At Issue

“Social computing is here to stay and our research suggests that product development is ripe to take advantage of this new way of working.”

by Robin Saitz, Senior Vice President, Solutions marketing and Communications, PTC

How many of you visit social networking sites? Maybe you have a LinkedIn account, you post on Facebook, you rate movies on Netflix, and maybe you have registered on the PTC/USER forums. Some people think this social networking stuff is pretty cool, but could never work in business. I was reading an O’Reilly Radar report and Tim O’Reilly makes a great point:

“….remember how the personal computer was dismissed by the titans of the computer industry as nothing but a toy? The future often comes to us in disguise, with toys that grow up to spark a revolution.” He was referring to Twitter, in this case. But it struck me that the same is true for social networking’s role in product development.

Collaboration is not new to product development. In fact, since the dawn of time, people have been working together to create innovative designs. In short, product development is a team sport. How well you and your company choreograph product development activities is key to the success or failure of your product and your business.

But beyond well defined business processes, which are absolutely necessary, individuals need to connect easily to information and people on an ad-hoc basis to get their work done. If you have used IM to get a question answered quickly while you are in a meeting or used Yammer to get information for a presentation, you know what I mean. Product development is already social, but it can be even more so. 

For business, social networking has evolved into social computing, and today, social computing technology has emerged as a real business application, but for product development it needs a boost. The real value of social computing in product development comes not only when you are connecting to people and documents, but when you are connecting to the content that defines your products -- and that content is helping you connect to people you don’t even know who can help you get your work done better and faster.  

But would engineers use social computing technology to do their jobs? I really wanted to know this, so I engaged Josh Bernoff and Forrester Research to create a social technographics profile of product developers using PTC products as well as those that don’t. How actively do designers and engineers participate in Web 2.0 and social media activities? How about CAD and IT administrators? Managers, Directors, and even VPs? What about across industries?  

Any differences between those coming from electronics and high tech and those working in aerospace and defense, for example? Are product development practitioners from small and medium-sized businesses any more or less active than those who work in large enterprises? Would we see consistent activity across the geographies PTC serves throughout the world? Do they use social media and web 2.0 in business? 

So we created a survey….some would say (and did) that it was too long. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what to expect. We sent the global survey out to 750,000 contacts in March 2009.  In just two weeks, we had over 7,000 complete responses – a record for PTC. Josh and team churned the data. And the results not only surprised us, but it surprised them, too! The social technographics profile for US online adults in 2008 looks like this: (http://www.flickr.com/photos/25131367@N05/2955749197/in/photostream/)

In comparison, the social technographics profile for our product development practitioners looks like this:

An astounding 89 percent of the respondents used social media and web 2.0 tools in their personal and/or professional lives. The data was so significant that we peeled away those that only use these tools for personal use, so we could look at only those who use these tools in their job. We got answers to all our questions. Here are some of the highlights:     

• All roles are active in social media; managers a little more so than designers and engineers, CAD and IT administrators a little more than managers.
• There were no significant differences across industries; however A&D was a little less likely to participate than other industries.
• Individuals from SMBs were a little more likely than those from large businesses, but all were still very likely to participate.
• Regarding geographic differences, all were active, but China, India, Germany, Korea were all more active than the US. 

While some have dismissed social networking as a fad or a toy for the teenagers and college students of the world, I have news for you: Social computing is here to stay and our research suggests that product development is ripe to take advantage of this new way of working. 

What do you think? Does social computing have its place in product development?

Robin Saitz is Senior Vice President, Solutions marketing and Communications for PTC. You can follow her on Twitter www.twitter.com/robinsaitz or learn more about social product development at www.ptc.com/go/social. PTC provides discrete manufacturers with software and services to meet the globalization, time-to-market and operational efficiency objectives of product development.

Six steps to your organization’s social networking success. The Internet, more specifically social networking has changed the way people and organizations connect, create, stay in touch or seek help from others.

by Jeff Klingberg, President/CEO, Mountain Stream Group, Inc.

Citizen journalists are using social media tools like blogs, microblogs, and video sharing to inform the world of the events surrounding the 2009 Iranian election protests when traditional journalists were banned from the country. Musicians utilize services like Myspace and YouTube to launch careers and connect with fans. Companies employ wikis to collaborate on product develop, manage projects and customer relations, and provide technical support. E-tailers and restaurants apply reviews and opinions to increase traffic and drive sales.

However, many organizations are jumping head long into social networking before they know what it is, how to use it, what platforms their stakeholders may or may not use, and what social technographics define their stakeholders for fear they are going to be left out.

Others leap in because it is going to be a ‘cheap’ way of marketing themselves without having goals, strategies and tactics established, knowing the human resource and time allocations needed to get results, defining a method for measuring results, and determining what message(s) they’re going broadcast.

The following 6-step process will help any business successfully take advantage of the numerous opportunities social networking offers to engage—and connect—with stakeholders: physically, rationally or emotionally.

1. Discover

Before you, or your employees, think about using social networking for engineering, marketing communications, customer service, or anything else you must have an understanding of each of the different services and platforms available, and how their ecosystems operate. Acquiring this knowledge can done by first visiting Wikipedia’s list of social networking services or conducting a Google search. Then visit the service’s homepage and browse their ‘About Us’ section, which is full of useful information. Also, investigate the proprietary platforms to understand their ecosystems, and how they might be implemented.

Once you are comfortable, sign up, browse and watch for a bit before jumping into the conversation. Note: But, before you do it, find out if your company has any social networking policies in place, see comments in the definition phase.

You must gain insight on your stakeholders as well. This is crucial to the success of any social networking venture because each personality or technographic type plays a different role in the system. All your departments—engineering, marketing communications, sales, customer service, human resources, information systems, etc.—need to collaborate to determine who’s who.

Some questions to ask include. What reason(s) do they use social networking: to connect, to create, to stay in touch or seek help from others? How tech savvy are their stakeholders? Where are they going to find information and how do they find it? How active are they? What’s their age, sex and title?

Answers to these questions and others will go a long way in determining what type of personality or technographic they are: creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators and inactives? These categories are Forrester Research’s methodology for surveying consumers. Also, compare the answers against the demographics of the service, if available.

To help companies with technographic segmentation, Forrester Research has developed a profile tool. It can be found at http://www.forrester.com/Groundswell/profile_tool.html for consumer profiles, and http://www.forrester.com/Groundswell/b2b_profile_tool.html for business-to-business profiles.

The research isn’t just for external stakeholders, but internal as well. Conduct an internal company review. Ask your entire staff how familiar they are with the various platforms? Does your company have the creative and human resources available to create, manage and promote a social networking campaign with relevant and useful content and communication on a regular basis, or will you need outside assistance like copywriters, or marketing communications specialists? Are your employees adaptable and prepared to accept the change that social networking will bring to the company or do you need change consultants to guide them through the process? What is the employee morale level? Are they capable or willing to stay on message?

Don’t forget to learn about your competition’s use of social networking tools. Check out your competitors’ websites to see if they have any blog posts, wikis, specialized forums, etc. Do they use or supply tools like ratings or specialized widgets (applications)? Are they on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, etc.? If they are what types of information do they have? What subject matter are they discussing? Who’s following them? How active are they in their posts?

2. Define

While individual employees maybe championing the social networking need, it’s truly a corporate function, which needs goals, strategies, tactics and rules. Executive management along with every department head will need to be involved during this phase as well.

Just like your organization has corporate, product development, marketing communications, workforce developing and other departmental goals, you must also have goals for social networking—e.g., gain customer insight, reduce product development time, provide better customer support, gain competitive insight, enhance brand awareness & image, etc. Each goal for each stakeholder group will require a different set of strategies, tactics, resource needs and metrics. Additionally, the use of social networking, and its goals, must relate back to the your company’s objectives.

Hence, the need for a comprehensive social networking plan.

Social networking giveth, and it taketh away. It can be a great resource, but if misapplied or misused,  or your staff goes off message or misidentifies themselves, and your organization’s reputation maybe harmed or intellectual property divulged, lost or stolen. Therefore, you need to establish a set of rules for how your business intends to use social networking and how your employees should use it to make their job more efficient and practical. If your company doesn’t have a social networking policy in place, you need one quickly before you take the leap.

You must recognize that, while social networking can provide cost savings, it can be time consuming as well. Therefore, as part of the definition process, you must determine what technology and human resources will be required to engage your stakeholders and achieve your goals along with the frequency and duration your employees can participate.

It could be a discussion group on LinkedIn, a Facebook page, developing your own forum, wikis, etc., or a combination of all them maybe required. Do you need several social networking channels to cover each of the major stakeholder groups? Is it going to be a private platform requiring user name and password to get at information, or open to the general public to read like a wiki or knowledge base or maybe a combination of both? If you develop your own platform, where will it be hosted: on company or off-sight servers? What method(s) that you will use is(are) going to be dependent on the skill levels of those involved and your company’s objectives.

And, just like any ecosystem if there is no activity it will die. So if your organization decides to develop your own social networking platform or even if you’re going to use LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter, you must also determine who are going to be the internal and external supporters to stir the pot and keep the conversation going.

3. Create

You’ve figured out what you need and how you are going to do it. Now you have to purchase and implement the required technology and information systems. Build, write and develop the blogs, wikis, knowledge bases, discussion groups, forums, and employee accounts for the various tactics that will be employed.

Generate the educational information (videos, documents, etc.) needed, if they aren’t already. More than likely, you will also need to develop a company-wide training program for your employees. So don’t forget that when generating your educational information.

Produce the marketing communications messages needed to notify your customers, employees, channel partners and vendors of the company’s social networking efforts.

You must keep your core brand values in mind in creating your social network because if the experiences and messages at each touchpoint aren’t consistent and cohesive—and in harmony with the values—that will create a disconnect, the conversation will end and the desired action will be terminated.

4. Test

Like any good product development process includes beta testing, developing a social network to meet the needs of your stakeholders also requires testing before it is launched. You’ll need to let key stakeholders test the systems, information and messages that are being employed to see if they are going to meet the needs of that particular stakeholder group.

