Yvonne Schmidt

DESIGN THINKING COURSE REFLECTION

I am a member of an engineering support team responsible for providing Design for Manufacturing  (DFM) input to mechanical design engineers during the design cycle for new products. Our team created  documents called Manufacturing Design Tenets, for use by design engineering during the product design  cycle to improve the manufacturability and reduce the cost of a mechanical component.  The  information in the design tenets was well received by the design engineering community. We have a  large design engineering community located in North America, Europe and Asia. Dissemination of the  information to all members of the community was an issue. We had a great product but not all of the  consumers were aware of its very existence. We tried several internal communication tools to help  familiarize the DEs with the tenets, but still could not reach all the potential customers.

We chose to create a training course for the design engineering(DE) personnel. We chose the Learning  Launch tool for this project. We used surveys and focus groups to determine the most appropriate  delivery method for the training. The data showed a preference for on online video training course  which could be viewed at the end users’ convenience.

The best way to provide this training is a one on one session where the Subject Matter Expert(SME) can  answer the individual design engineer’s question. This is not always convenient as the SME is not always  available to address the question to meet the individual’s need. The challenge was to present experience  based  knowledge  to  them  in  a  format  where  they  can  consume  the  training  using  the  latest  media  capabilities. We are in the online video generation, so a similar format was selected to ensure success.

We selected the 10 highest priority DFM Tenets for the video content. We created a training script for  these examples. In the training course an SME discusses the tenet, then we use videos to reinforce the  tenet. One specific example we used was for changing the internal radius on a machined pocket to a value  to allow the machine tool to machine this feature more efficiently. A video showing a machine tool in  operation was added to reinforce the discussion.

The training course was added to the training requirements for all of the engineering community. The  online training class allowed the user to set their training schedule.  They liked the reduced time  away from their daily tasks to complete the training. They also liked the internal and external web  sites that were provided for reference after the training was complete.

The content of the class met the expectations, however there was room for improvement regarding  the presentation in the video format. The training videos were produced in a three month timeframe.  A longer time schedule would have allowed for an improved product. Some of the video examples  used could have been improved. The production and editing for the video was performed by the  team members, who had limited video editing capabilities. Hiring a team of video production experts  would have improved the quality of the presentation.

