“I consider one of my core responsibilities in running companies to have an environment where great engineers can flourish.”
This article will consider Elon Musk product development thought process…below is a link to a video where Elon is elaborating on this topic:
Summarized in 5 recommendations:
1. Make requirements less dumb
2. Delete the part or process
3. Simplify or optimize
4. Accelerate cycle-time
5. Automate
Several of Elon Musk’s recommendations can be enabled by Design for Six Sigma and Systems Engineering best practices.
With this in mind, let’s use some creative license and speculate on these recommendations and characterize them as design-for-six-sigma, systems engineering, and some specific tools or deliverables.
First, since there are several similar DFSS thought processes, the thought process you’ll find in this article series comprises of:
- Understand Customer Needs
- Define Initial Solution
- Model Design Performance
- Optimize Design for Value
- Verify Design and Models
- Control
Below are summary tables that begin with Elon’s recommendation and corresponding DFSS and Systems Engineering considerations:
A presumed takeaway from Elon is: requirements are generally not detailed enough, or questioned enough. Also, optimizing something that should not exist…we can interpret this as a design or feature without a requirement or customer need. For more information, there is a heavy emphasis in these articles on:
Validation/Systems Engineering
Why Market Requirements Really Don’t Exist
Enabling Customer Value in Product Design
Design Optimization Using Value Equations
In general, Elon was suggesting that we don’t “over-engineer”. Adding things in case they are needed is not an optimized design. Selecting and modeling the best design concept sooner in the product development process will help avoid this. Also, analyzing the design for manufacturing risks and potential causes of failures enable risk mitigation in the design phase to make the necessary adjustments. Note that these aren’t additions in-case-they-are-needed, rather they are justified by analysis.
In general, it’s safe to assume Elon was suggesting that we don’t “over-engineer”. Adding things in case they are needed is not an optimized design. Selecting and modeling the best design concept sooner in the product development process will help avoid this. Also, analyzing the design for manufacturing risks and potential causes of failures enable risk mitigation in the design phase to make the necessary adjustments. Note that these aren’t additions in-case-they-are-needed, rather they are justified by analysis.
Go faster only after you’ve, made requirements less dumb, deleted the part or process, simplify or optimized. Accelerate and automate is combined here in the following table:
Hopefully we’ve successfully elaborated on Elon’s thought process.
Finally, does your company have an environment where great engineers can flourish? Perhaps some of the fundamentals above would help with this!
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