Author: Joe

NPI in Seven Steps – Part Availability

Published by Joe

This is part two of our look at New Product Introduction (NPI) where we will look at part availability. If you missed the first articles, get caught up here. In this section, we dive into Part Availability, alternative parts, and lead times. Products need parts. Otherwise, they would just be ideas. But they can’t be just any parts. You’ve carefully engineered the exact parts into the product to make it spectacular. But what happens if those parts don’t exist at production scale, or are so expensive they would double the product cost? You’ve picked the parts that solve the solution. In this section of the NPI process, your manufacturer finds parts that can make the product. Part Availability Analysis It’s important to both your team and the manufacturer to ensure that the product will be able to be built at a very specific cost. To achieve this, they will look over your Bill of Materials and assess each part for its availability and if any is nearing end-of-life. Parts that are hard to find or difficult to …

Workplace Gossip, What’s an Engineer to Do?

Published by Joe

Gossip, scuttlebutt, water-cooler talk, chit-chat. Call it what you will, but let’s talk about what you talk about at work. People gossip, and the more time you spend with your teammates away from the office, the more gossip you will hear. Workplace Gossip As the Oxford Dictionary defines gossip as the “casual or unconstrained conversation or reports about other people, typically involving details that are not confirmed as being true.” Now, defining the word is nice and all, but let’s dive into some specific areas where we can apply it to our engineer careers. Sets a Precedent One of the unforeseen side effects of partaking in gossip is that it sets a precedent in your coworker’s mind. If they know they can talk to you about the ridiculous thing they just heard, they may come back to you to share even more. This could quickly spiral out of control and next thing you know you are playing therapist (but without the paycheck). When ‘shit gets real’ you have become the one person they go and unload. …

NPI in Seven Steps – Design for Manufacturing and Test

Published by Joe

This is the first part of our mini-series on New Product Introduction. If you missed the getting started post, read it here. In this post, we will talk about the first step in the NPI process: Design for Manufacturing and Design for Test (DFM and DFT). No one likes broken products. Customers hate them. Engineers scoff at them. Manufacturers don’t get paid. It just sucks when a brand new thing just doesn’t work. This is why, before even building the first one, the Contract Manufacture spends a good deal of time going over the design to make sure they can build it right and that they have a way to test all the functionality before it even leaves their doors. Design for Manufacturing and Design for Test Analysis In this step of the New Product Introduction, the CM does a review of all the files you provided, from schematics to assembly documentation to labels. While PCBs are often a big part of this process due to their complexity, the plastic enclosures and custom metal attachments must also be examined carefully. …

Dealing with Experienced Coworkers and Learning From Them

Published by Joe

It doesn’t matter if this is your first job or your third, you will have the opportunity, and challenge, of working with a broad range of individuals. As an early engineer working on building your credibility and proficiency, perhaps the most daunting group of people are the experienced coworkers. The experienced coworkers I am not talking about the guy with only a year left before retirement and just coasting, I’m talking about the engineer who is the expert in her field and has ten patents and nine papers to her name. Perhaps every time you bring up an idea they have 10 reasons to shoot it down. Or they can seemingly walk up to your computer and instantly point out a critical mistake. After a few of these incidents, you quickly learn to avoid them or get an anxiety attack just by knowing they are going to be in the same meeting. The difference of years Why are so many early engineers intimidated or even threatened by senior engineers? When you look at the differences between …

New Product Introduction - Getting Started

New Product Introduction in Seven Steps – The Beginning

Published by Joe

This post kicks off a seven part series on New Product Introduction. Here we will be introducing the concepts. How many failed Kickstarters are out there that couldn’t raise enough cash to make their project into a shelf-worthy product? How many more failed to deliver or even went bankrupt right after because they couldn’t afford to build a second round? It’s not just the makers. Even large corporations that attempt to branch out into the hardware space have failed to bring their product to market. For many, the reason is they do not understand, or they misjudge the requirements needed to make a prototype into a ready to ship product. This process to get from mockup to saleable item is called the New Product Introduction. What happens after the prototype Let’s say your company has a cool little prototype that will be a game changer. Your team has proven it can work. The marketing group is so excited that they want to launch it at the next big expo – which is in two months. To …