5. Broadcast

Once all the content has been created, and the platforms have tested and tweaked, then they can be disseminated to the entire stakeholder population, and participation can begin.

6. Track

Just like any good business or product development plan has metrics which are monitored, it’s necessary to establish metrics in the definition phase and track those metrics to determine if results are meeting expectations, and to establish the ROI and ROE (return on engagement) of your efforts.

Monitoring your company’s dedicated networks just isn’t enough. You must watch all forms of social networking to follow what stakeholders are saying. Tracking stakeholder communications will require technology, and there are numerous packages that enable organizations to do this easily and efficiently.

The insight gained from monitoring and analyzing metric data along with conversations should flow back to the beginning and be part of a continuous improvement process. Making the network better, the stakeholder connections stronger, and the company more successful.

If your company is seeking to gain more insight into social networking and effective strategies I recommend you read the book Groundswell: Winning in a world transformed by social technologies.

Certain designs may be elaborate and complicated to understand, but their complexities help make life a little easier and more enjoyable.

by Meaghan Ziemba, Associate Editor, PD&D

I’m not a complex person. My three favorite seasonings are hot sauce, pepper and salt. I drink my coffee black most of the time, and the less buttons I have to push to play a video game or control the TV, the better. I use, maybe two of the applications that are offered on my overly-complex enV phone, and I have yet to open the manual to see how the rest work or what they are intended for. When it comes to movie themes I want more senseless, non-emotional, guns-a-blazing-bomb-exploding fighting.

I don’t try to understand the nitty-gritty in my phone, computer or favorite movies. I find myself discombobulated at times when I make an attempt to learn about what makes certain technological items tick. But I do find with the complex technology of today, the simplest things we enjoy in our everyday lives are made possible creating less difficult and more enjoyable opportunities.

For instance, my latest movie experience: Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen; a great, action-packed movie filled with alien fighting robots and not to mention, some cool looking vehicles that is unlikely to win the next Oscar; took hundreds of artists and thousands of hours to produce the lifelike scenes.

 A recent article, Transformers Showcases Prime Design Technology, explains how each, 2D drawing of every individual robot was transformed into 3D digital images. Every part of each robot needed an algorithm and so much information was required for the animated aspect of the film that it caused one computer to literally explode.

The movie may have had a simple plot and concept, but the mechanics involved were anything but, and without them, the movie…well it just wouldn’t have been the same. 

The same applies with other products that are being released across all industries: Car designs are being remodeled to not only support fuel-efficient engines, but voice-command GPS and phone systems, and sensor technologies that beep warnings of obstacles when backing up or switching lanes. Some even include systems that alert a driver when they start to doze off at the wheel, or dial 911 automatically when the vehicle has been in an accident. There is even auto face recognition that automatically applies personal driving preferences depending on who is operating the car. 

Computer products are becoming smaller and paper thin, yet still capable of supporting mass amounts of information and images. The compact sizes and wireless accessibility enable individuals to attain, distribute and carry their lives anywhere they travel. They can even be used as mobile video phones to conduct meetings or connect families and friends.

Video games and electronics are becoming controller-less, and cell phones are becoming more diverse offering TV and movie stations, music channels, Internet access and video-games galore – why bother purchasing individual products when they can all be available on your phone?

With the high-tech blueprints that lie behind the latest innovations, products are becoming smaller and faster making our lives more manageable – not to mention, producing amazing special effects for action filled movies that involve massive combative machines. I know some ideas are recycled throughout the decades making them dull, but I’m anxious for the day I can drive to work, fold up my car and place it into my purse that hovers above ground…Okay, maybe that’s a bit extreme, but so were flying cars, and look how close we are to that reality.

The saying goes that it’s the simple things in life that matter, but I think it’s the complexities that make them possible. What are your thoughts? Post your comments below.

Engineers know many things; they just don’t seem to trust that knowledge.

By Mike Rainone, Co-Founder of PCDworks

I have been thinking about epistemology lately as it applies to engineering. Now, I don’t sit down and decide ‘I am going to think about epistemology’ like I’m Immanuel Kant thinking about phenomenology, — I do have two businesses that run me now. Rather, this question has evolved from years of trying to understand why engineers don’t trust what they know.

Many of you may react with indignation at this question. “Of course I trust what I know, I know everything,” you might say. Bear with me and I will suggest some evidence to the contrary.

Example # 1:  The “design with precision, and then double it” phenomenon. It’s common to build in irrational fudge factors in design.

Example # 2: Rejecting conclusions that are based on probabilities. Engineers like hard numbers, and tight conclusions. Anything based on less that 100 percent certainty is anathema. 

It took years for Ed Deming’s Total Quality Management (TQM) methods to be accepted in the U.S. after he completely remade Japanese production style — and U.S. production during WWII. His work is largely based on the fuzzy world of probabilities: TQM’s success is based on rigorous OC and the use of statistical analytical techniques, along with a lot of very smart management techniques.

But we don’t like statistics and probability, we like to say things like “the beam will support X load, or the heat exchanger will dissipate Y watts.” We don’t like to say, “The heat sink has a 95 percent probability of dissipating Y watts. Under certain conditions there is a likelihood that the heat sink will do its job, but we don’t like the fuzziness of probabilities.

This speaks volumes about our comfort with the concept of “knowing” something. Engineers know many things; they just don’t seem to trust that knowledge very much. We have all sorts of empirically derived formulae, proven by years of practice and implementation, but right after we finish a design using these formulae, we double them, just to be sure.

Maybe it’s because we don’t think of ourselves as scientists. We are not really trained and immersed in the scientific method. We don’t often see ourselves digging into the fundamentals of our universe, or the why’s and how’s of what makes up the truths of our existence. This is ironic, because, as engineers, we have built our profession on the backs of great scientists and engineers who were always theorizing, experimenting, confirming results and providing the scientifically derived knowledge upon which we depend for our work.

As engineers we use science everyday. An engineering design is a chain of hypotheses, each piece with a probability of failure that we are chaining together to form a solution with a probability of success. Those hypotheses are tested by the design.

The CYA distrust of science leads to waste, at all quarters, and makes us irrationally comfortable. It also shows itself in the strangest of places.

An acquaintance of mine who works for a large defense contractor recently called to rail about his product assurance department. His job is to help align suppliers so that this employer can comply with a very specific performance requirement. They must ramp up production from one part a month, to one per day. Obviously, we are not talking about a gear or a transmission; it is a large, complex machine with thousands of complex critical parts. Ramping up will not be easy.

Quality Assurance is important and the QA folks are responsible for seeing that suppliers are complying with the specs. 

The problem is that the QA folk not only want suppliers to test each part when the part comes to the receiving dock, they also insist on testing each part themselves.

It makes one wonder whether QA understands its own principles of the science of statistical probabilities. 

Needless to say, the friend who manages the supply chain to make sure all of the parts arrive at the proper point on the assembly line on time, is not happy with this time-consuming make-work project.

To add insult to injury, the Ph.D. who runs the department keeps telling him that if he had a Ph.D., he would understand why they need to test everything as it comes through the door.

Every time you work on an engineering design, you’re running an experiment. You may think that your mathematical models are rock solid, but the truth is they are all bets. Good bets, maybe, but a gamble nonetheless.

So, get comfortable with probability theory. Perhaps if you knew how good those bets were, you wouldn’t add such a fudge factor to your designs.

Mike Rainone, the co-founder of PCDworks, a technology development firm specializing in breakthrough product innovation. You can contact him via mrain1@pcdworks.com or by visiting www.pcdworks.com.

We never had a chance to fall in love

By David Mantey, Editor, PD&D

I get it, I get it. We’re a culture that loves buzzwords. iPhone, Palm Pre, energy efficiency, green, change, synergize, monetize, functionality, stimulus, Tesla, etc. The list is long and can be efficiently compiled, even though it’s in a constant state of fluctuation, by looking at the top stories on any aggregate or social site.

Just look at the top stories on reddit or Digg. Look at the most read news stories on CNN.com. Look at this newsletter and the PD&D site: If we feature anything on Tesla, our servers go into cardiac arrest and our IT Scotsman burns his mustache administering mouth-to-mouth.

All things lithium or Li-ion typically make the top 10 on this list, and I’m not sure the position is warranted. After all, few know what it is, where it comes from and how much of it is buried under the earth’s surface.

We only need to know that this green efficient technology will help power our gadgets, replace fossil fuels, help alleviate the pain we're feeling at the pump, cure noise and noxious pollution woes and pull a golden-egg-laying rabbit out of a 40-story hat.

I was speaking with Scott Redmond, chairman of XP Vehicles, when he casually mentioned the limited amount of lithium – and how more than half of this green power stash was located in a country that typically hasn’t played nice with others. I didn’t brush off the comment, but I offered an agreeable ‘Right, right,’ and continued with my line of questioning for the cover story that I’ll shamelessly plug and link to now: The Inflatable Car.

I was working out the article when the comment came back to me. Limited lithium? That can’t be. Our country would never make a fool-hearted investment and risk billions of tax payer dollars on a technology with a finite amount of resources. Top story: Energy Dept. to lend $8B to Ford, Nissan, Tesla.

If two of these companies figure it out, the forecasted lithium shortage could happen much sooner than 2015.

Back to the green revolution getting stalled in South America. Bolivia is the potential owner of 5.4 million tons of lithium under the Salar de Uyuni salt desert (about half the worlds supply). According to an article run in the Guardian (UK), “Bolivia’s socialist government has a habit of clashing with foreign multinationals in other sectors and has not clinched a deal – and, according to some, may never seal one – with the investors needed to extract significant quantities of lithium.”

The holder of Bolivia’s most interesting title, Mining & Metallurgy Minister Luis Alberto Echazu hopes to extract 1,200 tons of lithium next year, with exponentially more to follow as the operation becomes more efficient in subsequent years. Right now, the government is building a bungalow to house technicians and miners for a pilot plant that seems dangerously similar to Fordlandia.

The government is in the market for a partner, but foreign companies have been afraid to work with a government that “confiscates assets and rips up contracts.”

