the dark side of engineering

The Dark Side of Engineering:

It’s Efficiency

As engineer I know too well how much we are tempted by the blank paper of a new project. After all we are “innovators” and tend to prefer effectiveness over efficiency.

Dear Fellow Innovator,

We shall admit our sins. We love to innovate. We love it so much that sometime we forget to assure that our ideas are not only effective, but also that they are created in an efficient way.

If we narrow down our attention to the “creative section” of our companies:

“the Engineering”, we may discover that “Efficiency” is not one of the top priorities.

No wonder: a massive curtain of “math’s and jargons” assures any Engineering Office a shelter against a simple request of “productivity” that would be considered minimal and mandatory in a manufacturing or sourcing environment.

The strange thing here, is that focusing a bit of attention on “Engineering Efficiency” would generate immediate and tangible results in at least 3 key business KPI:

1) Time to market: a more efficient engineering process can shrink delivery time

2) Cost of Quality: a more efficient engineering process can systematically detect and correct “random errors”.

3) Business Risks: a more efficient engineering process can assure greater precision in budgeting and multiply the possible solutions of the offering.

But how to inject Efficiency into Engineering?

Here I want to propose a very high level framework that can help isolate

4 different “Engineering Efficiency Drivers”

Little nightly thoughts

by Business Exploration^®

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If you are interested to know more,

Just give me a call at +39 349 648 2225

or visit:

EU Enginering - la buona ingegneria

Cordialmente,

Flavio

© 2015 Business Exploration^® - All Rights Reserved

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4 different Engineering efficiency drivers

I will go through each of them, but before, let’s fix some definition:

Engineering Goal: “transform customer’s problems into solution’s instructions”.

Goal of the Engineering function is to create the instructions to build the solution to a Customer’s Problem.

Engineering Efficiency: instructions per unit / Cost of quality / Time to issue.

Engineering efficiency is defined as “instructions” produced per resource’s unit , reduced cost of errors and poor quality, reduced lead time / time to issue.

Based on this, we may think that the Engineering throughput is based on the ability of the Engineering function to:

1. Possess know-how

2. Make each of its members fully cooperate to build the path to the “instructions”

3. Be able to re-use that path, avoiding the costs to re-invent it.

4. Assure a feedback of the results that can be used to improve the first 3 points.

Let’s review each Engineering Efficiency Driver one by one:

1) Knowledge Coverage - the more you know, the better -

There are 3 elements of the “knowledge coverage”:

A) Owned Know-How

All K-H owned by the Engineering team is the base of its ability to find a solution

B) Searched Know-How

The K-H not owned by the Engineering team shall be either reached outside the engineering team (BUY) or created by a dedicated activity (MAKE)

C) Know-How Management

Possessing the know-how is not sufficient, it must be used and therefore managed. There are 4 key elements of k-h management:

i) Access

To use K-H, Engineering must ensure Access to it. Doing it with security, weighting risks, etc., is part of managing the Access points .

ii) Architecture

Engineering team shall be able to “navigate” the K-H and to recover it. It’s not only a problem of “search” but also of priority: e.g.: philosophy, principles, (rules and data), (norms & Standards), best practices, final instruction’s paths

iii) Systems

Supporting systems are based on: processes, tools, resources, constrains

iiii) Maintenance

A Knowledge base shall be maintained:

made available, made reliable, maintained up-to-date

2) Degree of cooperation: the more Engineers cooperate, the better

The moment Engineers work together to identify and formalize a new path (methodology) to produce the solution’s instructions is of paramount importance.

But:

Is not about: Collaboration:

A matter of friendly environment, teambuilding, culture or feelings

Is not about: Coordination:

Performances, processes, tools, resources and constrains

Is about: Cooperation:

Work together to put colleagues in the best conditions so to produce collectively the best results: both in terms of an effective path and of an efficient path.

The Dark Side of

Engineering:

It’s Efficiency