Advanced Uses of the SPI Interface

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The SPI interface has become as ubiquitous in embedded design as the UART or ADC. This is for good reasons as the SPI protocol has a number of great advantages. It is these advantages that we will talk about today and how to best utilize them in your design. Advanced uses of the SPI interface If you are just getting started with the SPI interface, Sparkfun put together a nice intro on SPI or even check out the Wikipedia article on it. Below I have gathered a list of advanced uses of the SPI interface hardware that could either improve SPI communications between your devices or use the hardware in an unusual way – often to provide means to a different protocol not supported by the hardware. Single direction allows for isolation or level shifting In one of my recent designs, I’ve been using a micro that is limited to 2.8v to 3.3v power source but found an extremely low-power, and low-cost sensor that could only run at 1.8v. Because of the single direction of each of …

Bill of Materials – Creation and Control

Published by Joe

Ever look at something and wonder how they keep track of all those parts? Or how about when you see two products, almost identical, but with slightly different labels and wonder how they keep track of the differences? This is the world of the Bill of Materials (or BoM for short, though don’t use that word in public spaces). With only this document, any manufacturer, anywhere, could (in theory*) rebuild the exact product specified within. * Clearly they would need the source files for PCBs, plastics, software, etc.… What Is a Bill of Materials (BoM) and What is it Used For A BoM is a document, which may be as simple as an Excel spreadsheet or as fancy as an Oracle Agile database, but in the end, it is a document that lays out what parts are used to assemble a product, how many, and a way to identify them. Before we get too deep, we need to define a few terms; your company or tool may call them something different, but speak of the same …

The Power of the Lunch Table

Published by Joe

Time for your annual review! As a new engineer, it may be understandable to think that your merits and promotions will be based on your work alone. Makes sense. That’s how it worked in school, and seems like an objective way to attain your worth to the company. The reality is, how much you are liked could influence your position within the company more than how well you can engineer. Surprised? You are not alone, many people get out of academia thinking that getting a good grade at work is just a matter of doing the homework (finishing a task), passing a tests (meeting project deadline), or showing up to office hours (working those extra hours). Now, don’t get me wrong, missing deadlines and not being proficient at your job will hurt, but so will getting on your boss’s nerves (the person who approves your promotion) or making another team member look bad (the person giving peer reviews). Making Friends As you progress in your career, it will become more important to be liked, …

Importance of Version Control for All the Work You Do

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In your Documents folder do you have a Final-Report-V1, Final-Report-vFinal, Final-Report-vFinal-Johns-comments, etc.? How about the experience of having worked on a software assignment all night long, only to have something, somewhere cause a crash minutes before it is due? Then you have seen a glimpse of the importance of version control to your company, and more importantly, to your career. The Importance As a student, backups and constantly saving files was a personal CYA, and unless you were working on a team, a lost file only hurt you. You also had the generous benefit that when the term was done, you could burn, delete, kill, or otherwise maim any document you had spent so much time on and have no repercussions. Now, as the professional you, there is much more at stake when a file goes missing or bugs creep in at the last moment. While there is a large amount of personal CYA that benefits of good use of version control, the company has a legal and financial obligation to keep good records and …

Hello World – or the inaugural post of Learn It, Make It

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Hello world. It doesn’t matter what programming language you use, this has become the de facto standard for an introduction. When Kernighan wrote that first program, I wonder if he knew how it would last. Even embedded engineering has their version of this classic with a blinking LED. It is no wonder that every development kit, experiment board, or hobby set has, at least, one LED populated. You have to start somewhere. And that is the point of this inaugural post for Learn It, Make It. This is my hello world. Nothing fancy, nothing deep but a way to break the ice and introduce this site and myself. Why When starting any endeavor, it is important to ask why. Why bother, why start, why is it important. For me, I started Learn It, Make It because I wanted to help give back to the embedded community, utilizing the strengths I possess. Do I hope to become rich and famous from it? Not in the least, I hope that someday I could use it to provide a …