Not only is there a finite number of lithium resources, but it seems unlikely that Bolivia will find a way to harness its potential.

No lithium for the batteries and a desert that is once again known for nothing more than being salty.

Lithium, 

         It’s just not working for me. You say you’re going to be there for me and then you never show. Do you know how embarrassing it was to describe to my friends? I sit in your driveway waiting for hours, only to have your father come out and say, ‘It’s not going to happen. it’s over. I’m done playing games. Thanks for nothing, I’m keeping the toaster.'

Dictated but not read.

Is lithium the answer? Comment below …

The driving public is ready for change, and the fortwo opens the door for it.

by Jeff Reinke, Editorial Director, PD&D

Although garnering much less attention than other recent developments in the automotive marketplace, Daimler’s smart fortwo car recently celebrated its first year of availability in the U.S. Even if you haven’t seen the 8.8’ long x 5.1’ tall x 5.1’ wide “smart car” in person, you’ve certainly heard about these mini-vehicles and their greener benefits.

While their eco footprint is impressive, sales numbers in the neighborhood of 25,000 during this first year on U.S. soil haven’t drawn as much acclaim. Taken at face value it’s difficult to disagree with the lack of attention, but looking a little closer offers what I believe are some significant trends that will impact the future of vehicle design and represent a revolutionary paradigm shift amongst the driving public.

But first, a slight refresher on the background of these vehicles. The project was initiated in the early 1990s via a joint venture between Mercedes-Benz and the makers of Swatch watches, with Nicolas Hayek, the inventor of the Swatch watch, presenting his ideas for an “ultra-urban” car.

Full development started in 1994 and was followed by a debut at the Frankfurt Motor Show in 1997. Production began in 1998 in Hambach, France. That same year, smart became a 100 percent owned subsidiary of Daimler-Benz AG. Last year, smart USA Distributor LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Penske Automotive Group, began their exclusive distribution of the vehicle in the United States and Puerto Rico.

The smart fortwo delivers 41 MPG on the highway with a 1.0-liter, 3-cylinder engine that generates up to 70 HP. Its four models range in retail price from $11,990 to $20,990. Additional vehicle features include a 5-speed automated manual transmission, paddle shifters, alloy wheels, a tire pressure monitoring system, a hydraulic dual-circuit braking system and several other safety-focused systems.

Again, none of this is real impressive, until you look a little deeper. On a number of levels these smart fortwo offerings answer the call for what a growing number of consumers want:

• Improved fuel mileage – check.
• Simple functionality – check.
• Green as Kermit’s nose – check.
• Safe – yes, check there too. Perhaps the biggest possible detraction from the smart offering was the risk associated with its size in navigating U.S. freeways. In response, Daimler engineers outfitted the vehicle with a tridion safety cell that surrounds occupants with an energy displacing system of longitudinal and transverse structural members that displace impact forces over a larger area of the car. For a clearer understanding of how this keeps the driver and passenger safe, just think of a NASCAR wreck where the vehicle is shredded, but the driver still manages to get out and thank his sponsors for the pleasure of repeatedly flipping on the nose and tail of his Wonder Bread, Powerade, Big Red Gum-sponsored Chevrolet. Additional, more traditional technology like Electronic Stability Control and ABS brakes are also part of the mix in adding to safety and performance. The vehicle’s shorter wheelbase is even a safety feature in that side impacts will be better absorbed by the wheels and tires of the fortwo, which are connected to either longitudinal structural members or axles that help to displace the crash energy.
• Variety – check. The higher-priced units offer sporty suspension, exhaust and handling packages that allow you to push all three cylinders to their limit. Now, you might never be Charlize Theron in her Mini Cooper from the Italian Job, but then again who really could be?

So what makes this vehicle the next potential rock star in the automotive world:

• First, it has Roger Penske behind it. The guy is a winner and could offer some pretty unique competition when the fortwo is teamed with his recently acquired Saturn offerings.
• It is a direct result of what a growing number of people want. It’s cheaper to purchase and keep running, simple to use and German engineering supports its safety claims.
• It has 25,000 advocates from the most environmentally insensitive driving population in the world.
• The system integration hasn’t forgotten creature comforts or vehicle technology enhancements. Features like ESP have been around in luxury vehicles for a while, but are just starting to make their way in to more general models, including the fortwo. Also, smart allows drivers to get their favorite color, audio system of preference and other upgrades with Brabus models. 

Will the fortwo ever overtake the Mustang in the hearts of most Americans? Very doubtful. But then again, heart hasn’t been driving Americans to Toyota and Honda dealerships for the past 30 years. Chrysler has gone with Fiat. Ford, Toyota and the rest have smaller vehicle offerings either available now, or ready for introduction in the not-so-distance future. Hopefully, GM can find a smart answer of their own, because the driving public appears ready for a change.

"In order to understand why the struggle for survival is being waged, we have to understand a bit of the industry’s history and the product lifecycle curve."

by Jeff Klingberg, President/CEO, Mountain Stream Group, Inc.

As a person who worked in the industry for 10 years and has provided consulting services to the industry for the past 16 years, I believe it is—especially in the United States. And, if they don’t wake up immediately, they’ll find themselves in the history books and museums alongside dinosaurs—extinct.

Like a precision military assault, the fluid power industry is getting hammered on several fronts: technology competition, the environment, government regulations and knowledge loss. The environment, government regulations and knowledge loss have teamed up to open a gaping hole in the fortress allowing a full frontal attack by technology competition.

And, like Great Britain during World War II, the industry has done very little to combat the forces working against them. While some have acknowledged defeat and quit the battle, most of the industry, it seems, have yet to realize they’re under attack or their survival is at risk.

In order to understand why the struggle for survival is being waged, we have to understand a bit of the industry’s history and the product lifecycle curve.

The use of compressed air dates back over 2000 years to ancient Greece. The industry’s genesis came in the 1880s during the industrial revolution. What some call the beginning of the modern fluid power era came just after World War I, and the industry really took off after World War II.

In the 1980s, foreign competition, like Festo, Joucomatic (now ASCO Numatics) and SMC, started coming to the United States and establishing operations. Also, during this period the industry had its largest sales levels.

Starting in the mid 1990s and continuing into the new millennium, the founders of some of the industry’s powerhouses became of retire age. During this period component shipments remained relatively constant, cost per component decreased and profit levels shrank to high single digits. This combination commenced the consolidation of the industry that continues today.

These are clear indicators of an industry in decline, as shown above. Now, let’s take a look at how the assault is being waged.

The environment and government regulation opens the hole.

December 1970, the US Environmental Protection Agency was established to protect human health and to safeguard the natural environment—air, water, and land. Over the next 27 years scientists and governments worldwide came to the conclusion that the earth was warming, and much of its cause can be attributed to the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) due to the generation of electricity through the use of coal.

In 1997, industrialized nations signed a treaty to reduce GHG emissions called the Kyoto Protocol. A year later, the US Department of Energy announced the Compressed Air Challenge. Its goal was to reduce the consumption of electricity used to generate compressed air by improving its efficiency 20 percent by 2010.

On December 12, 2008, the European Union signed an agreement—to surpass the Kyoto Protocol—which will reduce greenhouse gases emissions by 20 percent from 1990 levels, increase energy efficiency by another 20 percent and double the use of renewable energy by 2020. Germany has a loftier goal of 40 percent and doubling energy productivity—currently at 27 percent.

Hydraulic oil is considered a hazardous waste. Companies not disposing of the used oil in accordance with federal and state laws can be and are sued. Some states, like Illinois, are not only going after the waste disposal companies, but are suing the end user who sold the oil to the disposal company. I learned this when I recently spoke to one plastic injection and blow molding firm who was sued by the Illinois EPA because the firm they hired to recycle and disposal of their hydraulic fluids didn’t dispose of the used oil properly.

To mitigate this type of liability in the future, the firm has worked with all their injection and blow molding equipment suppliers to change all of their 30+ machines to all electric actuation. Industries like HVAC, one of the largest users of pneumatic actuators, have begun eliminating compressed air actuation of dampers and moving to electric actuation. So because of the environment and governmental regulations hydraulic and pneumatic actuation is being replaced at a much greater pace than most realize.

Some companies, like SMC, have begun promoting the reduced air consumption and energy savings of their actuators and valves. But at the same time they, like Festo, Parker Hannifin, Bimba, Norgren and many others, have begun transforming their pneumatic cylinders into electric actuators. At Pack Expo, the Festo salesperson who met me in their booth was more excited to tell me about their electric actuators than he was their servopneumatic systems, which he knew nothing of.

And like any good prize fighter, electric actuator companies, like Intelligent Actuator, see their opening and are pounding away at the fluid power industry with their ads promoting eco-friendly products and lifecycle costs significantly less than pneumatic actuation.

Consolidation not limited to manufacturers.

When looking at the characteristics of the different product lifecycle segments, you’ll recognize that the fluid power industry is in decline. This is evident by the reduction of profitably and the inability to grow organically. This is leading manufacturers and distributors alike to consolidate to grow and to mitigate or eliminate pricing pressures. But there are issues with consolidation, such as elimination of workforce and product integration problems.

Consolidation is not only a trend from a manufacturing and distribution standpoint. It’s also a trend at the end user level. End users are consolidating suppliers to make purchasing and inventory control less costly. That’s why you’re seeing fluid power distributors take on other motion control components and systems—so they can be a one-stop-shop vendor. And, the distributor trade association change its name to The FPDA Motion & Control Network.

Fluid power isn’t sexy.

As a mature industry that arose from the baby boom generation, the industry is seeing this generation of engineers and leaders retire and pass away causing a loss of the technical knowledge and intellectual property that built the industry. The industry acknowledged they’re in trouble from this standpoint at a 2007 international summit in which heads of all the world’s fluid power trade associations agreed to find a solution to the problem.

The problem being that the engineers, designers and mechanics coming out of school over the past decade or so have little to no interest in, or knowledge in the fundamentals of, fluid power. As a May 2007 Design Product News (Canada) article put it, fluid power is not sexy. Electricity is. Therefore, these engineers, designers, and mechanics are specifying electric actuation as the main mode of motion control.

