D… for Design (product and component Design)

I started my career as a hardware development engineer. Together with my colleagues at the time, I designed printed circuit boards (PCB) and complex products, mainly for the aerospace industry. Like any good engineer starting out, I did scrupulously adhere to the specifications, based on a list of requirements. Then I described when and how these requirements were to be tested. And I did follow the various stages of the process, ensuring my department to obtain all the necessary ISO certifications. I thought that by following all the rules, I was doing a very good job. And then, going to the Gemba (yes, everything always starts from there...) I came face to face with some of my misconceptions.

The first shock came during an in-depth visit to the manufacturing plant, where I realised that my design choices had a significant impact on the manufacturing process... the choice of components, for example, which, when I multiplied the number of different references, required a much more complex supply chain, more frequent tool changes and longer manufacturing times. That goes without saying... but in front of the machines, it became much more concrete for me, and I never designed my PCB’s in the same way afterwards.

The second shock came at a customer site (we had been honoured to be allowed to go there...) when I realised that the most difficult performance to obtain, requested by the customer’s purchasing department, was in fact never used by the direct users. As a result, I began to really understand that you have to make 'the right product' before doing it right!

The third shock was more recent, and it took me longer to understand. It was during my first trip to Japan that a colleague who was there with me pointed out to me, at the Toyota Museum in Nagoya, that right from the design stage of the very first car, in 1937 / 1938, the development of measuring and control tools was planned at the same time than the car itself. Not only the machines and tools used to manufacture the parts, but also everything needed to check, measure and test them as they went along had been designed with the first prototype.

My latest trip was another eye-opener. At Kino Metal, a supplier of metal parts to Toyota and Mitsubishi, we saw a series of presses aligned, rather than a single large press, allowing to work with smaller and therefore cheaper moulds, and better visibility (and therefore a better control) of the process and quality at every stage. Everywhere we went, we saw a wealth of ingenuity in obtaining efficient tooling and checking fixtures that were quick to implement, to achieve exceptional levels of quality and constantly challenged costs. To achieve these results, it's not possible to simply execute part design, industrial design and test design one after the other! All three have to be designed together.

When I followed the design processes step by step, I never forgot to consult the industrial teams on the manufacturability and testability of my product... which sometimes led to design adjustments; but I hadn't understood that the design of the product must include the design of the machines, tooling and test resources at the same time. This is the difference between cooperating and collaborating (co-elaboration).

A product is the result of a series of decisions (technical or otherwise). The order in which these decisions are taken has a huge impact on the definition of the product, and decisions relating to manufacturability and testability must be taken as early as possible in the design process. It's not a question of checking whether a solution is manufacturable or testable, but of designing a manufacturable and testable solution... It is therefore a question of collaboration between the teams from the outset, i.e. co-development of a solution and the manufacturing, inspection and testing tools, and not of validation at the manufacturability or testability "gates".

Product design is not just about obtaining a bill of materials. It's about collaboration between different jobs (and therefore, no doubt, managing the inevitable conflicts!) to obtain a clever solution throughout the product life cycle (I haven't mentioned recycling, but it's becoming increasingly important so).

Cécile Roche