don't open that engineering door

Don’t open that (Engineering) Door!

The effects of the Engineering standardization are

directly measurable as reduced Cost of Quality...

Dear Fellow Innovator,

when you hear a scream coming from the engineering department,
it’s often a sign that a new mistake has been discovered and
its effects are well down into the manufacturing…

Some organization think that errors are unavoidable
and bring them into the costs and the risks of doing business.

They know that this will lower their price competitiveness
and reduce customer satisfaction and fidelization,
but the fear to deal with Engineering Complexity
it’s so terrifying that they prefer “do nothing”.

In today’s business environment this could be a suicidal decision.
More reactive organizations like General Electric
have started to introduce “knowledge management” best practices
and greatly reduce the times those screams cut the air.

First, with the help of a simple software, they have started
collect all the engineering best practices and methodologies.

Then, the same software has allowed to connect all key engineering tools,
from xls and CAD to FEM, from PDM to CAM and ERP…
and made them work in autopilot.

Don’t get scared by the jargons above:
the software takes all the burden to deal with those tools.

The result is a dramatic reduction of cost of quality:

· Mistakes are captured and corrected into the knowledge base, once and forever.

· Company rules, design philosophy and even international Norms and Standard are embedded into the automated design, without any chance that are not enforced.

The nice thing about all this, is that you free up engineering resources
and relocate them from re-inventing the wheel, to study better products.

Once they have defined the way a new design shall be made,
the methodology is embedded into the software, that makes it run.

All the rules are made explicit, fostering a spirit of open innovation
among the engineers and mistakes are more easily detected.
When a gap of competencies or a need of
special expertise arises, Your HR manager can easily pin-point it
and define a dedicated improvement plan.

Now, your company know-how is Banked:

Because it is collected into a software system,
it can be protected by innovation patents and utility patents.
You can easier attach a dollar value to it and be ready to
monetize it in case of new investments are on the horizon.

If you want to share with me some ideas about “knowledge management”
and talk about how this methodology can help to bring down
the Cost of Engineering’s Quality near to zero,