Is the industry prepared for the realities of a changing world?

Today, electric motion control is equivalent to the pneumatic fluid power sector, or roughly $9 billion dollars. All reports indicate that electric motion control growth is expected to stay even with or outpace pneumatic motion control. It’s also expected to dig deeper into the hydraulic sector as well, especially since some of the major earthmoving equipment manufacturers have started to replace hydraulics with electric actuators in certain applications.

While there will be a place for all 3 motion control actuation methods in machinery design, the industry needs to pull their collective heads out of the sand and wake up to the reality at hand. Where is the industry—the NFPA, CETOP, etc.—in driving and promoting energy efficiency.

The United States is nearly 10 to 15 years behind Europe and Japan in technological studies in efficient fluid power product design.

Why hasn’t the industry taken steps to promote efficient and practical machine design to reduce the consumption of compressed air and electricity? At every trade show I attend, I see machinery, shake my head and say to myself who designed this. The fluid power actuation systems being used are rudimentary, impractical and inefficient. Who’s fault is this? It lays at the feet of the industry because the trend in machine design is to seek assistance from the technology manufacturers and distributors who are supposed to know their products.

Why haven’t they been more proactively promoting alternative fluids, such as vegetable-based oils, to replace petroleum-based fluids in hydraulic systems? Water hydraulics has been around for at least 20 years now, but the industry has done little to nothing to educate end users of its benefits. Where has the industry been to combat the negative press of hydraulic leakage and pneumatic lubrication? I believe there are plenty of fitting technologies available today that don’t leak, and pneumatic systems that need no lubrication.

How many manufacturers are aware that they must begin calculating, identifying and installing energy consumption and efficiency numbers into their advertising, and promotional and technical literature in order to service the European market? I’d have to say NONE! But that is the reality of the situation.

Are US fluid power manufacturers ready for this reality? I don’t think so.

Are they ready for the reality that their products must meet ROHS? Are they ready for the reality that their products must meet new ISO safety standards? Are they ready to discuss their products in terms of lifecycle costs? Probably not.

However, it is not too late to stave off being minimized or extinct. Research on new energy efficient products must be accelerated. The industry must band together to promote their value to mankind just like other industries have done in the past. Not just videos posted on YouTube or handed out at fluid power functions, but a strategic marketing communications campaign to advance the industry. And, the industry must take a more concerted effort to educate today’s students—starting in the grade schools—about the simplicity of the technology.

If they do these things, the industry will postpone the decline. If they don’t, I am sorry to say they will end up in the history books and museums alongside dinosaurs—extinct.

“Not all cash breaks are sure fire ways to keep folks coming back.

by Anna Wells, Editor, IMPO

Establishing the loyalty of your customers can be accomplished using many tactics—and I’ve seen a few very blatant attempts in the past week by way of financial incentives. But it seems not all cash breaks are sure fire ways to keep folks coming back:

Apple recently announced a major reduction in price point on some of its more popular electronic items, including its older model 3G iPhones, to make way for the new model 3GS. Superficially it makes sense, considering people are making do with less. But in reality, the data phone industry is one of the few that is actually booming. In fact, smart phone sales grew 25 percent over the past year, even though regular cell phone sales went down.

This tells us a few things:

People are really addicted to mobile communication, to the point where we’d give up other perks in order to afford the “extravagance” of being able to work from the airport.

Apple is reducing its prices for reasons other than a public who can’t or won’t purchase its products.

This announcement came in the wake of the introduction of the Palm Pre, the most competitive data phone the iPhone has seen yet. Here Apple is preparing for the fact that its customers could be persuaded by other brands based on price point, functionality, or the media blitz of the new and exciting. People are still buying smart phones, but it’s up to Apple to make sure it remains competitive, and retains its existing customers.

It’s also no coincidence that the big media splash occurred when many of Apple’s original 3G users were about to see the end of their 2-year contracts. Why not give them a new, top-of-the-line model to encourage them to stay with the iPhone? In addition to retaining customers, new, lower priced iPhone 3Gs will likely entice newbies.

My brother is a technology geek and can’t, in good conscience, let a new model of iPhone hit the streets without it being in his pocket immediately. For me, the lower cost 3G model is just the incentive I need to trade in my BlackBerry for something a bit less formal. My brother’s loyalty to Apple is a given, and it’s based on Apple’s consistent innovation—and in this case, perhaps, it’s timing. My loyalty, however, is pending the success of my new technological venture. If I become an Apple diehard down the road, it will be a direct result of the financial incentives.

But not all incentives toward loyalty are so ingeniously timed. Case in point: I recently returned from a vacation in Hawaii. Because of the latest economic conditions, coupled with an early summer lull, our resort was at an enviable 20 percent capacity (meaning: enviable for us and our beach solitude, but a financial obstacle for the hotel owners). Sitting down to breakfast in the hotel’s open air restaurant the first morning, we were informed that the price on our meal had been preemptively reduced by ten dollars. This “special” ran all week, as well as other discounts like the cabana’s $5 drink of the day. (Really, you can’t get a Pina Colada anywhere for $5, and here we were sipping them on the ocean like it was some type of patio happy hour.)

While I am certainly not complaining about the price breaks, this is an example, in my opinion, of a loyalty incentive gone wrong. Considering I was stranded on an island where the nearest city was 15 miles away, and the next nearest resort was a mile down the road, why was I being courted with price reductions? I had nowhere to go, so would have paid whatever they asked, simply chalking it up to the cost of a vacation at inflated resort costs. If the incentive is to try to get people to come back, I’d be surprised if anyone were to book a vacation to the same place every year based on the hope of cheap drinks, or a few dollars off a fruit buffet. The discounts seemed misplaced and unnecessary, and my credit card bill would have been higher, had they wanted it to be.

Finally, a chance to vent without threatened persecution. Let’s see what you have to say.

By David Mantey, Editor, PD&D

Every couple of months, I like to take a survey of the readership to get the industry’s pulse regarding a particular topic. Given the anonymity of the survey, it also gives you a chance to vent in 60 characters or less — although one respondent did fill out an entire survey twice, just so he/she could conclude his/her rant.

I collected these particular responses to be featured in our annual Time-to-Market Supplement with graphs, charts and other kinds of eye candy to make the copy more interesting than a pixilated small font with some generic clip art.

The supplement will be done shortly, but here are some of your more interesting responses.

What is your greatest obstacle in accelerating time-to-market?

1. Physical testing is not what lengthens a timeline, a non-satisfactory test result and the time to re-design lengthens the timeline. My company deals with Federal safety standards and physical testing is required. FEA reduces physical testing non-compliance, but does not eliminate it.
2. Lack of information and data sharing from other departments.
3. Lack of human resources all along the way from design, reviews, evaluation & testing, tooling, operational methods preparation, and operations--machining and assembly.
4. The mid-design kicker where marketing changes the design goal, forcing a re-design right before qualification, which puts a potential mini-pass in the critical path.
5. PROTOTYPING- the best designs take the longest - based on costing and structure guide lines. The best made products evolve in the hands of the craftsman not necessarily in the minds of the designer. The designer draws the road map/inspiration. The craftsman brings it to life.
6. Getting engineering to seize a future trend and deliver their product to manufacturing in a reasonable time.
7. Lack of Management support, incorrect information regarding the customer's desires, or improper allocation of resources.
8. Available man-hours – This was a reoccurring theme. Everyone is strapped for manpower and companies keep amending job descriptions with additional responsibilities.
9. Finding a supplier of Contract Manufacturing services capable to meeting product specs in cost targets.
10. Bureaucracy i.e. documentation requirements specifically for reporting up the chain of command.
11. Unrealistic schedules which causes essential steps to be skipped, causing massive rework during design validation.
12. Getting people above and below to buy into "getting it right the first time" and accepting that it takes more time at the front end of the project.
13. Our greatest obstacle lately has been dealing with a single design that satisfies the global market. Different countries have different requirements on function and on aesthetics.
14. Requirement creep, always at the last minute marketing wants to add more features functionality that was not in the original requirements.
15. The inability to kill poor projects. Poor projects take away resources from good projects, which slow down time-to-market.

So, are these legitimate concerns? What is your greatest obstacle in accelerating time-to-market? Comment below …

Seeping out of the streets and into the office, it’s time to take a stand.*  

By David Mantey, Editor, PD&D

Madison, WI – 6-19-09 – I’m writing from the heart of a brewing crisis in office parks around the nation and, quite possibly, around the world.

In cube farms everywhere, production has been brought to a stand still because amateur office baristas are not heeding the Rules for Brewing posted above the Bloomfield Koffee King and making coffee two to three times stronger than the recommended dose.

Such gross scoop misuse has created a nation with tweaked-out pairs of eyes locked on computer screens, working to tribal dance music while attempting to mask the caffeine-inflicted twitch as a New Age rave dance.

Office coffee czars are screaming from the rooftops, “We want you to work harder. We want you to work faster. But we don’t want you to drink that much coffee … Do you know how much that is per pound?”

A side note: Why does all of the screaming always occur on the rooftop? Wouldn’t the person be better suited and their message easier to heed, had they simply stood on his/her desk and shouted like the fish-in-hand Jerry Maguire, “Who’s coming with me? … To have a 10-minute demonstration on proper coffee-care and scoop etiquette. We will be filming and shooting the webcast with a complementary PowerPoint presentation to be dispersed to those unable to attend. Call HR, have them reserve a spot for it in the handbook.”

Just yesterday, I was at the heart of the internal battle as I, David Mantey, brewed an eight-scoop pot of coffee. (This is the allotted time for gasping and heartbreak, as well as a good time to brainstorm mild disciplinary tones, while coming up with a pair of quick pick-me-ups to bookend this compliment sandwich.)

I’m not proud of it. I know the Six-Scoop Standard, I’ve read the bylaws. I needed to be picked up a bit quicker yesterday and thought those few extra grams could do the trick; until yesterday I never knew it wasn’t servers behind the unlabeled black door in the back of the office, but a collection of medieval hand-slapping mechanisms. I have tasted my own medicine and is it bitter.

