Ohio to Texas I don't think we flew over your place.

I just wanted to share my thoughts about the designers getting the feedback they need. Its always a "C" priority most places. So I tried to make my case...

Milo

As an industrial design consultant for over twenty years I largely agree with your statement.

Limiting the use of something because that is what it was originally designed to do is blinkered. I have used off the shelf modular dairy fittings to construct volumetric fillers for packing window putty.

My main point however is that you are preaching to the converted by suggesting that the designers should undertake the review.

Top management of the company operating the PRAP (product, recipe, art, process) is a more relevant target. But they could have a couple of million £,$,€,¥ tied up in hardware producing a product that is currently selling and making payback. So their "if it ain't broke don't fix it" attitude is understandable. Periodic reviews if done properly are expensive, and don't necessarily lead to cost effective improvements. They are the ones who have to justify the expense to the shareholders. Initiating a review after a viable improvement has been identified is a more practical approach.

Alas, while the stock market values short term gains over long term sustainable growth, and makes more money from gambling on share price fluctuations than it does from receiving dividends, your suggestion is facing an uphill battle.

Hi JHH,

Try to implement the following principle: "Sell, Design, and Produce" and only in that order. It's shorter (3 words against 4, including the extra work) and less complicated.

This way your company has an advantage, specific, customized, and faster delivery against the competition. Your company can or will become a better and instant supplier what your customers want to buy from you.

Sell = What your customer wants to buy from you.

Design = You make only what your customer wants to buy from you.

Produce = You produce and deliver only what your customer wants to buy from you.

This is a simple SDP process (probably comes from the KISS process) but hard to understand and harder to apply. However, when is customized and fast delivery, an extra charge can be collected. So, the process is more profitable! Try it and let us know your findings, Gil.

Hi Gil

Let me just go through what you are advocating, because I think that one of us has lost the plot. I just hope that it is not me.

First you sell the item to the client at a large profit because that is the item that he wants. Of course you have not designed it yet so you can't show him all the wonderful features that he is paying for. He just has to take your word for it.

Second you design the item, presumably working out somewhere along the way how much it will cost you to make. Lets hope your client was really gullible and the price tag he paid was big enough to cover all your costs (and your hefty profit).

Thirdly you produce it on machinery that you may or may not have. After all you didn't know what you were going to need because it wasn't designed when you sold it.

Now you are going to deliver it quickly, as you don't need to test if it works, or meets his criteria, or is durable or reliable. After all proving these things takes time, and why would you need to convince the next customer that you make functioning, durable reliable items?

However you are very organised, so on day one, before you sold it, you sat down and wrote out a Gantt chart. So you knew that the 'sales price' node came before the 'cost price' node. To overcome this little difficulty you had to insert the 'guess price' node (This usually reads "Think of a telephone number, double it and put a $ sign in front of it") Once the 'guess price' node is in place the 'guess machinery required' node doesn't look at all out of the ordinary.

On balance I think I will stick to the tried and tested methods that have given me a good living for twenty years and leave this revolutionary new way of doing business to radical thinkers like you.

Of course all this assumes that the client actually knows what he wants. Fortunately for industrial design consultants like myself, that is rarely true.

Hi Milo,

Thanks for the subject and for the "Deming Wheel". During my working life I found very few people understanding and less to use the Deming Wheel. Why? I cannot explain but I think because he was rejected by the American industries, his contribution to better production and many other improvements was forgotten.

Many products are designed for a certain purpose but can be used to another.

The users want to change and need collaboration from the manufacturers.

Every product must and can be improved.

If you don't improve what you created, someone else will improve it at your expenses.

The life of any commercial product is short because the competition.

After my opinion, as already mentioned many times, the Deming Wheel must be used as often as possible. I recommend, teach, and encourage people around me to use it when a problem arises.

Thanks again for the subject, Gil.