My kingdom for a chief engineer, enough with design by committee – more ways you can improve time-to-market.
by David Mantey, Editor, PD&D
It’s the most wonderful time of the year, and it has nothing to do with kids jingle-belling or being full of good cheer. As a matter of fact, I find great joy knowing we’re still five months away from holiday season madness.
This most wonderful time of the year is filled with information dissemination. Walking show floors, interviews, new products, new designs and, best of all, Product Design & Development’s annual Time-to-Market supplement – my eyes are so filled with glee, it’s near-impossible to read the screen.
Every year, we survey our readership to get the time-to-market pulse. At which stage of the design and development process are design engineers running into the most time-to-market obstacles? (Testing.) What software features are helping improve development times? (Better CAD.) How can distributors speed up the process? (Speed it up.)
And my favorite, the open-ended question, the readers’ forum-like vent haven, when the gloves can come off and you can tell us what’s really on your mind – with complete anonymity.
Of the many surveys that I have administered in the past, this one had the most open-ended responses. Thanks for taking the time — even if you simply elaborated at great length on a growing lack of manpower and resources.
What good is state-of-the-art prototyping equipment and finite element analysis software if you don’t have anyone in-house that knows how to properly use them?
Scope changes, scope creep and a "clearly defined scope" were often pegged for making a "huge impact" in slowing time-to-market. Uncontrolled project scope changes typically occur when the project lacks clear definition from the beginning. It can also be negatively impacted by inaccurate or insufficient documentation, and/or overall poor project management and control.
Product feature creep was most notably affected by marketing groups who hadn’t locked down the pre-product description and feature list. According to one respondent, "too much unnecessary micromanaging by upper management looking for a reason to come to work" was slowing him/her down every day.
Creep was also experienced as a result of stubborn engineers, as some respondents noted that it can be difficult to get the engineering department to seize a trend that could be added to a future iteration and deliver the product to manufacturing in a "reasonable time."
According to our readers, particularly those neck-deep in the medical industry (not necessarily a poor position in this economy), product development continues to be delayed by clinical trials for medical device design, and heeding FDA design controls and approvals.
Regulatory compliance and documentation is becoming more difficult with smaller staffs attempting to fill additional roles, and more engineers are adding the Technical Writer position to their resumes as they have to spend more time creating marketing and product specification documents.
Many of you responded with many different qualms, but one of the greatest obstacles in accelerating time-to-market was time. Among all the other cogs seemingly working against the machine, many stated that they simply didn’t have enough hours in the day to meet expectations. It’s a bit odd, really.
As time-to-market demands accelerate, the ongoing cuts from the testing timetable were alarming. I did find it reassuring that someone stated that while "validation testing to verify that reliability goals will be met in production" is slowing time-to-market, "accelerated testing is not possible due to a lack of correlation with real-time testing."
I also noticed that a number of readers are really looking for someone to take the reigns of the project and become the self-appointed leader if necessary. Readers appear to be frustrated with decisions by committee, as one reader responded, "My kingdom for a "chief" engineer.
So sit down, strap in and prepare that index finger to flip through pages of hard data suggesting what you can do to improve time-to-market. Limited clichés to follow …