We each have the handful of things that not only help us get through the day, but also be more productive as the day goes on. For me, it’s dark roast strong enough to jump-start a corpse and a set of headphones to drown out office white noise.

For some, it’s a never-ending stream of Diet Coke or Mountain Dew; others have yogurt and granola every few hours to stay alert. Some re-enact gangland warfare between Homies and Transformer Happy Meal toys, and some water plants. Some still have trolls with wild hair to rub as if they were anxiously awaiting the life-changing bingo card to cure all of their ills. We all have quirks, rituals and habits we wouldn’t dare list on Match.com. If it makes us work harder, who cares?

Reporting live, from Coffee Crisis ‘09, I’m David Mantey.

*Only fair trade coffee was consumed during the writing of this blog, so all of you hippies with your laptops open in Starbucks can back off.

What’s your office habit, ritual, necessity? Comment below …

by Jeff Reinke, Editorial Director, PD&D

Usually any negative news about the Chicago Cubs would produce a great opportunity to take a shot at fellow PD&D editor and resident Cub fan Meaghan Ziemba, but the recent unveiling of Sammy Sosa testing positive for performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) registered on a larger scale. True, I would have loved to taunt Meaghan about the validity of those 60+ home run totals he registered while playing for my Brewer’s notorious rival to the south, but this time it seemed to resonate on a different level.

Maybe it’s ambivalence to the frequent headlines relating to athletes and steroids, or some recent frustrations over attempting to fill a current position. Either way, I began to wonder what might happen if we could apply a model that has become most widely, and probably unfairly, attributed to baseball in more mainstream applications. Be honest, wouldn’t we all be tempted to ingest the equivalent of Samson’s legendary locks if it promised greater occupational results, as well as the associated monetary gains? And don’t tell me those in the automotive realm couldn’t use a shot of positive PR right now, similar to when the steroid era began after the 1994 baseball strike that washed out the World Series.

My thoughts are that while the current benefits of these pharmaceutical innovations dwell on physical improvement, it would only be a matter of time before breakthroughs were realized on the mental side, especially if public sentiment took a more accepting turn. What could possibly be negative about a collection of super-buff, hyper-intelligent human beings?

We wouldn’t have to worry about energy issues because we’d either be strong enough to run or walk more frequently, and smart enough to harvest our own oil from newly mandated algae ponds. This is, of course, after we retro-fitted our homes and vehicles to run off of vegetable oil.

Who needs the latest iPhone offering when we’d have devices that, via Transformer-like capabilities, actually morphed from a phone into a camera, gaming system or computer.

The medical care crisis could be addressed with kits for performing minor procedures at home. Along with the educational materials that we would all now be able to easily absorb, these kits would provide intuitive 3-dimensional holographs showing exactly what to do, how to do it and how to react if complications arose. A waiver form would be attached to the credit card receipt. Thank you PEDs!

On the sports front, you’d have to think that the playing field would be leveled if everyone was indulging. Sure, you could hit a baseball 500 feet with regularity, but try doing that when the pitcher is delivering a 110 MPH curve ball.

So when would it stop? Maybe when life spans began to shrink. Or violent crime and mental insanity escalated to a level of anarchy. Then again, our incredible brain power should be able to anticipate and address these situations appropriately … hopefully.

Okay, so maybe PEDs aren’t the answer to solving society’s problems. Maybe at the end of the day the good guys, the people who do things the right way, really do come out on top. Maybe as much as I’d like to see design engineers with 24” biceps standing up to bullies on the marketing, sales and production teams when it comes to changing their concepts, we’ll have to stick with the current state of our operating environment.

I guess original thought and innovative talent has served us pretty well so far, and besides, I’m not a big fan of needles. So while I understand the appeal, hopefully more athletes will stick with the same course many of you have taken, and avoid the short cut to success in favor of longer term viability.

And oh yeah, the first place Milwaukee Brewers currently lead the Cubs by 3.5 games in the NL Central – not only a quality parting shot, but done completely without the assistance of performance enhancing drugs.

"Reading the Wisconsin State Journal a few weeks back, I came upon an article that broke my heart."

By Amanda McGowan, Editor, Surgical Products

The article reported a $17.3 million lawsuit settlement in Wisconsin, the result of a malpractice case in which a surgeon attempted to remove a young girl’s spleen and left her permanently brain damaged.

According to the article, Shelbey Bomkamp, now 8 years old, had her spleen removed in June 2007 because of a hereditary condition. The pediatric surgeon operating on Shelbey decided to go with a minimally invasive approach to the procedure—working though small holes in Shelbey’s abdomen—and use a morcellator to remove the organ.

“To retrieve the fist-sized spleen through one of the holes, he encased the organ in a bag and used a blender-like device called a morcellator to chop it up inside the girl's body,” the article reports. “The device punctured the bag, cut major blood vessels and severed part of her bowel, causing serious blood loss and permanent brain damage.”

Unfortunately, this tragedy is not just a routine procedure gone wrong. What’s more is, the surgeon had never used a morcellator before and did not inform Shelbey’s parents he would be trying this new instrument for the first time. As a result of the incident, Shelbey is confined to a wheelchair, fed through a feeding tube and unable to speak, communicating by blinking her eyes. The damage is irreversible, the article reports.

I know, mistakes happen, even to the best of surgeons. However, reading about this incident reminded me of another conversation.

At a recent trade show, I learned about a new social networking/educational resource for surgeons. SURGiVIEW is a Web-based program that allows users to upload video of their surgeries, share with other professionals in the field what instruments they use and even offers a forum-type function where surgeons and other professionals can communicate and ask questions. This new community seems like the ultimate educational platform. It allows the opportunity for surgeons to witness new procedures and techniques and interact with each other.

What makes it truly valuable, though, is it allows surgeons to learn without necessarily having to worry about their peers knowing they still have things to learn. As a surgeon explained, “I would rather watch video than let another surgeon know I don’t know how to do something.”

As I read this article, it got me thinking—is that what happened in this case? I understand there is a first time for everything, and no matter how much this surgeon practiced and trained and studied, there is always a chance that something could go wrong. I can’t help but question, though, did this pediatric surgeon maybe know he needed help using this morcellator for the first time, but was too proud to ask for it until it was too late?

Surgeons, undoubtedly, know the importance of education and training and working together to advance surgery. However, just like any professional, they also face the “pride factor”—the idea that we all want to feel good at our jobs, among the “best”, if possible, and do not always want to let on we need help.

Hopefully, this new online resource will come to be the next greatest educational tool for surgical professionals—to act not only as a forum for sharing the latest surgical accomplishments and to give advice about which instruments and brands work best, but an opportunity for surgeons to learn and ask their peers for help in a comfortable setting, so they are as prepared as they can be for the many “firsts” to come.

Check out SURGiVIEW at www.surgiview.org

Source: Wisconsin State Journal

Project Natal makes gaming more personal; reality forgettable

By Meaghan Ziemba, Associate Editor, PD&D

During my youth, I was a video game addict. I’d spend hours in front of the TV, sleep deprived and starving, determined to conquer Donkey Kong and Super Mario World 2 on my Super Nintendo that I received on my birthday. Pause was the only option when I debated to use the restroom. Yes, I said debated.

Nowadays, with advancements in sensor technologies, video games aren’t only becoming more educational, but interactive as well – and did I mention, more of an obsession. Gamers aren’t only playing them; they’re becoming a part of them, forgetting at times the underlying fantasy.   

Nintendo’s Wii is a perfect example. Characters aren’t just being manipulated by a controller that is easily broken when frustrations of defeat reach a boiling point; they are following the movements of the actual player themselves. Gamers become the bowler, track star, boxer, Jedi knight, etc. What’s more? Nintendo is updating the accuracy of the controls with Gyro Sensors, making them more sensitive to individual movements. The virtual reality becomes closer to a reality.

Then there’s Project Natal, Xbox’s version of the Wii, however the absence of hand devices makes the gaming experience truly innovational.

Equipped with an RGB camera, 3D depth camera and a multi-array microphone, the system not only tracks full body movements, but recognizes individual voices and faces of multiple participants. Personal items can also be scanned and placed into the virtual reality, creating a more intimate experience.

In the video Meet Milo, Creative Director of Microsoft Game Studios in Europe, Peter Molyneux, explains how Natal breaks down barriers that hand-held controllers build between players and the fantasy world. While viewing the demonstration, my old addictive tendencies started to itch, tempting me to purchase the product once it became available.    

How unproductive will people become when they can make personal connections with Milo, Darth Vader, and a 6’3”, 200-pound ninja they’re trying to defeat in order to save the world from mass destruction? Granted, the Wii and Natal produce more physical activity than the sit in front of the TV, mouth open with drool drizzling Pong game of the past; and research has shown certain games provide exercise benefits equal to that of light jogging; but the personal and intimate connections that are assembled intensify the imaginative fixation. Why ride a bike when you can pretend to in your living room? Why go out and meet new people when you can socialize and produce your own friends at home?  

At times it becomes a battle to break my daughter away from Spiderman. I can only imagine how it will be to disconnect her from the handsome prince on a magical island who actually returns the conversation – say goodbye to real bikes and the park.

We all want to escape our personal realities to a point, and Natal has made it easier by breaking down the barriers of hand-held devices; emphasizing the need we feel to play out actions with the characters. Even with Internet connections, individuals can play with other gamers of other countries, making dress-up conventions ridiculous and inconvenient, and being a couch potato more appetizing.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited for this break-through technology and anxious to see what it brings to the future of video games and electronic components. However, I wonder if those participating will get so wrapped in their character roles, they’ll start believing they’re actually Darth Vader and forget about other opportunities that wait outside in the real world.

Or are we just too impatient?

by David Mantey, Editor, PD&D

I’m currently watching, listening and reading Michael Mandel’s take on The Failed Promise of Innovation in the U.S. - the fact that I even have this capability is a testament to innovation in multi-media information dissemination and a symptom of onset adult Attention Deficit Disorder, which will be diagnosed by an online pharmacist’s web crawler and pinged as a spam prospect.

The failed promise of innovation, if anything, assigns a guilty verdict to new products in order to remove all personal culpability. Tell me how BlackBerry addiction and internet fatigue are legitimate problems.

If you can make a case for those two, I still want to know how the story makes for headline news more popular than any current event.

My explanation? Self-diagnosis is in, and it’s more common to sit in a meeting and talk about the many sicknesses that ail you rather than your plans for the weekend – consisting of the many things you’ll be forced to cancel because you’re suffering from the exhaustion of a life lived as an “ambivalent networker.”    

Back on our supposed inventive shortcomings that read like a thanks-for-trying participation ribbon or an honorable-mention medal for the design engineering community.   

Innovation is not a promise or a deal that has been struck with the public. The only sure thing is we’ll continue to come up with theories, provable or not, that will inject rampant excitement into imaginative potential consumers.

Within the presumed benefit of innovation lies the expectation that we will experience a greater number of technological failures than life-altering tech-savvy breakthroughs. That, and we need to get over flashy new features that really don’t make life that much easier to live. I tend to think that most new apps amp up trivialities to the point of annoyance, but I’m drawn to the Joy of Less rather than a Jim Rome-like electro-lust.

Innovation always falls short of expectation. It’s the reason the artist rendition is released before the prototype, and the prototype is then paraded around the country like some Ozzfest freak show to see if anyone is as excited as they were when they first viewed the mock-up on a Discovery Channel product design chronicle.   

Are we not as innovative as we thought? From 1998, Mandel cites a possibly tremendous innovative shortfall as we expected:

• Fast satellite internet.
• Amazing biotech drugs.
• Fuel cell propelled cars.

If you think that innovation has failed, cite your delusions of grandeur and sci-fi gadget envy rather than the economy, education or whatever makes for the best headline on a homepage. The symptoms of the failed economy are no more true than the symptoms of a self-described failure sitting at home wallowing about what he/she could have been instead of making active changes.

We can also attribute our demand for immediate return. We want a flying car and we want it now. We want to be teleported. We want cheaper, faster, cleaner power. We’re spoiled children who cry unless we get to open a gift the day before our birthday. Calm down. Have certain innovations failed? Yes. Has the promise of innovation as a whole failed? We don’t know yet and who’s to say we need an answer 11 years after inception?

"While gas mileage is a vital feature of today’s vehicles, it will never be the only one driving the purchasing decision."

by Jeff Reinke, Editorial Director, PD&D

You have to love the lifecycle of buzz words. They’re usually introduced by someone of prominence, and then follow one of a couple different routes. They can either be genuinely accepted by the general public, thrust upon us via repeated use from a socially prominent figure, or exhausted to the point of annoyance by the mainstream media. The similarity they share is running that gauntlet from being fully embraced to discarded or simply treated as background noise. Our case in point for today is the term fuel efficiency.

In a recent release from GM touting their “Leaner, Greener, Reinvented General Motors” offerings for 2010, the term fuel efficiency, or a very similar variation of it, was referenced with every single vehicle mention. In fact, some sort of reference to fuel economy was made in almost every paragraph, minus the last one which traditionally offers a mini-backgrounder on the company.

Admittedly, GM is an easy target right now. So at the risk of appearing to pile on the automaker, I have to admit that these constant references to cutting fuel consumption sent me back to late last summer in watching the presidential campaigns. Even as an admitted conservative, the repeated “Maverick” references from John McCain and his campaign turned from a somewhat catchy personal reference to an unintentionally comical and overly-ambitious attempt at improving a good man’s appeal to a wider base of decision makers. It obviously didn’t work, and now I have to wonder if GM hasn’t wandered down that same treacherous path.

When you hitch yourself to a given platform, it needs be the right one and encompass some staying power. Calling himself a maverick was supposed to separate McCain from the Bush administration and diminish any political alliance. The bottom line, however, is that it became overplayed to the point of ambivalence. People stopped listening because it was always the same message. This is where my concerns lie when GM begins banging the fuel efficiency drum.

While gas mileage is a vital feature of today’s vehicles, it will never be the only one driving the purchasing decision. Other technologies also need to be improved in order to keep pace with the competition. Companies like Volvo and Audi have excelled in bringing clean diesel technology to the marketplace which combines performance and fuel efficiency, but guess which one gets more attention in their promotional efforts? While some drivers will tout the less frequent visits to the pump, we all love our cup holders, entertainment systems and quick response from pushing down the gas pedal.

My point is that while it’s extremely prudent to reinforce the move to more efficient vehicle offerings, this simply cannot be the only focal point for this new version of General Motors, as it certainly wasn’t the sole factor responsible for past failures. Going green isn’t necessarily what will get them in the black – it’s only a portion of it. Just as McCain’s campaign didn’t revolve around his maverick character reference, it’s what people gravitated towards because it caught their attention … but only for a while and without achieving the long-term goal.

This situation offers an example that is not only prudent to GM’s future offerings, but all product designs. There’s a danger in engineering new products around buzz words without also concentrating on long-term and user-mandated functionality. Today’s iPhone can quickly become yesterday’s Palm Pilot.

The key to GM’s future success will be in demonstrating the capabilities of this fuel efficient technology without sacrificing the power of innovative designs, performance enhancements and all the other attributes that carry more significance in the purchasing process than most would ever admit. While I can appreciate that GM needs to revamp its image by donning a greater shade of green, this can not and should not be the sole focus.

Chevron Digging Its Own Waste Pit

by Carrie Ellis, Editor, Chem.Info

Only something catastrophic could come from a corporation with a moniker that can be easily manipulated into such URLs as www.texacotoxico.org and www.chevrontoxico.com as intimated by the Amazon Defense Coalition and Amazon Watch.

I don’t know how many of you have been following what some environmentalists are calling Amazon Chernobyl, but one word keeps reverberating in my head — ridiculous. Maybe even unbelievable. Actually, I could probably go as far as audacious.

Ditching more than 18 billion gallons of toxic waste into rainforest water reserves. Walking out on more than 900 waste pits. An estimated excess of 1,401 cancer deaths. Escalating childhood leukemia. An abnormal number of miscarriages. Increasing instances of birth defects amongst mothers exposed to contaminated water. Perhaps even killing off entire indigenous groups.

These environmental atrocities are coming to fruition at a time when companies are being lauded for going green, yet this oil giant still insists on playing the Ecuadorian bully — with a past that continues to prove it’s pockmarked with oil waste dumping and other major environmental transgressions.

If you find yourself lacking (or me a bit over-the-top), however, in the wealth of resources recording this landmark case, please visit the following links for more information on the noxious storm gathering over not only the Amazon, but Chevron, too:

• Chevron Corp.
• Amazon Crude On “60 Minutes” – Read; Watch.
• Chevron Board Member Armacost Tied To Conflict Of Interest Over Cancer Study In Ecuador’s Amazon .
• Chevron Annual Meeting Heats Up Over Ecuador Suit .
• Chevron Falls Short On Disclosure Obligations Relating To $27 Billion.
• Amazon Watch Warned That Board of Directors Is Shirking Its Fiduciary Duties On Ecuador.
• Chevron Management Dealt Major Blow With CalPERS Announcement On Ecuador .
• When Chevron Hires Ex-Reporter To Investigate Pollution, Chevron Looks Good.
• The True Cost Of Chevron.
• Chevron Lawyer Stumbles In “60 Minutes” Interview Over Ecuador Oil Contamination.

What I find more gruesome than Chevron’s lack of self-responsibility is that it has smeared this already ugly, historically expensive environmental case with Eddie Haskell-like PR and marketing schemes, including a junk documentary to thwart bad press from “60 Minutes” and other thinly veiled ploys, designed to foil shareholders and drum up public support.

"I have makeup on, and there's naturally occurring oil on my face. Doesn't mean that I'm going to get sick from it," Chevron in-house lawyer and spokesperson Sylvia Garrigo said defensively during her “60 Minutes” interview.

OK, forget gruesome. It’s too leading and perhaps pejorative. Let’s go with strategically confused … Maybe even sadistically delusional. I feel like this industry giant is injuring a reputation more than anything. (Well, I guess not as much as its dignity.) Didn’t “Leave It To Beaver” always teach us that you may as well own up to your mistakes rather than try to chicken-scratch ‘em like Haskell? To be a standup guy and admit wrongdoing when you’re inevitably caught? Must we return to the teacup episode?

Chevron is elbows-deep in the most expensive — around $27 billion — environmental lawsuit this world has ever known. Yet it seems like the more negative attention that is brought on the company, the dirtier it plays and the more conniving its schemes. The company is even under public investigation for fraud. Then repeat.

One of the more recent faux pas was when Chevron enlisted Samuel Armacost — a board of directors member with $3.1 million invested — to disprove the incriminating data amassed by court-appointed scientists in Ecuador. The company financed a so-called independent study of cancer rates in the affected areas to discredit these scientists.

Turns out, the study fudged numbers by taking into account only those cancer victims who had death certificates. With an admittedly limited knowledge of information sharing amongst rainforest inhabitants, I never pictured indigenous groups to be big on paper trails, especially considering most have never had the opportunity to see a doctor. The simple fact that Chevron appointed Armacost further undermines its integrity, while reducing our willingness to believe its other claims.

It’s not that I don’t know most of the articles I referenced also come from parties with a vested interest in the case at hand. It’s not that I want things to be the way they are either. It’s just that these environmental groups back up their argument, while big business continues to flounder. If I were accused of false reporting or grammatical murder, I’d take a moment to reflect. Then, upon not being able to validate my ineptitude, I’d print a retraction or devise how to otherwise make amends.

Mind you, I realize much more is at stake for Chevron than its name (namely, a lot of money), but where does the oil giant envision itself if it even were to sidestep this well-documented historical case? The company would inevitably remain tainted with a loss of both social and environmental credibility. Or maybe just respect.

My words of advice: Play nice and take responsibility for your actions before you alienate everyone. While your biggest proponents may initially grimace, your biggest opponents must admit that at least you’re doing your part to fix any oversights. With this upfront approach, you may be able to not only avoid incurring lawsuits in the first place, but also a bad name and a fraudulent reputation.

Please comment below …

by Luke Simpson, Associate Editor, IMPO

Back home in Australia, I religiously listened to Mornings with Ross & John, a breakfast radio show that used news as a backdrop for discussions about social phenomena, crime and sports. They tracked a number of recurring topics, such as:

• The evolution of the spelling of names — Khloei (Chloe), De’mon (Damon).
• Football players behaving badly — who was at the local strip club associating with the Hell’s Angels and known drug dealers?
• Habits of politicians — Obama’s thin frame was surely a sign that he still smoked.
• The Melbourne gangland killings — not quite as famous as Chicago’s Al Capone era but just as bloody, battling crime gangs and drug dealers wiped out 34 people between 1998 and 2006.

Ross & John, like a lot of people in Melbourne, were also keen punters (gamblers). During the spring horse racing carnival the two presenters would often stray from the mainstream news items to discuss the horses running that day, and more importantly, the odds offered by the bookmakers. They even set up a charity that received the winnings of certain bets. Horse racing and gambling are certainly engrained in the city’s culture – we even had a public holiday for the Melbourne Cup horse race.

In the lead up to elections, both local and abroad, Ross and John would track the polls like the rest of the media. But they would also keep a close eye on the bookies’ odds (yes, you can bet on election outcomes). As soon as the 2007 federal Australian election campaign started, the bookies’ odds indicated that opposition leader Kevin Rudd would be the clear winner. At the time, all of the polls showed different margins and jumped around drastically during the campaign, while the betting odds slowly and steadily shortened for Rudd.

Now Rudd did win the campaign, and yes, most of the polls eventually picked the winner, but there was something compelling about the predictions laid out by a business that stands to lose or gain money based on those predictions, as opposed to a polling group that simply generates numbers based on surveys of indifferent or emotionally-charged humans, prone to react to whatever the current hot-button issue is.

On Monday, the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) released its manufacturing index for May, a key indicator for the industry that shows growth or contraction. It came in at 42.8, up from 40.1 in April and better than the 42 predicted by analysts at ISM in a Thomson Reuters Poll. Any reading below 50 indicates that the sector is generally contracting, but the steady improvement we’ve seen since the index bottomed out in December at 32.9 is encouraging.

In fact, it’s easy to extrapolate on the upward trend of the index readings we’ve seen since January and predict that the manufacturing industry will return to positive growth in early August. But I can’t help but wonder what the professional gamblers think.

I recently discovered intrade, a website that allows you to “trade (speculate on) events that directly affect your life, like politics, entertainment, financial indicators, weather, current events and legal affairs.”

Events (contracts) listed on the website are given a value, translating to the probability of that event coming true. In the words of intrade, “the prices of our contracts are determined by traders, like you, who are confident enough to back up their opinion by risking real money. People put real money on the line in making predictions, which is better than snap judgments in opinion polls or no-stakes views of pundits.”

While this predictions market is slightly different to the independent bookmakers I discussed earlier, it is an interesting way of gauging possible outcomes to events that are generally too complicated to predict using only statistics or science.

If an event on intrade is listed with an 87.6 percent probability of coming true, it will cost you $8.76 for a contract, which will be worth $10 (100 percent) if the event comes true, or $0 if it doesn’t.

In no way do I encourage any of you to speculate on any of these events — in fact I would strongly encourage you not to — but it’s amazing to see what you can bet on these days, which is what this boils down to. Here are a couple of interesting events:

• Event: 15,000 or more cases of A/H1N1 Swine Flu to be confirmed in the U.S. before midnight ET on the 30th of June, 2009.
  • Current Probability: 91.2 percent.
• Event: USA and/or Israel to execute an overt Air Strike against Iran by the 31st of December, 2009.
  • Current Probability: 12.4 percent.
• Event: Osama Bin Laden to be captured/neutralized by the 31st of December, 2009 (what’s neutralized?).
  • Current Probability: 9.0 percent.
• Event: US Unemployment Rate in December 2009 to be greater than 10.00 percent.
  • Current Probability: 65.0 percent.
• Event: United States GDP growth for Q3 of 2009 will be positive.
  • Current Probability: 50.0 percent.

Unfortunately, the last two events don’t really indicate anything compelling about the economy: unemployment will probably be over 10 percent by the end of the year, and there’s an even 50/50 chance that we’ll see positive growth in GDP in the next quarter.

Believe it or not, intrade has created a Growth, Unemployment and S&P Depression Index (GUSD Index), “designed to measure the general condition of the United States’ economy, and allow comparison between quarters to determine if conditions are improving or worsening.” And you guessed it, contracts for this index can be bought and sold – you can bet on the economy.

The index is calculated by summing the percentage change in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) between quarters, the change in the unemployment rate between quarters and the percentage change in the S&P 500 stock Index between quarters. The lower the value of the index, the worse the economy is performing. The index for the first quarter of 2009 was –8.57.

There are currently 12 contracts on offer for the value of the GUSD Index at the end of the second quarter being –1 or lower, –2 or lower, –3 or lower etc. Unfortunately, there is virtually no trading occurring in this category at the moment, which I take to mean that the gamblers really aren’t sure where the economy is headed.

So let’s move away from the entertaining world of prediction markets and back to the people who are actually involved with the manufacturing industry. ISM’s May 2009 Manufacturing Report contains quotes from respondents across a number of different areas — here’s what they’re saying:  

• “Some amount of havoc is about to erupt, with companies pushing for increased capacity when suppliers have taken capacity offline.” (Computer & Electronic Products).
• “Business is actually better than plan.” (Food, Beverage & Tobacco Products).
• “Realistically, we don't see any of our major customers looking to place business until mid-2010 at the earliest.” (Machinery).
• “April was flat on sales. May looking better.” (Primary Metals).
• “Business still trending downward, but not as fast.” (Chemical Products).

In addition, while the ISM index is still below 50, it is in a range that indicates possible growth in GDP.

“The past relationship between the index and the overall economy indicates that the average index for January through May (38.1 percent) corresponds to a 1 percent decrease in real gross domestic product (GDP). In addition, if the index for May (42.8 percent) is annualized, it corresponds to a 0.5 percent increase in real GDP annually,” according to the report.

These are encouraging signs — not enough for me to put my money where my mouth is on the predictive markets, but encouraging signs nonetheless.

by Tom Lee, Chief Evangelist, Maplesoft

The great Chinese philosopher Laozi (aka Lao-tzu) once remarked that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. With my recent business trip to China, I feel that I have a blog posting of a thousand miles ready to burst onto my keyboard but for everyone’s sanity, I’ve chosen to deconstruct my experience and pick a few highlights that I’ll share over a couple of postings. This first one is on the people I’ve met.

A Particularly Enterprising Taxi Driver In Shanghai

This was my third trip to China. Feeling rather confident on this particular visit, I told my hosts that I’d be taking the famous Shanghai airport magnetically levitated MAGLEV highspeed train – a marvel of modern engineering and mathematical modeling - from the airport to the LongYang Road subway station and I’d meet them there. Mastering forms of public transportation is always a goal for me when I travel and I felt I was ready.

I dutifully followed the signs at Shanghai’s cavernous Pudong airport but at one point, an official looking gentleman informed me in a very official sounding way that the MAGLEV was down and may not be operational for another hour or so. Bummer … the MAGLEV goes over 400 kph and is always an amazing way to start a Shanghai visit.

So he directs me to the official taxi line … nothing outwardly suspicious, and I take an official Shanghai cab directly from the airport to the hotel. As we drive leisurely through the Pudong country side, two MAGLEV trains scream by in opposite directions.

About 40 minutes later, we get to the hotel using a fairly direct route.  I look at the meter, it reads 393 Yuan. I quickly do a mental calculation (divide by 6) and come to “little over $60” … ok seems fine … typical airport taxi prices in many cities. Keep the change. I’m handed an official hand written receipt. I check in and call my colleague and asked him how much the taxi typically costs.

“On a busy day 150 Yuan at most!” Later on I show him the receipt and he informs me that it’s a restaurant receipt. All taxi receipts come out of these little printers in the car. So here’s a lesson for all of you. The Shanghai MAGLEV is particularly robust and has an excellent engineering and service record. It really is an engineering marvel.  Always go to the MAGLEV terminal and check the status yourself.  If you’re curious about how to develop control algorithms for your next MAGLEV project, check out the Maplesoft user story www.maplesoft.com/applicationbriefs/maglev.aspx.

Dr. Yang Xin Tie, Chinese Super User, Northwest Polytechnical University, Xi’an

The ancient city of Xi’an is most famous for the legendary Terra Cotta warriors – a thousands-strong clay army created to protect the first unifying emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang (circ. 210 BCE). Many consider them an eighth marvel of the ancient world.  They don’t disappoint.

What also never disappoints me is the amazing recognition that Maple and more recently MapleSim have built around the world. Literally, if you visit a major technology or scientific center in most places of the world, you’re basically treated like a rock star. One such place was Northwest Polytechnical University in Xi’an – a very well known engineering school in China with a specialization in space, aeronautic, and vehicle research. 

I was advised that I’d meet a Maple “super user” -- Dr. Yang Xin Tie of the School of Astronautics, a long time fan of the technology ever since he met Maple pioneer Michael Monagan during a visit to the renowned RWTH in Aachen Germany, in the early 90’s. Today, he spends his time evangelizing Maple to students and colleagues alike. He also boasts many research publications and a Chinese monograph on Maple-related topics.

Although Dr. Yang, in some sense, has been isolated from the primary stream of English Maplesoft dialog for over a decade, his work offers remarkable resonance with the emerging modeling and simulation focus of Maplesoft products. A lot of his recent work has been in the automatic derivation of model equations in fluid problems in aerodynamics. Although the topic is a cousin of the lumped parameter modeling that consumes MapleSim today, the basic motivation was common – save time in modeling, and develop more effective and efficient models.

One of Dr. Yang’s Powerpoint slides … I am told that it says “if you feel pain with mathematics, Maple is your cure”. Honest … I didn’t forward him our marketing literature before the presentation.

He also dusted off a couple of books from the 70’s. I couldn’t read the Chinese but inside were pages and pages of handwritten equations with each expression spanning multiple pages (yes … pages). Based on the structure of the terms (e.g. various combinations of sines and cosines wrapped in ordinary differential equations) I realized they were the equations of motions for complex mechanisms.

What I was seeing was the result of months of work by a younger Dr. Yang to derive the equations and to archive the results. Imagine the task of deriving what took about 1000 pages of handwritten math and to do the checks to ensure correctness. I had never seen such work in the West. Perhaps they existed but with computers having been part of the toolchain for so long, I somehow doubt most ever attempted systems of that complexity without a computer.

Of course, this is music to the ears of a MapleSim fan. Literally, I suspect that those two volumes representing months of toil can now be done by MapleSim in about half a day total. Dr. Yang was very happy.

Tariq Rahman, Vice President Of Technology, Ericsson China, Beijing

Tariq (affectionately known as Bob) is a university friend of mine who is now Vice President of Technology for Ericsson in China. Yes, he cleaned up really well. He now has a lovely family and lives in a very North Americanesque house in the expat district of Beijing.  I had no intention of dragging Bob into my blog post as I tend to keep my professional and private lives well separated.

He did, however, insist on chatting business and I discovered that Ericsson China is much more than a manufacturing and sales operation. A fair bit of genuine R&D is happening for a couple of very good reasons. First, the sheer amount of engineering and scientific research talent is staggering and for many of these bright young professionals, a job with a progressive company like Ericsson is a dream come true and for Ericsson, access to this brain power is key to global growth.

Second, it’s no secret that the Chinese government offers incentives to foreign companies to do as much as possible within China and now that spirit is evolving to include R&D. My reading of it is that China, like so many recently successful Asian economies have a long-view of things. Even with their mighty ranks, they see a limit to development based only on manufacturing.

Creative design has to factor in sometime soon in order to make a real difference for the next generation. You can see this in their domestic car industry with rapidly improving models every year and with Ericsson, in this specific example. So what started as a nice dinner at an expat restaurant in the Central Business District of Beijing quickly became work and now I have to facilitate software evaluations for his group. Thanks Bob!

Miscellaneous tidbits

Lamprey tastes very good when deep-fried and served with a spicy sauce. But then, what doesn’t? Donkey was pretty non-descript.

In typical Chinese restaurants beer is by default, served warm. I am told that traditionally the Chinese have felt that ice-cold liquids are bad for one’s digestive system. You need to specifically ask for cold beer (or “beer with ice” as the locals refer to cold beer) and often, they run out.

When you tour the terracotta warriors and your officially licensed, government approved, tour guide says “you’re in luck, today they have the original farmer who discovered the first warrior in 1974 and he will sign this specially priced guide book for you,” don’t believe her. Although the overall cost is modest by North American or European standards, he is definitely not the original farmer.

A sure sign that you’re adjusting to a foreign destination is the amount of coins you bring back. Until you fully adjust to local prices, currency, and the counting words, it’s impossible to avoid pockets filling up with change. I am happy to report that on this, my third trip to China, my take home amount in change was zero! And I didn’t leave all the change as a tip at the hotel … I’m kind of cheap that way. It just means China is making more sense to me now.

Ever wonder what donkey meat tastes like? Neither did I … but in China, you’re always greeted with a smile and food that shatters some fundamental axiom in your dietary worldview.

To be continued…

I never thought filling up my car would become so distressing.

by Meaghan Ziemba, Associate Editor, PD&D

Every morning and evening on my way to and from work, I anxiously drive by the small gas station on the corner and check out the price of fuel. It’s amazing how such a small detail will either make or break my day, but I think some will agree; the pace at which the price has risen is somewhat ridiculous and a little irritating.

Yesterday evening, I cursed myself for not stopping in the morning, because the price was seven cents cheaper than what it was when I finally made the stop to fill up. It’s like buying a lottery ticket and getting two of the three matching numbers to instantly become a millionaire.

What’s more aggravating is the varying prices I find within a one mile radius. Down the street, two gas stations sit across from each other, one demanding ten cents more than the other – and it doesn’t help knowing that both are owned by the same individual.

I’ve used an eighth of a tank before just driving around searching for the best deals, finally giving up at $2.69 – then kicking myself half a mile down the road later, seeing a price that was six cents cheaper. Curse my impatience.

I’m living my life by the pennies, and while some of us may have escaped the depressing affects of the recession and continue to spend without constantly checking our bank balance, I myself need to include refueling in my budget plan, keeping my fingers crossed that the cost didn’t dramatically change from what it was ten hours before.

I admit to not being well educated on the fueling industry – I couldn’t say how the prices are determined or who the major players are in the business – but a part of me doesn’t care to be educated on it. I just want to get from point A to B in a cost-efficient way, and right now that’s becoming more of a dream than a reality.

Certain companies have already designed and produced electric vehicles, and some states have already begun the transition to the power grid, constructing recharging stations…but what about Wisconsin? A charging station in California is not going to help my gas-price anxiety.

Volvo promises “production of battery-powered Volvos featuring plug-in hybrid technology as early as 2012.”How big is the hole in our pockets going to get until then? In the last week, gas has increased by at least 10 cents. How much will it increase in two years?

While I am still a fan of hydrogen, I will accept any option that will keep my traveling experiences calm and relaxed, pockets mended and my fingers from getting bitten down to the bare skin – until then here’s hoping gas stays at a reasonable price.

by Jeff Reinke, Editorial Director, PD&D

Most are as guilty as I am, and I’m confident many of us have said it at least once.

The main difference being that the design engineer is usually the guy or gal with the right balance of logic, intellect and clear thinking to gravitate more towards a solution than dwelling on the problem. I, on the other hand, tend to let frustration bubble up until fully transformed into the equivalent of an angry caveman bound and determined to pound that square peg through the round hole – complete with the confused look and scratching of a not-quite-fully evolved cranium.

Regardless, recent frustrations with my daughter’s car seat strap once again sent me down the road of uttering that timeless phrase; “Why can’t they just …”, which concluded with a collection of words and phrases that provided a rather unique and colorful description of a strap that could be easily twisted back to where it belonged in properly sliding through the buckle to adjust as I needed. Anyone who’s encountered the same twisting issue with seat belts can appreciate my struggle. Thankfully the occupant of the seat in question was not within ear-shot.

This situation, combined with others on both the personal and professional fronts, have led to my belief that many of our problems don’t stem from a lack of initiative, understanding or effort. Rather, in many instances we simply get caught looking at the bigger picture, and forget the basics, or what I like to refer to as the blocking and tackling portion of a successful endeavor.

With the car seat example, I have no other significant objections with the product. It latches well to the car, and judging from her frequent napping it must be reasonably comfortable for my daughter. Hey, it even has attachments for holding her Dora water bottle and bag of Scooby Snacks. And while all of that is great, they’re kind of pointless if the strap that keeps her body from catapulting out of the seat can’t be easily aligned. So while some nice features and benefits have been enhanced, which I’m sure the sales and marketing teams are thrilled about, the basic functionality could still be improved.

This is a problem that I don’t see as exclusive to car seats. We have mobile phones that can download music, take pictures and play video games, but carry only slightly better phone reception than models from 10 years ago. Numerous non-fossil fuel energy sources have been developed, but a cost-effective way of getting this energy to consumers is still pending. It seems that in a number of situations we have the Griswold family roadster all packed and ready for that trip to Wally World, but forgot the road map on how to get there.

I guess my point is that whether it’s the initial design phase, construction of a BOM or specification of the manufacturing process, there needs to be a balance between new bells and whistles with the blocking and tackling-centric functionalities that will keep customers happy, loyal and with all apologies to those in the Geico ads, a safe distance from any caveman impressions. New toys are always fun to play with, but the core capabilities should get just as much attention in the process.

By Anna Wells, Editor, IMPO

Despite the current jello-like texture of the economy, there seem to be a pervasive stockpile of authors, consultants, and (gulp) “media experts” advising us on how best to be successful.

I don’t consider myself a pessimist… in fact, I have two ½ full glasses on my desk: one with water and one with portable USB drives. But a recent Business Week article brought out my cynical side. It started with the headline: “Are You Full of Mojo or Nojo?”

“Nojo” is exactly what you think it is—the buzzword result of a Venn diagram in some “meeting of the minds.”

The article, by Marshall Goldsmith, author of such business tomes as Succession: Are You Ready, and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, begins by discussing leadership development, and the qualities which are often seen in those who are most successful.

The operational definition of mojo is “that positive spirit toward what we are doing now that starts on the inside and radiates to the outside,” says the article. Nojo, the article adds, might embody the following characteristics:

• Painful to be around
• Zombie like—living dead
• Victim
• March in Place

I won’t list them all, but you get the point.

While Mojo and Nojo sure sit cutely next to one another on a book jacket, the real world work environment is usually not this black and white.

I realize there is value in trying to pinpoint the “bad apples” within your organizations. In fact, there have probably been numerous bad (and good) apples who have been shown the door in the last year due to the inevitable weight of labor costs. But… come on: Zombies?

Instead of trying to push people into columns, let’s just all try and be better. I have never, in my life, worked with a single “nojo.” But I have worked with folks who liked to skim 15 minutes off of either end of their workday. Or people who took every opportunity to badmouth a boss or co-worker behind closed doors.

Keep your eyes peeled for subtleties… and make sure you’re the one who shows your employees what a strong work ethic looks like. They’re looking to you for that intangible quality—the one that has more transparent value than the books that arbitrarily place people in quadrants of success or failure. I’d like to think we’re all a bit more self-aware than to see ourselves in this fictional world of Zombies and bursting rays of sunlight—but if we’re somewhere in the middle, let’s figure out where—and how we can get just a little bit better.